• A Great friend to the HardForum with a great kid that he is trying to get a scholorship to continue his schooling. Please give hime a vote! Only 24 hours left! Thanks.
    If you have an VOTE FOR KEENAN!

Workstation build suggestions ..

T

trinimoses

n00b
Joined
Jun 30, 2010
Messages
17
hi all..

I have been a fan of this site for years.. but only registered yesterday.. Great reviews and advice....

I am looking at building a workstation over the next few months that will give me the ability to program (web dev, ai), gaming and design work and to be usable for atleast 5 years. I have made up my mind to build a dual xeon box.,... but i just dont know what else i should get.. I will list what i have been looking at and hopefully u guys and gals can assist me.

FIRSTLY let me state i dont live in the USA, i live in the caribbean so i know some stores wouldnt ship parts to me.

Processors : 2 x Intel Xeon X5680 Westmere-EP
motherboard : EVGA SR-2 (i just love this BOARd)
Memory : 24GB BRand ?? (dont think i will need more than 24GB... but i just dont know which brand is best and at what speeds too)
Video Card : 4 x 480 GTX ( was going to go with some 4 x 5870... but then nvidia brought our surround gaming) (quad SLI here i come)
Case : undecided... there arent many cases that the SR-2 can fit in... Looking for suggestions and it must HAVE WHEELS.
Boot Drive : 2 of Cruical 256GB SSDs in raid 0 (if i have any $$ extra would go for 4 of these in raid 10)
DATA/Music drive : 2 x 2TB (dont know which brand is besT)
Raid Controller : dont know who has a TRUE SATA 6gb controller..
Network adapter : Killer™ 2100
Blue RAy Bruners : Dont know which brand 12x blue ray burners are best.
Monitors : 3 x Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP ... Is there any better 30" that i can use for work and gaming...
Monitor arm/bracket.. : I need a good arm/bracket setup to hold all 3 30" monitors.

My budget is about 15000USD to 17000 USD max. Also I want to watercool the CPUs and videocards.. Not going to do much overclocking... but here in the caribbean the normal room temperature is around 30c to 40c.. and i want the system to be QUIEt as possible..

It would be my first step on the watercooling boat... but i have be building PCs for atleast 15years.. so i think i can handle it ... BUt i would appreciate any advice you guys can give me.

thanks in advance.
 
I'd avoid teh Killer 2100 NIC and grab an Intel PRO 1000PT off Newegg. Its much cheaper and will do what you need it to do. Also bear in mind that you may run into OROM problems with that many graphics adapters. I don't know if EVGA resolved this or not with the SR-2's design. As for RAID controllers, I'd go with an LSI or Areca within your budget that offers a real XOR processor. Finally I'd question your monitor choices. The 3008WFP's are reported to have terrible input lag. Though this may or may not be noticeable to you. Some have a huge problem with it while others don't. For gaming the lag is unacceptable for me. I've not tried the 3008WFP myself but I have used panels with noticeable input lag and I noticed the lag doing general desktop usage tasks. Even web browsing felt "off" to me. Also you need to give some thought to the power supply question if you are going to run that many cards. It may take two using separate circuit breakers in your home to power that under full load.

On the subject of watercooling, don't expect too much in the way of silence because high end watercooling rigs aren't typically quiet. You still need decent fans moving a fair amount of air to cool higher end components. With two processors and four GPUs you shouldn't expect anything exceptionally quiet. What will you be doing with this machine anyway?
 
Programming (web devi..) ,maybe AI programming, equipment design and gaming (FPS and RTS).

On the PSU front, I was looking at having 2 PSUs 1200WATT pushing the system.
But i dont know how to get them to work together. I am having an electrican put in a seperate circuit just for that room with an outlet that can push 20amps for the UPS.

Whats OROM problems ?
 
Last edited:
I question your need for a dedicated RAID controller considering that your planned hard drive setup should be just fine with the mobo's onboard storage controller which can easily handle a RAID 0 array and two separate 2TB drives. Speaking of which, I recommend this 2TB drive:
$190 - Western Digital Black WD2001FASS 2TB 7200RPM HDD

Go with this RAM set:
$278 - Kingston 2 x 4GB ECC Registered DDR3 1333 RAM

Go with these this PSU setup:
$600 - 2 x Enermax Galaxy EVO EGX1250EWT 1250W PSU

Go with this case:
$440 - Mountain Mods Ascension (Black Wrinkle Powder Coat) Case
$80 - Modular HPTX-SR2 Motherboard tray assembly

It has wheels, can fit those GTX 480 cards, and can fit two PSUs.

You're gonna have to decide what you want more: Quiet or good cooling. Can't exactly have both, especially with 4 x GTX 480 cards and two Intel CPUs. As Dan_D pointed out, even with water cooling, it's still gonna be pretty loud.
 
Thanks for the replies so far.

How would i combine both PSU to push the system ?

Secondly who has the best cpu and 480GTX water blocks... and who has the best rad and pump..

I am guessing i would have to run the cpus and gpus on different loops
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top