Number crunching machine for work

Morbius

Morbius

Morbius

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Hi all. I've been asked to look into building a number crunching machine for work. This machine would just be used for computations. A decent amount of RAM would be good as quite often we end up with large meshes to analyse. I've been slacking when it comes to reading up on hardware as of late, so I'd appreciate any suggestions.

The last machine we got for this purpose was from Dell. It has two Intel Xeon E5520s for processors, memory is 18 GB (3x4GB + 3x2GB) 1066MHz DDR3 ECC-RDIMM and the OS is Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. This cost about £2.5k at the time and I'd be looking to spend a similar amount and get a similar or better performance. I'm aware that the budget isn't huge in performance computing terms, but that's all I have to work with.

Is a two CPU system the way to go? Or should I look at getting a single CPU of a higher spec?

I'm open to any ideas. :)
 
Multi cpu systems are a lot more expensive, it could be cheaper to have two single cpu systems.

Does the software that you use make use of hyperthreading?
 
Well I have no idea what you need in terms of storage, however for the main components something like this would be as fast or faster than the previous Dell machine:

Intel Core i7 970 3.20GHz (Gulftown) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail £431.99
(£359.99) £431.99
(£359.99)
Patriot Viper 2 Sector 7 24GB (6x4GB) PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Kit £299.00
(£249.17) £299.00
(£249.17)
Asus X58 Sabertooth TUF Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard £144.98
(£120.82) £144.98
(£120.82)
Antec 100 One Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £43.99
(£36.66) £43.99
(£36.66)
BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W Power Supply £42.98
(£35.82) £42.98
(£35.82)
MSI ATI Radeon HD 5450 512MB SILENT GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.66) £13.99
(£11.66)

Sub Total : £839.11
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £169.92
Total : £1,019.53

Sadly OCuk don't tend to have many of the Xeon chips/motherboards in stock (and the ones they do stock are the higher end chips so you probably wouldn't fit them in the 2.5k budget anyway). The other i7 options are the Sandy Bridge 2600k, which gets you similar multi-threaded performance to the i7 970 but limits your RAM to 16GB, and the extreme edition chips which are only really worth it if you're intending on going for extreme overclocking.
 
Disco Boy said:
Multi cpu systems are a lot more expensive, it could be cheaper to have two single cpu systems.

Does the software that you use make use of hyperthreading?
Click to expand...

This needs to be just the one machine because we'd need a special (and expensive) licence to allow the software to distribute a single run between two systems.

Unfortunately, the software doesn't use hyperthreading. I've asked the developers about it and apparently it's not happy when using the virtual cores. I've no idea if that will change or not in the future but I can only go on what the situation is currently.
 
Can the software offload to GPUs instead? I'm just thinking, most people who do folding@home offload to the GPU as it's cheaper bang for buck. You'd have to ask in that forum though, I'm clueless about it.
 
Brian8bit said:
Can the software offload to GPUs instead? I'm just thinking, most people who do folding@home offload to the GPU as it's cheaper bang for buck. You'd have to ask in that forum though, I'm clueless about it.
Click to expand...

It can, but only to certain Tesla cards. And also needs an extra licence.
 
I just looked on PassMark and the i7 970 compares favourably to a dual E5520 system. A single CPU might well be the way to go in terms of bang for buck. Might well even be able to upgrade to the 990X.
 
 
You can get a dual socket supermicro board for half the price of the EVGA. The EVGA is wasted as there's not much point if you can't offload to multiple GPUs so it's all going to have to be processor computation. And then the Xeons are a waste of money since the software doesn't like hyperthreading. So you might as well save a packet and go for a dual core Opteron setup.
 
In fact, just checking you can get a 4 socket supermicro board with 256GB of DDR2-667 RAM total for the price of the EVGA. 360 quid will get you a 6 core Istanbul opteron. You can drop processors in as you need them.

Edit: To the OP. If you need serious CPU computing power, I would get in touch with this chap BaBa (he's using the board I'm talking about). He uses the rig for folding and it's a pretty extreme build with the water cooling loops. But he'd probably be much better than I or others to recommend what you need for serious compu crunching. And more informed about the merits of cost/performance between something like the Opteron/Xeons. (But in my opinion, if the software doesn't like hyperthreading, why waste the cash on Xeons when Opterons will do?)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18228902
 
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OK, budget is now £2k. That squeezes things a bit.

I have heard of single CPUs not being as stable under load. Surely if the cooling is adequate then that's not really a problem?
 
I have come up with a build and managed to source components, which I think is pretty good going for the budget. I'd appreciate any critiques in case I've made a mistake or overlooked something.

CPU : 2x Intel Xeon E5620 (2.4 GHz, 4 cores each)
Motherboard : Asus Z8NA-D6 (ATX)
RAM : Crucial 24 GB (6x4GB) PC10600 DDR3 ECC Registered
PSU : Antec TPQ-1000GB (1000W)
HDD : Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB SATA
GPU : XFX Radeon HD5570 1GB PCI-E
CASE : Antec Three Hundred Gamers case
DVD : LiteOn 24x Internal SATA DVDRW
OS : Windows 7 Professional

This came to about £1850. So I've got about £150 left for cooling or other accessories if I need them.

Does this look reasonable? I went with the Xeons rather than an i7 because of the two extra cores.
 
I'm not sure a dual E5620 would outperform a i7 hexacore overclocked.

That board could be tricky with some third party coolers given how close the sockets are to each other.

Oh well, here's your answer.

Moe benchies.

That's all I can say. You should really talk to the specialists who've used dual Xeons and Opterons before.
 
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olivier renault said:
I'm not sure a dual E5620 would outperform a i7 hexacore overclocked.
Click to expand...

Well that was my thought too, but I was told to have a look at dual xeons because "They perform better under load." I still think the i7 hexacore would be better and it's my decision at the end of the day, so I might still go down the single cpu route. It would be a lot easier.
 
OK, I think we're going the i7 route. I have come up with a build and would appreciate any suggestions.

CPU : Intel i7 990X 3.46GHz (Gulftown) [To be overclocked]
Mobo : Asus X58 Sabretooth TUF DDR3
RAM : 2x Corsair Vengeance 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit
Case : Coolermaster HAF932
PSU : Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 1000W
HDD : OCZ Vertex 2E Bigfoot 240GB 3.5" SATA2 Solid State
GPU : XFX Ati Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-E
DVD : Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD+/-RW SATA Rewriter (Black) OEM
OS : Windows 7 Professional 64 bit

Extras :
Corsair Hydro H70 High Performance CPU Water Cooler
Corsair Airflow Triple Channel Fan RAM Cooler
Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB SATA 6GB/s 64MB Cache OEM (for storage)

I think this should work quite nicely. But I am human after all and may have overlooked something, so I'd appreciate critiques please. :)
 
The power supply is massive overkill, also not sure what you need a 5770 for unless you're planning on running 3 screens or doing some sneaky gaming on it? :D Other than that it's fine. You might want to go for 2x drives in RAID1 as a minimum for backup.
 
Redmint said:
The power supply is massive overkill, also not sure what you need a 5770 for unless you're planning on running 3 screens or doing some sneaky gaming on it? :D Other than that it's fine. You might want to go for 2x drives in RAID1 as a minimum for backup.
Click to expand...

I wanted the PSU to be overkill although I fear I may have overdone it somewhat. How much do you think I'd need? 850W?

I put a 5770 in it because I had some money left over and I wanted the GUI to stay happy whilst displaying large meshes.

I'm not going to bother with RAID because the HDD is only going to be used for temporary storage. We have dedicated storage drives that files will be moved to after they have run.
 
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