High end workstation spec

subbytna

subbytna

subbytna

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Dual Xeon E5-2687W v2 8 core 3.4ghz cpus

192GB DDR3 RAM

3 TB hard drive

Approximately 500GB usable space in RAID0 configuration (SSD preferred)

1GB Nvidia Quadro K600 graphics card

NVIDIA Tesla K20 series GPGPU

Bearing in mind Nvidia Maximus certified configuration preferred for ANSYS software

Does anyone here have experience with this workstation spec?

I'm putting together different ideas for a mate and from various sources so I have a good idea of what to expect cost wise.

Anyone?
 
I can't be much help as that system is out of my knowledge.

However I do run Quadro 600's (non K's), there fine for 2D and very lite 3D work. I have found Nvidia Quadro drivers a bit hit and miss recently, and recently been rolling back driver releases.

I don't recommend RAID 0 SSD's due to reliability, unless your friend as a specific reason for the bandwidth I would avoid RAID 0.

Choose a good quality PSU, Seasonic X Gold or Platinum.

Silverstone make a nice Workstation grade case below. Rotates the board 90 degrees has very good cooling and can be made very quite.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-167-SV

Arctic cooling make some CPU coolers called i30 CO. The CO stands for continuous operation, there very reliable fans and run quite.

IC Diamond CPU paste is very good, I have a number of servers running 100% 24/6 over a couple of years and I've never once had to reapply the CPU paste.

Workstation grade HDD's you need Western Digital Black, don't entertain anything consumer grade on a high end workstation build.

Can't add anything else i'm afraid, hope at least that's helped.
 
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JasonM said:
I can't be much help as that system is out of my knowledge.

However I do run Quadro 600's (non K's), there fine for 2D and very lite 3D work. I have found Nvidia Quadro drivers a bit hit and miss recently, and recently been rolling back driver releases.

I don't recommend RAID 0 SSD's due to reliability, unless your friend as a specific reason for the bandwidth I would avoid RAID 0.

Choose a good quality PSU, Seasonic X Gold or Platinum.

Silverstone make a nice Workstation grade case below. Rotates the board 90 degrees has very good cooling and can be made very quite.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-167-SV

Arctic cooling make some CPU coolers called i30 CO. The CO stands for continuous operation, there very reliable fans and run quite.

IC Diamond CPU paste is very good, I have a number of servers running 100% 24/6 over a couple of years and I've never once had to reapply the CPU paste.

Workstation grade HDD's you need Western Digital Black, don't entertain anything consumer grade on a high end workstation build.

Can't add anything else i'm afraid, hope at least that's helped.
Click to expand...

I agree RAID 0 (which if we wish to be exact isn't really RAID) RAID 0 is not worth the time and effort. Only difference it makes is in benchmarks, however in real world performance there is no difference.

ICD (ofcourse i will say this) is designed for high heat environments so an overclocked environment should be no problem.
 
I don't see any issues with RAID0, they CAN make a difference in real world use, and anyone spending this amount of money on a workstation will surely have their head screwed on when it comes to backups? If not, factor that into the budget.

The Workstation is there to do the work as fast as possible, the NAS is there in case the Workstation drives fail.

SSD's in RAID0 = blisteringly fast, holding the "at risk" copy of the currently-working-on file

3TB HDD "ready backup", ideally a pair in RAID1, holding the working copy of stuff, backed up at least nightly (but more often would work) to a NAS with RAID1/5/6 depending on how many HDDs he gets, which holds the archive.

If he loses an SSD and 3-4 HDDs before he manages to replace at least one of them, he's the unluckiest man alive and should just wrap himself in bubble wrap and stay in bed.

If he can afford and justify 192GB of RAM and the workstation you specced, the cost of this little lot shouldn't be an issue :p
 
If it's for bandwith and you're spending that much anyway why not go the pcie ssd route? Unlikely to be any bandwith issues in that instance.
 
stulid said:
Doomspeed knows about this stuff.
Click to expand...

I may have a bit of insight yes, thank you Stu.

I'm more interest about the users uses for this? Engineering is a good start (the field j worked in) but what type of tasks does he do.. Modeling/simulations/rendering/structural analysis??? What is he most frequently using?

I'm confident that spec will EASILY accomplish whatever he's doing I am just try to look to save him some £'s... And there potentially a lot to save.

I used a similar rig to this in my engineering work (though it was 2x 6 cores and 32gb of RAM) but as my work was mostly modelling based (ie: designing of a product) of was hardly used. Modelling is VERY single threaded so the extra cores made No difference... I could see (task manager) only a single core being used.

On the off chance I had structural analysis (or simulation) work to do, the extra cores kicked in, though NEVER were all 12 used, mostly it was between 4-8. This is the problem with the software not the PC. Do you know what programme/software he is using?

That was my issue with that PC it was being under ulitised due to the (buggy) software we were using. As it stood we could have used a half cost PC just as easy...

On the hand at uni we used a render server (near enough the sane as your spec) for MASSIVE (Actual A0 size) and that was 100% ultilised due to rendering being really tough, especially at that size, on hardware. We used 3DS Max too, which was fully optimised which made it much better. Even with that server some of those renders still took 10 hours+ due to the sheer size and complex lighting..

But I digress...

The GPU is another concern for me.. You have quoted a Quadro 600 and a Tesla K20.. Are you thinking of using both? If so why? The fact is one is low end (600) and one is VERY high end (K20). Which you need 100% depends on his uses...

Are you looking to build yourself? Or as a pretty built?

Any budget in mind?

Is this for hone use or use at work?

Thanks .
 
Doomedspeed said:
The GPU is another concern for me.. You have quoted a Quadro 600 and a Tesla K20.. Are you thinking of using both? If so why? The fact is one is low end (600) and one is VERY high end (K20). Which you need 100% depends on his uses...
Click to expand...

I expect the K20 will be used for heterogeneous programming (CUDA).

The Quadro K600, is low end however it's still perfectly fine providing your not displaying more then lite 3D graphics, biggest issue with card is memory bandwidth due to DDR3.

As you say it depends what the OP needs the computer for.
 
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