Ultimate home PC challenge...

Feasability study of ultimate home PC.
Anyone have any input/opinions ?

Tyan K8WE (S2895UA2NRF) System board
2 AMD Opteron 285 CPU's
2 7900 GTX Dual GPU Vid Cards SLI
8 2GB Sticks
8 Seagate 146GB Cheetah 15K.4 Drives
In Raid 0 array

Thats 4 CPU cores, 4 GPU cores, 16GB ram,
and 1.1TB of the fastest disk access avaliable.
Is there anything faster out there?[/b]

Yea, most dual socket 940 bouards support 8 dimms, and 16 gig max.
Personally, I dont see the point. Better to go with lower latency and timing. at a higher mem bus.
Only because with 16 gigs, you would be lucky to get T2 @ 333DDR speed, and something like 4,4,4, 10 timings.

Tabris, I love your and the PC that Gakalist wants to build
When I rob a bank I will buy some for sure

And why would you possibly have a need for this??? You have a ton of money to throw at a computer???

Because current Socket 939 / 940 AMD processors have integrated dual-channel memory controllers, which only support DDR1.

DDR2 memory controllers will be integrated into future AMD processors starting with Socket AM2 for desktop. Socket F (future Opterons), not 100% what they'll be using yet (prob Reg DDR2). Socket S will get bumped to 638 pins, and future Turion 64/X2 will support DDR2 aswell.

I am guessing you've never looked at the price difference between 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB DIMMs. Let alone between Unbuffered and Registered and/or Non-ECC, ECC, ChipKill ECC, etc DIMMs. The price rise is very steep at 2 GB / 4 GB. The larger capacity DIMMs are usually clocked lower aswell. eg: PC2700 or PC2100.

Decent 2 GB and 4 GB DIMMs = Very expensive

Have you ever used a computer that was 'fast enough' ?

Good for development work, research, and running Virtual Machines (which can run other operating systems at the same time, and run a 'virtual network' within the PC - good for testing stuff), etc.
eg: http://www.vmware.com - check it out.

Also runs Battlefield 2 at an 'almost' acceptable speed (they need to learn to code, or start patching that game somewhat urgently). Can host 3-6+ dedicted game servers, while playing a client on the same machine. (Setting "CPU Affinity" helps, but isn't required to be setup for it to work).

Also waiting on a server for http://www.virtualbattlespace.com / http://www.virtualbattlefieldsystems.com that might benefit from such a system, and scale far and beyond what people think. (512 - 1024 players, plus another 1024+ AI + vehicles, + island that takes 3-4 hours to walk over so there is a 'need' for vehicles, etc).

I think 16 gigabytes of RAM is a little bit excessive. Remember that you could have 16 terabytes of RAM and not see any performance increase. In fact, in some situations you can aquire lower-density RAM that has faster timings and get better performance on a smaller amount.

I think 4-8 gigs of RAM would be suffecient for the next 4 or 5 years.

It would be fun to fold some proteins on that. . .

Now a RAM drive is a different story. I need to pull myself away from this fantasy world, I feel like my rig is ancient!

Not in the home, no way. ONLY if you, and I mean only, if you are a TOP OF THE LINE HDV (high def video) professional, AND you run a bagillion programs at once.

LOL...I think I made up a new word.

PS, prozac, I like your new sig....where did riser say that (link).

Yes that would be feasible.

There are even boards that will support 16 DIMMs.

http://tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8hm.html

So you can have 32 or even 64GB of RAM.


PS You can get a Quad Opteron with 8 cores and even more RAM :-D

http://tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8qe.html

OR an 8way Opteron with 16 cores and hell of a lot more RAM

And then you know what would happen? You wouldn't be rich anymore


I'll take an 8way Dual Core Opteron please with 128GB RAM + 2 Dual GPU 7900GTX cards. Oh and I would like fries with that!!!

:-D

hm...maby ur rite in the part regarding the cost, but if you would lok at it form the point of future upgrades, *buing lower ram now and then later on getin new one and ...throwing away the old one ) its much beter to get beter/more ram first, it minimizes the costs of buying 2 times, im planning to get a mobo which can supprot 16 gigs of ram , and for now 2 gigs (2x1gig) (instead og geting 4x512 or 2x512 as i originally planed), as for my rig that im planning to get during summer.....but yet again i might wait till Vista is out to put up a new rig (need to get windows anyway...so why not get the vista instead of xp)

Anyone out there have one of the Prometeia Mach II coolers?
Any problems with them?
Damn, I'm going to need a big case.

Check this out guys....

http://www.coolcases.com/cases/sr101107_m_p1.html

http://www.extremeprometeia.com/ac [...] ch_II.html

Nice stuff under consideration....

Anyone have the Coolance Memory liquid coolers ? Any need to go to that extreme? Does memory get hot enuf to justify liquid cooling? Will it make the memory run faster if it's cooler?

Check the link below.

http://www.koolance.com/shop/produ [...] cts_id=251

Thanks guys....
Mike

Anyone else have any input on the above mentioned products ?

Thanks

Anyone have any experience with the Prometeia Mach II coolers?

Thanks...

Maxtor Atlas 15K2 are way faster than all that Seagate garbage =)

I would advise you to use a smaller AMD64 939 system running Linux for the security and automation tasks. There are several Linux DVR / security systems that work quite well and a Dual Dual Core Opteron for games and other tasks.

The following Links are for illustration only:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Linux-Window-C [...] dZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/DVR-LINUX-8-CH [...] dZViewItem

If you'd like help putting one together or if you want me to put one together for you please let me know.

Good Luck!

You might want to froogle it.......

At first glance the ones I have found only go up to 20".... I'm not sure how much a mounting solution for 3 30" displays would cost but I suspect a good one might cost more than the displays themselves.

http://www.ergoindemand.com/lcd_mo [...] nitors.htm

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/co [...] sku=355624

Good luck!

Kewl :-D

Make sure you build a very solid wide base for'em those suckers like to tip over :-|

No suck thing as overkill 9-inch. The faster the better....fewer upgrades in the future, and it'll last quite a few years before having to replace again and turn into a hand-me-down system.

Hey linux, no CNC, he does one off's for concept stuff, all machine made, but he can't justify the CNC stuff. Too costly.

aNYONE ?