Workstation Gaming Setup

[scmnz]

Looking for guidance for a Workstation setup...

I currently have a couple of PC's, for various tasks;

Download box, (reasonable spec laptop with 128gb SSD)
PC I use for VM's (AMD 8 Core + 32gb, 2 x 256gb SSD, 2 x 2TB)
Gaming PC (Intel 2500, 16gb, 2 x GTX670's, 1 x 500gb SSD, 2 x 2TB raid)

I do a lot of work with VMware, and am regularly creating VM's and lab environment (which i currently use one of the boxes for..

This box was one i recently built, with an AMD 8core processor, and popped in 32gb memory... but the reality is that it's not really enough ram for me at this stage (trying to recreate a 3 node cluster virtually etc)..

So, from the research i've done... if i want to stay with good old PC motherboards, i'd need to go to an x79 or similar, and then 64gb is my limit.
However, what about if i were to look at a Server / workstation board, with either 1 / 2 CPU's?

I can quite likely get hold of 8 x 16gb ECC dimms (i.e. server ram) pretty cheaply,

What i'd like to know and you guys can probably help with... what would be a good setup that I could continue to use as a gaming PC, but work well for me as a Lab environment too....

Happy to spend, but not too much ... clearly i'd like to be able to leverage my gfx cards (do the workstation boards allow SLI?) and it makes sense if i can, to leverage a box that'll take ecc ram if i can get a hold of 128gb pretty cheaply.

1 / 2 proc boards?

What about power requirements (have a 1000w psu in gaming pc)

Cheers guys, appreciate your assistance / guidance here!

 

[AxlFone]

So, from the research i've done... if i want to stay with good old PC motherboards, i'd need to go to an x79 or similar, and then 64gb is my limit.

No. It is not the limit with X-79 you can trow 128GB memory some X-79 motherboards.
Like this. http://us.msi.com/product/mb/Big-Bang-XPower-II.html#/?div=Basic

I have two SSD raid 0 (240GB) and they mae system faster than one.
If plan is get two 500GB SSD to RAID 0 then buy one big. If not then buy two 256GB
Samsung PRO / Sandisk Extreme 2 , OCZ vector ..

If you need more memory.. you can look pci-e slot memory
http://www.violin-memory.com/products/velocity-pcie-cards/

I think that better way to go is get smaller SSD 64-128GB and use that as Cashing and extra memory. If your software supports that.

4 down vote accepted


This is a complex issue, that is highly dependent on exactly what you want to do with that RAM.

In most cases, it is cheaper and better to simply replace the motherboard with a new motherboard that supports the amount of RAM that you require. I have a motherboard here in front of me that can take 16 memory modules. The largest module available is 32-Gig. That's a total of 512 Gigabytes in a single machine. (Never mind that 16 modules of that size would cost lot Or that the MoBo also has dual 8-core CPU's on it.)

Having the RAM on the MoBo means that it is the highest speed possible. You can use it for both a RAM-Disk as well as normal program and data storage. The best of both worlds.

But in your question you keep comparing it to SATA storage, so I am thinking that you'd want to use this extra RAM as a RAM-disk and not for general CPU RAM. This is a valid use, and years ago people did have PCI cards with lots of RAM on it specifically for this purpose. Those cards looked like another disk drive, and not just more CPU RAM. Often these cards had an external power connector on them so you could give them some sort of backup power in case the main power failed.

These types of cards have largely gone away. They were obsoleted mainly by three things: 1. Motherboards now can have much more RAM on them than in the past. 2. There are more modern solid-state drives using Flash memory and PCIe (some with large RAM caches) that work better. and 3. They were just too expensive for what limited advantages it gave.

There are other reasons why you might want to have a PCIe card with lots of RAM, but all of them are applications where the card is doing something other than just storing data. Like Video cards, or data acquisition cards. These things do not apply here.

For videocards GTX 680 /780 are mostlikely best choice for you. SLI is not making much benefit in your usage. This is what I think. Not sure of this.

PSU is most likely enough since there is 1000w. New videocards and cpu will take less power so that is bit overkill psu. But better have too big than too small.

Hope this did help Good luck with your build