Building a super computer...cost limit TT$50K

[Smokey]

- The costs highlighted in blue are the ones I already bought and shipped down via skybox, therefore the price includes all the shipping and tax costs.
- The costs in red are the ones are bought locally.
- The ones in green are the ones I plan to buy but haven't fully decided on the components.

I budgeted TT $50K for this PC which is going to be used for the following activities:
- CAD
- 3D Animations (I know I should get a Quadro, but I have another PC I'll use to do the final animations)
- Intensive number crunching model simulations
- Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom as well as video editing
- Gaming (Duh!)

Dilemmas now I face:
- Should I have tried for a dual CPU Xeon Processor Setup?
- Should I do a Tri-SLI?
- Should I go to 48 GBs of RAM?

All of the above have diminishing returns and more than likely will not be worth it. However, TRI-SLI is the most tempting option.

When I get everything together I'll evaluate if I should be use water cooling, the room this PC will be used is already home to a small server farm where the temperature is kept at 15 deg Celsius.....However I will try to overclock the CPU to 4GHz+

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

12Ms refresh on the LCD??
why so slow?

[Smokey]

Duane,

I bought it for the 2560 x 1600 Resolution. I honestly haven't noticed any smearing when panning quickly. However, at this native res, I use my smaller 1080P LG LCD for gaming.

[zcarz]

waay with them specs you doh need no uwi gyul again, the pron on that gonna be 2x as good.. freakin nice

[shogun]

[Dragsta]

^

[ruffneck_12]

WDMC does use soooo much RAM???

48GB AH MC RAM!!!???
my HD is 40GB!
512ddr too lmao

take pics of the install btw

[saxman642]

Wow, just wow... Some real impressive stuff here. I surprised FirstChoice ent jump in this thread yet.

you gonna post pics when this build is done?
My take: you already good to go!
Other options: one of those six-core processors or dual socket as you already mentioned

(and i still waiting on a reply to me PM to you a couple days ago. If you not answering the question I asked, just reply and say so!)

[R. Mutt]

I do 3D as well. I used to run a dual 3.4GHz Xeon setup on my old workstation....if I had the money I would have gone this route on the new machine as well. In terms of 3D some people will tell you RAM is the important but for most scenes you'll be dealing with you wouldn't need more than 8GB so 24 is more than enough. Good ram helps in terms of loading large textures in scenes as the render starts and scenes with heavy geo....but little more. The most important thing when doing free lance 3D is render times which is all CPU based. And of course the faster the CPU- the faster the render times. The i7 is no slug, however if you are spending this much money to build a top class workstation I would have gone with dual Xeon 5600 series for a total of 12 cores. You can overclock them to about 4.2 GHz. Boxx offers systems like this that fall within your budget...so it should be feasable to locate an appropriate mother board that will support this setup and be overclocked.

As far as the video card I used to run an NVidia Quardo FX3400/4400.....that was a VERY expensive video card at the time. The problem with these cards is while they handle 3D and CAD well, they absolutely fall apart when it comes to gaming. I'm glad to hear you're staying away from them for this build....any higher grade ati Radeon and nvidia GeForce will handle that stuff fine.

[jusme]

24gbs ram???????

[jusme]

24gbs ram???????

[Smokey]

I do 3D as well. I used to run a dual 3.4GHz Xeon setup on my old workstation....if I had the money I would have gone this route on the new machine as well. In terms of 3D some people will tell you RAM is the important but for most scenes you'll be dealing with you wouldn't need more than 8GB so 24 is more than enough. Good ram helps in terms of loading large textures in scenes as the render starts and scenes with heavy geo....but little more. The most important thing when doing free lance 3D is render times which is all CPU based. And of course the faster the CPU- the faster the render times. The i7 is no slug, however if you are spending this much money to build a top class workstation I would have gone with dual Xeon 5600 series for a total of 12 cores. You can overclock them to about 4.2 GHz. Boxx offers systems like this that fall within your budget...so it should be feasable to locate an appropriate mother board that will support this setup and be overclocked.

As far as the video card I used to run an NVidia Quardo FX3400/4400.....that was a VERY expensive video card at the time. The problem with these cards is while they handle 3D and CAD well, they absolutely fall apart when it comes to gaming. I'm glad to hear you're staying away from them for this build....any higher grade ati Radeon and nvidia GeForce will handle that stuff fine.

Great post Mutt.

I've toyed with the idea of using two Intel Xeon W3680 3.33GHz CPUs and overlock them to 4GHz......with hyper threading that gives you 24 logical cores!...does anything take advantage of that?

I'd then need to use a dual CPU MB...although these aren't much more expensive.

However, again diminishing returns.....and the fact that I already bought the Core i7 970. Tri-SLI is becoming more and more tempting as most games now a days can scale to 3 videocards.

[Nasrallah]

Any reason you choose the MSI board ?

what about the Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer or the Rampage III Extreme?

I love Asus

[Chipz]

24gbs ram???????

So what? The next system im gonna be building soon would have the same

[M_2NR]

I do 3D as well. I used to run a dual 3.4GHz Xeon setup on my old workstation....if I had the money I would have gone this route on the new machine as well. In terms of 3D some people will tell you RAM is the important but for most scenes you'll be dealing with you wouldn't need more than 8GB so 24 is more than enough. Good ram helps in terms of loading large textures in scenes as the render starts and scenes with heavy geo....but little more. The most important thing when doing free lance 3D is render times which is all CPU based. And of course the faster the CPU- the faster the render times. The i7 is no slug, however if you are spending this much money to build a top class workstation I would have gone with dual Xeon 5600 series for a total of 12 cores. You can overclock them to about 4.2 GHz. Boxx offers systems like this that fall within your budget...so it should be feasable to locate an appropriate mother board that will support this setup and be overclocked.

As far as the video card I used to run an NVidia Quardo FX3400/4400.....that was a VERY expensive video card at the time. The problem with these cards is while they handle 3D and CAD well, they absolutely fall apart when it comes to gaming. I'm glad to hear you're staying away from them for this build....any higher grade ati Radeon and nvidia GeForce will handle that stuff fine.

This!

and the thread is closed



I was thinking you'd at least have gone dual-CPU's but ok.

feel free to join this thread

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=328218&start=120

[TK!]

FYI .. this is not a super computer ... but a good powerful desktop

[3stagevtec]

No solid state drive?? The Intel drives are nice..

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-2-5-Inch-X25-M-Mainstream-Solid-State/dp/B002IJA1EQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1283045869&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstream-Solid-State-Package-SSDSA2MH080G2R5/dp/B002IJA1EG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1283045869&sr=8-2

[wagonrunner]

FYI .. this is not a super computer ... but a good powerful desktop

hush nah man. it's a chest beating ched.

[shaneelal]

No solid state drive?? The Intel drives are nice..

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-2-5-Inch-X25-M-Mainstream-Solid-State/dp/B002IJA1EQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1283045869&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstream-Solid-State-Package-SSDSA2MH080G2R5/dp/B002IJA1EG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1283045869&sr=8-2

He does have a SSD in the list, this technology keeps advancing every few months, as a normal user I'll wait till the technology is standardized and cost is reduced.

[3stagevtec]

No solid state drive?? The Intel drives are nice..

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-2-5-Inch-X25-M-Mainstream-Solid-State/dp/B002IJA1EQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1283045869&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstream-Solid-State-Package-SSDSA2MH080G2R5/dp/B002IJA1EG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1283045869&sr=8-2

He does have a SSD in the list, this technology keeps advancing every few months, as a normal user I'll wait till the technology is standardized and cost is reduced.

oh, missed that.. i wanted to get a SSD for my netbook to improve battery life and speed, but the damn thing costs about the same as the netbook itself..

[ruffneck_12]

more pics of this

[Cjruckus]

FYI .. this is not a super computer ... but a good powerful desktop

hush nah man. it's a chest beating ched.

clearly he wasn't loved as a child.

[Trini Hookah]

FYI .. this is not a super computer ... but a good powerful desktop

hush nah man. it's a chest beating ched.

clearly he wasn't loved as a child.

he feel de pc goin tobago..

[Chipz]

FYI .. this is not a super computer ... but a good powerful desktop

hush nah man. it's a chest beating ched.

clearly he wasn't loved as a child.

he feel de pc goin tobago..

[rfari]

ehhh geeeddd!!! nice machine you have there hoss

[zcarz]

^^i believe you mean ohhhh gooood!! ehh geeeeeedd is said in times of disgust

[Cjruckus]

FYI .. this is not a super computer ... but a good powerful desktop

hush nah man. it's a chest beating ched.

clearly he wasn't loved as a child.

he feel de pc goin tobago..

Rofl@ tobago

this is normal for tuner smokey. he is always on some show off scene. Be it from his steroid use to his sexual fantasies.

Just smile a wave.

[TK!]

^^ ahh.. ok

[civic minded]

why do you need such a big monitor?

[firstchoicett]

thats a interesting build you have there bro, but its over priced i could of supply you with all of those parts for below 35k. with one year warranty. my personal system cost me about 45K, and the specs are much higher then yours.

here is my specs.

CASE

Corsair Obsidian Series 800D

HARDWARE

Asus Rampage III Extreme Cooled by Air

CPU Intel Core i7 Extreme 980X @4447Mhzs (Koolance CPU-350AC )

RAM- Corsair GT 3 X 2GB 2000Mhzs

VIDEO CARD ASUS 5970 IN CROSSFIRE COOLED BY (Koolance VID-AR597

WATER COOLING MAIN PARTS

Block,Danger Den Black
Ice GTX360 Radiator for LCS WITH (Koolance Fan, 120x38mm (FAN-12038HBK)X3)

Koolance Pump, PMP-450 [13mm, 1/2" ID

FLOW METER- Koolance INS-FM17 Coolant Flow Meter & Adapter
Board

TUBING- ,Koolance Tubing, Black PVC, 1ft/30.5cm 13mm 1/2"ID

Swiftech
MCRES Micro Revision 2 ReservoiR

Arctic Cooling MX-3 Thermal Compound

Feser-One F1 Cooling Fluid - UV RED

CONNECTORS

Koolance Nozzle Pair, G 1/4 Swivel Angled 13mm NZL-L13P,Koolance
Nozzle Single, G 1/4" Compression NZL-V13KG1,Koolance Nozzle Single, G 1/4"
Compression NZL-V13KG1

ALL POWERED WITH A

Sliver Stone 1500Watts

YouTube Link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzPSaPaN ... r_embedded

More info

http://www.firstchoicett.com/index.php? ... Itemid=180

...
i Mainly use this system for gaming and HD Video editing.

.....
here you can see the system ranked world wide.
http://hwbot.org/community/submission/1 ... 9197_marks

Thanks
hit me a PM if you want to save.