Workstation with some special extras

[Yves_]

Hello everybody,

I am searching for a solution for a new workstation. I have some pretty special requests and I think this is the board / forum who can help me find the right thing for me.

I want to use 6 Screens (Samsung SyncMaster MD230X6). But I also have a high priority on remote management because I travel a lot and I want to have access to my system from the boot process on and this is where it gets really complicated. Since Intel AMT (which is I think the cheapest and best solutions for remote management) is only on Boards with Intel Q67 Express Chipset which most likely does not support fast graphicscards...

I do know that there are Eyefinity 6 Edition Graphicscards from ATI / AMD but I think the performance is poor on 5760x2160.

Than I saw this Post with the Review of a TriFire but I think its impossible to release that with a Board with Intel AMT.

So any ideas are welcome.

This was my first bigger problem. Second one is I wanted to use 4x or maybe 8x Kingston HyperX SSD's but I am asking myself if it really make sence... Is the system able to handle it?

Cheers,
Yves

 

[cats_Paw]

If i remmber well the Q chipset is only for remote access at hardware level.
On the other hand i heard you can just leave your workstation on and remote access it throught windows. I cannot confirm this, so you better google it at least.

On the 6 monitors... Well, depends what you use them for. I mean normally its tested on games so its normal.

 

[Yves_]

Soooo I think I finally found the right mainboard... The Asus P8B WS. Correct me if I am wrong but I think its the only Board with Intel AMT and more than one PCI-Express 2.0 x16. As CPU I think I am gone use the Intel Xeon E3-1280 since the E-1290 is not really available yet.

Now I am getting to the Graphicscard problem... What should I use for decent 6 Monitor Power? I saw this Post about a HD6990 + HD6970 to support 6 screens. Is this possible on that Mainboard?

 

[preolt]

Alright so first off what is your price point? I am assuming (correct me if im wrong) that you are running on a fairly unlimited budget. The Xenon will kick most programs in the ass if you are running them individually. The only bottleneck with it will come in with your RAM, which is currently so cheap right now is laughable so you should be fine on that front.

The graphics card situation is an interesting one. I am personally an nvidia fan, have always had really good "luck" with their cards. People all over are raving about the 7990 though and from benchmarks it is a very powerful card. If you want to go all out the GTX TITAN will run your 5760x2160, but there are other factors that will play in. For instance, what are you using this setup for? Do you want to project your game across each screen in crossfire? If so, do you want to max out resolutions in said games as well as aliasing. If so you are going to need more juice in the graphics department. Now I ran the whole gtx 460 in sli when it was the best budget graphics an enthusiast could dream of, but even with a fairly well lubed system and drivers I still had hiccups and from my understanding in building desktops every multi gpu solution will have hiccups now and again. This is not to deter you, heck you could have built one already for all I know. I just wanted to make sure I cover my bases with my post.

As for off screen gaming you have a few options. The best option in my opinion is to set up your desktop to run its own server. This way you can tap into the power of that server and have your powerhouse workstation do the heavy lifting and then send you the results through wifi, ethernet, firewire, etc. I dont have the most experience with this but can recommend a few books and articles that will help get you started. I personally use "Splash top." I have an Asus Nexus 10 and I stream my desktop through the Splashtop ap onto my tablet, basically using another companies server to tap into my workstation. It is all doable though.

Finally ssd solutions, You can buy a RAID style system to set your SSDs up in but I personally just made my own and have had no problems with it. My budget wasnt quite as large as it seems yours is so I have a 256 Gb SSD for my OS and other things like CAD, Light Room, Final Cut, etc. and then the rest of the space is 1 Tb hard drives. It works fine for me. Your bottle neck here will probably be either slow esata connections with your mobo or the right speeds of the SSDs you choose, neither of which will be too noticeable though.

Hope I helped with this small biography I have written, if you need any more help feel free to pm me.
Cheers
-Preolt

 

[asado999]

Wow. Well I would recommend 64 Gigs of ram and 3 GTX TITANs if you need so much. Get a 1500W+ PSU or else your system will fail. That's a beast PC...

 

[Mannaroth]

Hi there. If i were u i would look out for HP's and Supermicro's board solutions. Best two brand for workstation solutions in my opinion.

I highly recommend
http://www.supermicro.nl/index_home.cfm

Also look out for already-built solutions
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z820.html

Regards...