$1500-$2000 Stable Server Development Machine

[rlzaleski]

Approximate Purchase Date: This weekend, March 13


Budget Range: About 2,000 only willing to crazy on buying a quiet case.


System Usage from Most to Least Important: Running a few VMs and doing JBoss/DB/App Server development and running tools, will use it for gaming when not working.


Parts Not Required:


Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg.com


Country of Origin: US


Parts Preferences: Intel CPU


Overclocking: Yes


SLI or Crossfire: Maybe eventually


Monitor Resolution: dual 1920x1080 or 1920x1200


Additional Comments: Should be quiet and uber stable since I'll be using this 8-16 hours a day. I'm focusing on Memory speed as Ubuntu will use that heavily and I'll be moving a ton of data around and running 2 VMs within. I also have hardwired Ethernet at my work location.

ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 209
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131641&cm_re=P6X58D-E_LGA-_-13-131-641-_-Product
i7 960 3.2 GHZ 289
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115224
Kingston HyperX 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) XMP Desktop Memory Model KHX1600C9D3K3/12GX 169
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104127&cm_re=KHX1600C9D3K3-_-20-104-127-_-Product
3 Western Digital Caviar Green WD7500AARS 750GB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive 150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136847&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL031111&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL031111-_-EMC-031111-Index-_-InternalHardDrives-_-22136847-L01A
Palit NE5X570SF10DA GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) Sonic 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 349
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814261096&Tpk=NE5X570SF10DA
SILVERSTONE Fortress Series FT02B-W Black Aluminum / Steel Computer Case 249.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163161&Tpk=SILVERSTONE%20Fortress%20Series%20FT02B-W%20Black%20Aluminum
Thermaltake Toughpower XT TPX-775M 775W ATX 12V v2.3 / EPS 12V v2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS 119
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153127&Tpk=Toughpower%20XT%20TPX-775M
Noctua NH-U12DX 1366 120mm SSO CPU Cooler 68
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608012


Windows 7 64bit pro (For Gaming) 139




Total 1632.99


First, of course I'd like a sanity check.

Second for the ram, Kingston is the only 12 GB on the QVL for ASUS, I'm hesitant to use something not on the QVL, but I may be persuaded. I wouldn't mind dropping another chunk of money for 24 GB, but I don't want headaches later, so I'm fine with just going with 12 GB if it's officially supported.

I know Sandy Bridge is the hot thing, and for single threaded stuff like games it's probably better. It seemed to max out at 1300 MHZ and dual channel, so I'm sticking with the 1366 setup. If you see something I can order this week that I missed let me know.

I opted for 3 drives in Raid 0 over a SSD. I'll be doing nightly backups on my LAN, so I'm OK with a possible failure in 6-24 months due to one of the drives going bad. Plus with 192 MB of drive cache in three drives, I feel like I'll be using a RAM disk anyways, but I may be wrong. I'm okay with the initial boot taking 30 seconds versus 9 in the morning. I'm also looking at Sata II(3.0 GB) over Sata III since the consensus seems to be that the MOBO controllers are crap. If someone knew of a good PCI-E Raid card that'd give me great throughput I'll take a look, maybe even do Raid 1-0 with 4 drives then.

Finally, 700 for the top end Intel processor and another 150 for the top end Nvidia seemed to be Overkill.


I'm looking forward to some suggestions / feedback.

 

[mosox]

Why not the new 1155 socket? The I-5 2500K or something and a P67 motherboard. For the HDD get Samsung Spinpoint F3s.

 

[rlzaleski]

Thanks for the pointer on the Spinpoint F3s.


They don't seem to support 1600 MHZ on the FSB with the Sandy Bridges yet. I could OC it, but I don't want to risk stability. I thought the Tripple channel would be a bigger deal too, but it seems it's not, kinda like 3 way SLI.

I'll easily put over 2,000 Hours on this machine, probably more like 3,000 when you add in gaming, so I want something stable with a ton of fast RAM. But maybe end of the year I'll have to upgrade when the second generation of Sandy Bridge comes in and the supported RAM configurations do what I want.

Machine is running Spin Rite tonight, and tomorrow I finally get to start configuring it.