Minimum 32G RAM compute box

[kenzaoe]

Hi All,

I want to build a box for statistical computation. Big datasets that need to be load and accessed from RAM not disk. CPU speed is important but secondary to lots of RAM (at least 32G RAM needed)

My budget is 1,500-2,000 USD.

Can this be accomplished on this budget? What chipsets should I look at?
They could be older like Core 2... prolly can't do this with i7 cuz ddr3 is expensive?

Many thanks!!!

 

[Ecoli]

Sorry for taking this off topic a bit but is this for a thesis? or for financial statistical mathematics?

 

[scotu]

$810 AR 3 x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227538
$600 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188067 (maybe there exists a cheaper, I didn't find one quickly enough)
$290 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115225

= $1700

Then you'd need a Case, Power Supply, Graphics Card, Hard Drive, So that'd be close to your budget and be an i7 solution that'd give you really strong parallel performance (something that probably gets taken advantage of heavily by your workload)

 

[1haplo]

Xeon or Opteron will be your best bet, Server boards allow more memory then desktop boards.

To support 23 Gig you need ECC RDIMM, If you Non-ECC UDIMM (STD RAM for desktops) most max is 16.

With the Socket 1156 server boards support the Core i7-800 series and Core i5-700 series will only allow 16 Gig.If you go with a socket 1156 you must go with a xeon. Some boards have 4 Memory slots and some 6, If you go with the 6 slots you will still have to get 4 8 gig sticks.

If you go with the Socket G34 you can get 32 gig with non-ECC UDIMMs. The SUPERMICRO MBD-H8SGL-O has 8 RAM slots so you can use 8x4 Gig sticks.

Both setups use DDR3 so its cheaper to go with the AMD setup, The 8 4Gig sticks will run around $900-$1000 or the 4x8 ECC for $1200-$1300 just for RAM.

 

[kenzaoe]

@ecoli yes, this is for graduate research

@scotu i like this solution and the mobo (room to add a second cpu) i guess i just need to find a case big enough to fit that mobo (according to newegg reviewers)

@1haplo i'll look into g34 chipset and i don't really need ecc. i'll have to see how much i save with amd - if it's worth the performance delta