24gb reasonable with non-ecc?

^ Well if you are investing so much money on that workstation, then better to go with reliable and higher quality parts...So my vote goes to Xeon and ECC RAMs...
The Xeons are better binned than the i7s and ECCs as you know is the way to go if you have more RAM that too in a server/ workstation environment...

I agree with gkay09.
You could go with i7 and ECC memory but if money is not a huge concern then I suggest the Xeon.

I'm only planning on getting 1 processor
single slot xeon processor --> xeon 3580
supports only unbuffered memory
for some reason ECC, unbuffered memory is 3 times more expensive than ecc buffered or non-ecc unbuffered.

can you take a motherboard that has 2 sockets and only use 1?

that would let me use a single 5000 series xeon with ecc, registered ram

^ Any specific reason to go single slot ?
IMO 2x Xeon E5520 on a dual socket LGA 1366 mobo would cost roughly the same as the sngle CPU and will give more cores too...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

the reason for single slot is that the app that will be running (ensight) definetly cannot use more than a few cores - it just needs tons of ram.

so the plan is to get a fast nehalem on a board that can support lots of ram

I did find some ECC, non-registered ram that isn't too expensive so I'll probably just use that.


BTW, anyone know where one can get a xeon 3680?