X99 Workstation build

So, you do realize you can't order those parts from Australia right? That's a US based PCPP list and what's available here is not the same as what's available in Australia. If you choose the Australia option at the upper right hand corner of the PCPP page you'll be able to see what's actually available through the majority of active vendors in that country, plus accurate pricing. Prices for hardware on the US site are NOWHERE near the prices in Australia. They are WAY more expensive there.

Occasionally we even have members who decide to order through US vendors and pay shipping rather than through other or their own countries but a lot of that depends on what is being ordered AND there is always delayed shipping as it will generally have to go through customs twice to get there. Plus there will be import taxes and duties.

Looking at the PCPP page for that build on the Australia site, the graphics card and memory are not available and the build, even without those parts, comes to a staggering 2158.88aud.

ALWAYS willing to help anybody that is willing to listen. Even for those who don't agree with everything, or even anything, that I might say, often says things like "but it DID make me think about THIS particular aspect, which I had not given any thought to before", so it usually works out. Also, there are certainly those with more experience than I have in a great many areas, so I' am by far not the be all and end all, by a long shot, but I do know enough to get somebody going in the right direction and avoid any obvious, or sometimes not so obvious, mistakes when it comes to component selection and configuration.


So, as far as that build goes, there are a few things I'd want to discuss. First one is the water cooling. Don't do it would be my advice. I'm going to copy pasta from another thread I'm working on where the guy is using a very high end X299 configuration, so some of it won't apply to you, but much of it may.

I tend to like air better because it does offer some beneficial airflow by way of residual cooling to the VRMs and memory components, but certainly if you are going to do an advanced open loop then who am I to knock that? Air also has the added benefit of not risking your very expensive hardware due to leakage. And don't think it can't happen.

Even though the designs have gotten much better, even the best open loop hardware, installed by highly skilled water cooling enthusiasts, can still have failures. Recently one of our moderators had a leak on some EK hardware that took out his motherboard, memory and graphics card. I also recently came across a forum thread over on Overclockers where a guy who has many custom loop builds under his belt lost almost the whole setup, including CPU, motherboard, GPU card, power supply and two 1TB SSDs all in one shot due to a leak.

First rule of electronics says to keep them away from water. I agree. Water cooling will never find it's way into any system of mine.

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Also, if speed is a major consideration for this system, especially if there will often be a need for sequential copying of large files from drive to drive or even if there is not, since the random operations are still far faster than even with a standard SATA SSD, you might REALLY want to consider the use of an NVME PCI M.2 drive or multiple drives even. Long term longevity is good and incremental saves or loading of large projects will tend to be MUCH faster, which means productivity will go up and frustration from waiting on operations to finish will go down. They are certainly a lot more expensive but if you can get the ok for budgeting said drives by explaining the great potential for increased performance they offer, you will absolutely be doing whoever uses this system maybe the best service of all.


If you were comparing PC storage to automotive racing, NVME PCI M.2 drives would be considered to the Top fuel category for drive performance.

As you can see from the random performance here:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/10754/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review/7


And the sequential performance here:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/10754/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review/8


The difference is FAR more than minor, likened to the difference between using a hard drive to a regular SSD. Even a very good SATA SSD like the 850 Pro can't even remotely compare. So that might be something you want to consider. It doesn't really matter how fast your graphics card and CPU can process or render your Solidworks project if you're having to wait on the drive to either read from it or write to it.

Also, the platform you've chosen, while certainly capable for it's day, is now more than 3 years old. I certainly understand the price consideration versus a newer workstation CPU, but the bottom line here is that there are better solutions if performance is a larger consideration than EEC memory support. If EEC memory support is mandatory, then stick with what you have outlined. If not, then let's discuss other options. For far less than what that E5 Xeon costs, you can get an i7 or i9 processor with much higher clock speeds, turbo profiles and FAR faster memory support.

I say it's not worth it and the risks of NOT running EEC memory are EXTREMELY minimal, in fact, in most cases EEC memory is NOT going to protect you against the primary causes of data loss and corruption which are hardware, not software, related.

To ECC or not to ECC?

When it comes to most desktop CAD design, ECC largely doesn’t make economic sense for a self-build. Right off the bat, you’re spending money for an issue – correctable memory errors – that statistically will only affect 8% of your hardware, and only if the hardware undergoes a server-like utilization. At lower utilization, as is the case for most CAD workflows, error counts are 2-3 times less in the worst case.

But perhaps that’s not enough justification for you. Know then that ECC is not a magic bullet, and requires a server-style maintenance philosophy to utilize effectively, otherwise it’s a waste. The Google data indicates that modules with correctable errors are up to 900 times more likely to suffer from uncorrectable errors. You should have one of two reactions to this:

Holy crap, I should be monitoring my ECC memory! Then you better read up on Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA) and keep some spare sticks around. Get ready to spend both time and money.
Wait, I have to monitor my ECC memory? If you haven’t bothered, and think ECC will save your bacon on its own, you’re deluding yourself. You may have already suffered uncorrectable errors without noticing. If you’re happy with uncorrectable errors, then you would likely be happy with non ECC RAM. You just spent your money for nothing. You’re doing it wrong.

Finally, all of this assumes perfect software. While it seems really unpleasant to have a system crash because a star on the other side of the universe farted a million years ago, it’s peanuts compared to how many crashes and problems you’re going to experience because your CAD software is broken. Even in the case of a system crash, most file versioning and backup strategies are a more cost-effective investment. If you don’t mind rebooting, you don’t need ECC.

ECC only makes sense in server-like workflows such as FEM analyses or rendering, where a bump in the road costs hours of time. Well, unless you plan to design in space. But then you have a whole other set of problems, like how to keep George Clooney from eating the only piece of lettuce available.

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**Why EEC Memory matters, but probably not for most CAD design**

So you have to decide if this is something that is actually a necessary consideration. I've run various CAD applications for years, using non-EEC memory, although probably not on the scale that your machine will be used for, and I've never had a problem at all in any of the applications I've used which includes Solidworks, SketchUP, AutoCAD, CorelCAD, TurboCAD, Autodesk Maya, Solidworks Visualize, 3dS max, POV-ray, Blender, Cinema 4d, Photoshop, Illustrator, FreeCAD and Poser.

Again, I'm not a super advanced user of any of these applications, although I do have a fair amount of experience with each of them, and I don't use any of them professionally or 40 hours a week like you will likely be, so my exposure to data corruption through errors is probably somewhat reduced, but I DO know people personally who DO use these applications professionally on a daily basis who do not run EEC memory and are no worse for the lack of it.

EEC is absolutely essential for the server, but aside from a few very specific instances, it's not essential for or possibly even beneficial for a workstation.

So, these are all considerations you might want to discuss with your boss, and share the information I've offered here as well. If this is solely your decision and you are knowledgeable enough to weigh these considerations, then great, otherwise I'd have a discussion about it and see what shakes out.

If the price can be budgeted in, I'd recommend m.2 for BOTH the OS and the storage. It's expensive, but it's SO worth it.

Fully understand on the Quadro card and actually tend to agree, although, I think that workstation cards are only better options if you can afford higher end models. All workstation cards are not instantly "better" just because they are workstation cards. There are some really crappy ones just like there are low end gaming cards. If you don't do much in the areas of view-port wire-frame rendering and double-sided polygon rendering, then there is not much reason to go with a Quadro card, however, if you do, or if you use them for double precision calculations, then there is a clear benefit.

If I was working with these applications full time, I'd probably want a more CAD specific card. For what I do though a really good gaming card does well enough.

As far as the EEC memory goes, I fully understand needing to comply with what the boss says he wants, however, I still think showing him the evidence, and pretty much ALL of the recommendations and discussions in all of the CAD forums say about the same thing, might be to his benefit if you can get him to look at and consider the facts. Either way, I have no dog in that fight so all I can do is offer you my opinion and the facts as they exist according to a lot of professional designers and system memory experts. Certainly it doesn't hurt to have EEC memory, except in the area of performance.

As far as the CPU cooler goes, I'd definitely look at a higher model cooler. That Gammaxx cooler is a great budget cooler, for anything with four cores or less, but it's not rated for the TDP of that six core Xeon and will probably not be up to the task. Plus, it will be loud. Likely not as loud as liquid cooling if you factor in the sound pressure from fans pushing air through a radiator and also the pump noise, but still loud. You don't want loud on a workstation. It will make trying to concentrate on what you are doing a nightmare. And I'd also like to point out that it's a very bad idea to keep any computer or workstation in one of those cabinets with the door on them like you see under a lot of desks, so if that can be avoided or the door taken off, it's a good idea, but it also takes away the ability to stifle some of the fan noise so that's all the more reason to invest in hardware that's quiet to start with.

Also, you do NOT want to ship that system with either the graphics card OR the CPU cooler installed, regardless of whether it's going to use water or air. Too risky for something to get damaged an leak onto your hardware or for the CPU socket or motherboard to get damaged. You'll want to ship those packed separately from the computer and install them once you set it up at it's final destination. This is EXTREMELY important. I see at least ten to fifteen threads per day here where just moving a system from one part of the house to another with a tower CPU cooler installed causes some kind of damage let alone across town in a vehicle, or as in your case, in the cargo area of an airplane where you know the people handling it don't give a tin shit whether it gets damaged or not.

I'd make a suggestion on the cooler, at least, but without knowing what case it's going into I don't know what the height considerations are. Is there a specific case model? Is it a mid tower or full tower case? Knowing that would be necessary in order to know what will work and what won't.

So, still problems there. You selected a much older M.2 drive that is not much, if any, faster than a standard SATA drive. Also, the hard drive you selected is a 5400RPM model, which is going to make it even slower than an already slow 7200rpm drive. If you are going to use a mechanical hard drive I'd definitely want to see an enterprise class drive in there. Here's what I'd recommend, trying to stay as low as possible on price but also trying to not lose any more performance than absolutely necessary.

This would likely offer 30-40% faster performance and 2x the reliability of the system as you had it. Not sure why, but none of the Quadro graphics cards are showing up on the Australian PCPP so you'll probably have to source that through some alternate method. No joke either on the Enterprise class hard drive. Unless you can foot the bill for a 1TB SSD, which would offer a tremendous performance advantage over a mechanical hard drive as the choice for the local storage medium, this WD gold drive is what you want to use, not that low end consumer level 5400RPM drive.

Also, the CPU and motherboard you picked out are also several years old. MUCH slower than this 8th gen configuration by probably 15-20% or more. You also have no need for a 750w power supply. This is no gaming system. Unless you go with a much higher performance workstation card than that P2000, which only uses 75w, you have no need for a higher capacity unit. Even the 650w unit I picked out is overkill, but not as much as yours. At 650w it will allow room to add a higher end card later or now if you desire, but still allows it to run pretty cool since you won't come near it's peak capacity.



PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7GHz 6-Core Processor ($548.00 @ Shopping Express)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-U14S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($89.00 @ Umart)
Motherboard: Asus - Prime Z370-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($249.00 @ Shopping Express)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($514.00 @ Umart)
Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($295.00 @ Shopping Express)
Storage: Western Digital - Gold 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($189.00 @ IJK)
Video Card: PNY - Quadro P2000 5GB Video Card
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($148.50 @ Newegg Australia)
Total: $2032.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-12-18 23:17 AEDT+1100

What compatibility issues do you have by going with the i7?

Z370 is the only chipset that supports the Coffee lake skus, and Coffee lake is MUCH faster than any previous generation of Intel CPU INCLUDING all the Xeon and Extreme edition processors, EXCEPT in cases where highly threaded application processing is supported and then ONLY if you choose an older CPU model with more than the 6/12 cores/hyperthreads of the 8700k. IPC is improved, clock speeds are improved, there is a better boost profile, there is support for newer video encoding specifications. Lot's of reasons not to go with an older architecture.

It's strange that there are no Quadro cards on PCPP AUS, like, don't they use CAD in Australia or what? LOL.

I'll be honest, I haven't heard the name Leadtek in a great many years. I think they have mostly been chased out of the GPU market in the US but are alive and well in other markets. If they are like they used to be, they made quality cards and had very good customer service, but that was years ago.

I generally buy Nvidia directly branded workstation cards or ones made by PNY, here in the US, for clients requiring workstation builds. It looks like Leadtek is the primary manufacturer in Australia though, so probably your only real choice anyhow. Seems like good quality.

So long as it is enabled in the BIOS, and there will be an option in the bios to enable NVME booting and selecting that specific drive as the primary boot device once the OS is installed (Which, by the way, are you planning on doing a clean install of the OS or were you planning to attempt to clone the current installation to the new drive?), it should be no problem and no worse, harder, than with any other drive.

These boards are DESIGNED to be used with M.2 drives, and the process is not like in the past where fast PCI drives using PCI adapter cards were a nightmare to configure and were not supported by a great many boards or firmwares. Much simplified these days.

Once you have ordered the parts and can for certain provide me with the model number of the motherboard you end up going with, I can provide you with the exact instructions necessary to perform those tasks on the selected board. Also, there will likely be tens of tutorials on just about anything you could want or need to do on that board as well.

If you are uncomfortable with the NVME drive, it would be ok to use a standard SSD if you prefer. I just like offering that option because the speed is unparalleled with any other storage media for the operations that it excels in.