Yea, haha back on topic.
The build in my first post is really more of an unlimited budget dream machine.
Xeon's are server grade CPU's. The one's I linked are 8 core 16 threads CPU's aimed at the extreme high end. Use a dual CPU MOBO and that 16 cores 32 threads of power right there. However, a single one cost's more than an entire system.
the i7-980x is a 6 core 12 thread CPU, which is basically the top end of the consumer CPU's.
The performance difference between the two would be quite substantial in well threaded applications. However, at $1,000 vs $8,000 you won't see 8x performance, more like 2-3x the performance.
Tesla's and Quadro's are workstation GPU's. They're have the greatest impact on floating-point calculations, but will greatly benefit any calculations that can be done in parallel.
AutoCAD, CAD, MATLAB and Autodesk all benefit greatly from CUDA. For them, a CUDA GPU basically act's like a CPU with hundreds of cores.
Quadro's have a display output, tesla don't. Hence you'd need at least 1 quadro or other GPU in the build.
RAM wise you really just want good timings, from a dependable brand and at least 1333mhz if you don't plan on Overclocking, 1600mhz if you do. The tridents will hit CAS 6 when underclocked to 1600, which basically is the best timings available ATM. The price is also very reasonable. Currently $200 for 6gb now on newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231254&cm_re=trident_2000-_-20-231-254-_-Product
Well if you need data safety and 2TB of storage my advice would be to do either a Raid 10 with 4 1 TB drives, or a Raid 5 with 3 1 TB drives.
Both will net you 2 TB of usable storage, and both have data safety. Raid 10 is less efficient, but can suffer multiple disk failures assuming not entire mirror is lost.
Raid 5 is nets you more usable space, but has can only have 1 drive fail.
SSD's are the future of storage. They replace mechanical harddrives with purely flash based memory (no moving parts). This result sin much higher dependabilty, less power use and heat, and MUCH faster read, write speeds and much more I/O bandwidth.
However, cost wise they're very expensive. You pay about $0.10 per GB in a mechanical drives, ~$2.5- $4.0 per GB in an SSD.
For the dual xeon build, yes you'll need a specialized MOBO. For a 980x, any good 1366 board will work. Cooling wise, a good case with good airflow is about it. If you want to overclock then you can also get an aftermarket HSF.
Maintenance is mostly keeping drives and software/os up to date. Clean out dust once in a while, clean filters if you have every other week or so.
But like I said, give us a budget really, because a good workstation can range from a $2,000 build, all the way up to a $25,000 build.
)
old habits die hard.
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