Two e5520 xeons for 3D/modelling/rendering and linux fileserver

[filanek]

all suggestions and advices welcomed, I've never done it before...

I wanna setup 2 workservers dual xeons e5520 and one 1TB fileserver based on linux(centos or ubuntu).
In future its possible I will add 10-20 render nodes and few more workstations...

Workstation 2P Intel Xeon midi tower, i5520, 6xDDR3-1333

Price 1730 EUR incl 19% tax
Procesor- Intel Xeon E5520 (Nehalem.2,26GHz@5,86GT 8MB cache,QuadC,HT,80W),box 2
cooler- SNK-P0035PA4 Aktivní 4U cooler pro 1P/2P LGA775/1366 (19,5dBA,2050rpm,4pin) 1
MoBo- X8DAL-i i5520,2S@QPT6.4,PCI-E16(g2)+E16(E4),-E4,2PCI,2GbE,6sATA,6DDR3-1333 1
RAM- 2GB 1333MHz DDR3 ECC with Thermal Sensor, CL9 - Kingston 6
HDD- HD 500GB WD5002ABYS 7200RPM/8,7ms/16MB/SATA II Raid edition 1
DVDRW + DVD-RW SONY-Nec AD-7200 20x DVD+/-, RAM, SATA black 1
GPU- ASUS VGA ENGTX260/G/HTDP, 896MB DDR3,2*DVI,HDTV 1
sound+ on board 1
network- Intel 82574 dual 10/100TX/Gigabit on the mobo1
Box- SC733TQ-665 miditower eATX quiet (25dB) 4sATA/SAS,2x5,25",665W(80+),black 1
keyboard- A4tech KBS-26B5R + mouse1
work ........ 1
OS- winXP64, have not heard anything great about vistas and win7 are not available yet..

still deciding if to use buffered or unbuffered, there is a big price difference, its not fileserver,
just workmachine, is unbuffered good enough?

regarding to fileserver I just started research - no idea yet, need advices

would like to buy two 24" monitors as well, should be good but not expensive of course
any hits?

thanks
filip

 

[filanek]

in one 3d rendering related forum have read that bigger amount ram is neccessary, because each processor claims a lot of memory... tried to upgrade from (6x2GB 1333MHz DDR3 ECC with Thermal Sensor, CL9 - Kingston 6 ) to(6x4GB 1066MHz DDR3 ECC Rg. w/Par., D.Rank x4 w/Therm 6Sen, CL7)
is there a big difference in speed (differend kind and mhz) in between these two RAM options? which one is slower and is it a lot slower?

could you tell me your suggestion? do I really need 24GB?

considering as well to switch my HDD for SSD (120GB SATAII 2,5" SSD Vertex
Series disk) what is your opinion please?

 

[Helloworld_98]

you don't need 24GB but 12GB would be a good start, as would having two coolers.

also why do you have such a powerful graphics card for what you're using it for?

 

[filanek]

thanks for reply

GPU-its a workstation not a rendernode, I am working with milions polygon scenes and
lots of proxies, I like to see hires textures and have realtime response as well... its the one they recomended me at the three different places, this one is not really such expensive...

some suggestions regarding to the 120GB SSD ?

 

[Helloworld_98]

why not get 4 WDC black edition 640GB's in RAID 10 instead?

it would be nearly as fast but you'd have a lot more storage space.

 

[filanek]

do not need storage space and raid at all, its just workstation connected to fileserver, considering something very fast, would like to see some benchmark how much faster this ssd is comparing to HD 146GB Cheetah 15K.5 ST3146855SS 15000RPM/3,5ms/SAS/16MB   , but cannot find anything, do you think is there a big difference?