Design my new workstation

[LeonardK]

Hey LTT forum,

 

Beware, wall of text incoming.

 

It's time for me to exchange my 2009 workstation as I've been having some issues, don't feel comfortable using it on time-sensitive jobs anymore and could use an update anyway.

 

I'm reasonably educated about current hardware, but I'm still rather stumped to pick the right stuff, especially when it comes to motherboards and processors.

 

I know that this is asking for a lot, but maybe someone hardware savvy will have some fun picking out great components and putting together a rig.

 

Price is not really an issue, but I also don't want to pay for features I won't need.

 

Here is what I have from my current rig:

• GTX 680 by EVGA 
  This one is more than sufficient for me and I'd like to put it in the new rig.
• 24 gigs of tripple channel RAM by G.Skill
  My current rig has tripple channel memory and I'd like to stick with these.

 

Here is what I need:

• A new CPU
  I do a lot of multi-threaded simulation and squeeze every bit of performance out of a processor.
  So it should be a high-end CPU with at least 8 threads. If you can make a good value proposition for dual sockets I'd be open to that as well.
  I don't like to overclock, but if there is the possibility of doing an easy and mild oc on it I'd do it.
  Related question: Are the 6 core sockets with their older architecture worth it at this point?
• A new Motherboard
  This is probably mostly dictated by the CPU, but here is what I would like to have:
  - I'd like to stick with Asus since I've had good experiences with them in the past.
  - Decent on-board audio since I'm not going to bother with an external card.
  - 6Gbit Sata for at least 2 SSDs (I don't know if this is standard or not even possible. I know my board can't do it, and it's one of the reasons I'm upgrading.)
  - Tripple-channel-memory. Since I want to keep my good RAM.
  - Support for two 16x PCI slots since I might put a tesla in there should I be hired to program complex CUDA stuff again (if this is a problem then omit it).
  - I don't need any special over-clocking support, but some basic support should the CPU allow it, would be nice.
• SSDs
  1 TB of SSD space with maybe another smaller one for the system install.
  I'm thinking either the 840 EVO 1 TB or the Crucial M50 960 here. Thoughts or alternatives?
• 6-9 TB of HDD
  I'm thinking of getting 3 WD Red 3TB drives and putting two of them in RAID1 while having the other serve as a dump drive for unimportant data and also as a back-up for project-data on the SSD.
  Does anyone know if there is a way to have the SSD continuously back-up to another hard-drive whenever it has time, without putting the whole thing in a raid-array which would defeat the purpose of the SSD?
• A suitable power-supply
  I've had two PSUs die on me in the past 4 years, so I'd definitely appreciate some recommendations here.
• A new case
  It doesn't have to be anything special, but it needs to accommodate those 4-6 drives and should have decent cable management.
  I'd appreciate it if it wasn't very big or heavy.
  Somewhat silence optimized would also be preferable.
• Good air-cooling
  Unless there is a decent water-cooling for dummies set out there I don't want to go down that road.
  High-grade, silence-optimized air-cooling should be the choice here.
  Linus says good things about noctua, but I don't know what will fit what case and am open to trying whatever works best with rest of the set-up.
• Anything you can make a good argument for.

As I've said, price isn't really an issue, but I don't want to spend money unnecessarily.

 

Thank you very much for reading through this and I thank you for any advice in advance.

 

If you need any further information please let me know.

 

Edit: I'm from Germany so that's where I'll be shopping from. I will however be in the US for a month in October and could also pick up stuff there. I'd prefer not to get those through customs though.

[Duda777]

Well there has to me some sort of budget ??

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think asus makes any boards with triple channel memory any more

[FireFox]

We need a budget but if it is kind of a 'money no object' kind of project then for the multi-threading I'd recommend the new $2,000 Intel Xeon E5-2697 V2 which has 12 hyperthreaded cores, that should do the trick

[jonasa97]

Wait for IvyBridge E. No need to rush with such a high end build when new CPUs are around the corner.

[ProGearUk]

Wait for IvyBridge E. No need to rush with such a high end build when new CPUs are around the corner.

Apart from a few Chipset upgrades like more Native SATA3 ports and native pci-e 3.0 slots they will not be much better to be honest. 

[jonasa97]

Apart from a few Chipset upgrades like more Native SATA3 ports and native pci-e 3.0 slots they will not be much better to be honest. 

I still don't really like the idea of buying something that will be "outdated" in a month or even less. We will have to let the OP decide !

[LeonardK]

Well there has to me some sort of budget ??

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think asus makes any boards with triple channel memory any more

Phew, not really. I just want those requirements met with high quality components, good performance and without any unnecessary extras.

 

I'm expecting to spend about this much on the components:

Motherboard: 200-250€

CPU: 300-400€

SSDs: 600€

HDDs: 300€

PowerSupply: 75-150€

Case: 50-150€

Cooling: 100€

Total: 1425-1750€

But I'm willing to spend more or less on each of these if you can make a good case for picking a more expensive or cheaper component.

[ProGearUk]

I still don't really like the idea of buying something that will be "outdated" in a month or even less. We will have to let the OP decide !

That is true but they will still be good cpu's. 

[WoodenMarker]

Total: 1425-1750€

But I'm willing to spend more or less on each of these if you can make a good case for picking a more expensive or cheaper component.

Where are you shopping from? Located?

It's also unwise to allocate separate funds for each part. You easily get an unbalanced build that way.

[LeonardK]

I still don't really like the idea of buying something that will be "outdated" in a month or even less. We will have to let the OP decide !

Yeah, going with the new 6 cores will probably be a very good idea.

Even though the price-jump is rather steep, I'm thinking that the benefit of having 1.5 times the processing power will be worth it.

Question: Is it really 1.5 times the processing power or is Haswell sufficiently faster than IvyBridge to nudge that down to a much lower multiplier?

 

Edit: I'm shopping from Germany, but will be in the US for a month in October. I can't buy a lot of components there though since I don't want to run that through the unknown variable that is customs.

[Rekhyt]

You won't find triple channel workstation grade boards anymore, they're all quad.

 

If you want a dual CPU solution you can go this route for the board. It has guarateed Xeon Phi/Nvidia Tesla compatibility and supports ECC memory which you might want if you do render jobs and such. It has a c602 chipset that will suport the Intel Xeon E5 2600 lineup. You could for instance get two 2650's, which are the "value" option for 8-core CPU's or stick with six cores which will be less expensive (starting at 400$ each). There's no secret, 2p setups are expensive.

 

If you don't want dual, you can essentially copy my rig: The 3930K/3970X offer the best non-xeon performance you can currently find and the motherboard is workstation-grade and also has guaranteed Phi/Tesla support. (I think we may have similar needs; what is it that you do?)

 

Both boards support all the SATA3 bandwith you'll probaby need. The board I have has what I'd consider "better" audio quality, as far as on-board audio goes, but nothing exeptional.

 

If you plan on using around 4 drives, get NAS-grade ones (Seagate NAS or WD Red) because vibrations become a factor. For the SSD's you can go with the options you listed, or get two smaller ones and Raid them for more speed.

You might also want to consider SSD caching, which isn't natively supported by the C602/X79 chipsets, but Asus have implemented their own version of it on both boards I mentioned (and several others).

 

As far as cooling goes, all-in-one liquid cooling is absurdly simple to set up (easier than the bulky air coolers; the only cooler I ever had to struggle with was the Noctua NH-D14 because it's so huge. Liquid coolers are tiny around the socket area, making the installation simpler) and very quiet. You can go Corsair H series or Swiftech h220 if you can get one where you live.

 

Get a big brand PSU, anything from Corsair, Seasonic, BeQuiet!, etc. will do

 

As for cases the Fractal Design XL r2 is silence optimized, is priced honestly, and has all the drive capacity and cable management you need but it is quite big and heavy. However with a workstation you are looking at bigger motherboards and generally more wires and hardware, so it seems like a good option for the price given the constaints.

 

Ivy Bridge E is not worth the upgrade, price or wait. You're looking at a 5-10% performace boost in some scenarios. The only compelling reason to upgrade/wait will be when intel adds MORE CORES to the chips instead of locking them down and being lazy.

 

EDIT: Also Titan cards are based on the same architecture AND have the same double precision floating operation performance as Teslas, making them the ideal alternative if you do heavy CUDA programming or computing. They also support Hyper-Q and Dynamic parallelism if you're into that

[LeonardK]

Wow, thanks for the detailed answer Rekhyt. What did you build your Rig for? 

You won't find triple channel workstation grade boards anymore, they're all quad.

Well that sucks. Quad-channel it is then.

If you want a dual CPU solution you can go this route for the board. It has guarateed Xeon Phi/Nvidia Tesla compatibility and supports ECC memory which you might want if you do render jobs and such. It has a c602 chipset that will suport the Intel Xeon E5 2600 lineup. You could for instance get two 2650's, which are the "value" option for 8-core CPU's or stick with six cores which will be less expensive (starting at 400$ each). There's no secret, 2p setups are expensive.

I'm considering going with the E5-2620 6-Core.

Does anyone know how overclockable these are and how do they stack up in value in comparison to for example a i7 4770k?

I'm concerned that with such a low clock-speed, single threaded applications and operations will run rather slow. For example compiling could be seriously affected by this. I can't really afford to spend double the time on every compile.

I could of course get the more expensive ones with higher clock-speeds, but I don't really see the value in that when I compare it to a current i7.

If you don't want dual, you can essentially copy my rig: The 3930K/3970X offer the best non-xeon performance you can currently find and the motherboard is workstation-grade and also has guaranteed Phi/Tesla support. (I think we may have similar needs; what is it that you do?)

I think that if I go single core, I'm probably going to choose an LGA 1150 architecture with a haswell chip.

To answer your question about what I do: I program tools for the 3D animation industry. Right now for example you can see my tools at work in the weapons effects in Elysium.

If you plan on using around 4 drives, get NAS-grade ones (Seagate NAS or WD Red) because vibrations become a factor. For the SSD's you can go with the options you listed, or get two smaller ones and Raid them for more speed.

You might also want to consider SSD caching, which isn't natively supported by the C602/X79 chipsets, but Asus have implemented their own version of it on both boards I mentioned (and several others).

Yeah, I'm going to go with two Reds and probably the Crucial since I've read that I won't notice the performance difference and that the lifespan is good enough anyway.

As far as cooling goes, all-in-one liquid cooling is absurdly simple to set up (easier than the bulky air coolers; the only cooler I ever had to struggle with was the Noctua NH-D14 because it's so huge. Liquid coolers are tiny around the socket area, making the installation simpler) and very quiet. You can go Corsair H series or Swiftech h220 if you can get one where you live.

I can get either of those (Swiftech h220 and Corsair H110). Any pros and cons on these guys?

As for cases the Fractal Design XL r2 is silence optimized, is priced honestly, and has all the drive capacity and cable management you need but it is quite big and heavy. However with a workstation you are looking at bigger motherboards and generally more wires and hardware, so it seems like a good option for the price given the constaints.

Hm. Should I go for the Fractal Design Define XL r2 or the lower priced Define R4?

EDIT: Also Titan cards are based on the same architecture AND have the same double precision floating operation performance as Teslas, making them the ideal alternative if you do heavy CUDA programming or computing. They also support Hyper-Q and Dynamic parallelism if you're into that

Yeah, I've read up on that and a Titan definitely makes more sense. I do some gaming on the side and it will be appreciated there too. And yes, I'm very much into Hyper-Q ;>

 

I've got some good recommendations for dual core boards now, can anybody recommend me a good LGA1150 board which meets the following requirements? 

(quoted from first post)

 

- I'd like to stick with Asus since I've had good experiences with them in the past.

- Decent on-board audio since I'm not going to bother with an external card.
- 6Gbit Sata for at least 2 SSDs (I don't know if this is standard or not even possible. I know my board can't do it, and it's one of the reasons I'm upgrading.)
- Tripple-channel-memory. Since I want to keep my good RAM.
- Support for two 16x PCI slots since I might put a titan in there should I be hired to program complex CUDA stuff again (if this is a problem then omit it).
- I don't need any special over-clocking support, but some basic support should the CPU allow it, would be nice.

 

Thanks a lot guys!

[stevv]

I'm considering going with the E5-2620 6-Core.

Does anyone know how overclockable these are and how do they stack up in value in comparison to for example a i7 4770k?

 

Xeons are not overclockable.  Though if you do plan to go that route and the software you using can support the extra threads/cores, I recommend getting a dual processor board since they are not much more in cost.  Like a ASUS Z9PA-D8 or SUPERMICRO MBD-X9DRI-F-O .  At the same time, you should go with at least E5-1660 ($1K+/processor)

 

In my opinion, It's dual xeon (at least E5-1660 , E5-2650 and above) or go the i7 route.  Price... well, that's up to you to decide if it's worth it.

 

cinebench:

4770K @ 4.2GHz: 9.3 pts

3930K @ stock: 10.14 pts

3930K @ 4.8: 13.97 pts

Dual xeon E5-2620: ~13 pts

Dual xeon E5-2650: ~18 pts

 

I can get either of those (Swiftech h220 and Corsair H110). Any pros and cons on these guys?

 

Swiftech h220 can be customized with extra radiators if needed.  (or even in dual processor with just one H220 + extra cpu water block + extra radiator))

 

Yeah, I'm going to go with two Reds and probably the Crucial since I've read that I won't notice the performance difference and that the lifespan is good enough anyway.

 

I prefer samsung since it comes with software for the ssd (easy firmware upgrade and diag... )

 

I'm concerned that with such a low clock-speed, single threaded applications and operations will run rather slow. For example compiling could be seriously affected by this. I can't really afford to spend double the time on every compile.

look at these for some comparison (but you'll have to know if the compiling you do is single or multi threaded)

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/benchmarks/cinebench/render-single/?highlight=63

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5553/the-xeon-e52600-dual-sandybridge-for-servers/10

 

 

Hm. Should I go for the Fractal Design Define XL r2 or the lower priced Define R4?

The larger one if you plan on the dual xeon and water cooling + radiators without being too cramped.

 

 

Btw, since there's no such thing as memory for "triple /quad channel"... they might come in the bundle (and better "matched"), but use them on the new board and it will work fine (some boards might be picky on the ram, but has nothing to do with "triple/quad" ram).  If it's three sticks, then get a fourth of similar specs/timing.

[Rekhyt]

That's great what you do! I haven't seen Elysium yet but I'll remember that when I do. I use my rig for gaming, compiling (I like doing cryptography stuff, and generally anything required for my courses and personal projects), virtualization, and some 3d modeling and rendering but really just for fun.

 

So to follow up:

 

- If you can get it, get the H220, it performs better and can be extended if needed

- If you're even considering Xeons, then your alternative should be the 2011 platform, not 1150. 2011 is "older" but it's still the "hardcore/enthusiast" platform through and through. On 1150 you're locked at 8 hyperthreaded cores vs 12 on the high end 2011. So great single and multi core performance; best price/performance ratio (for this kind of use) imo. As Wendell said, they can have my 3930K when they pry it from my cold, dead hands

- For the case, depends how neat you want it to be and what you want to put in. If you just want it to work the define r2 will be fine. If you want more room for hardware and airflow et al., get the XL. You'll have to get the XL anyway if you go dual processor, to accommodate the huge motherboard

- Stevv is right about the RAM; I'm actually running mismatched memory in my home server just fine; I tend to forget and be overly picky. it would matter for overclocking the ram, but no one needs that.

[LeonardK]

Hey guys,

 

thanks so much for the further explanations.

 

I've been looking at a couple of benchmarks and I think a watercooled and overclocked Intel 3930k is it. Too bad that you can't run these as duals.

Would be interesting to see a MB manufacturer go rogue and just build a board that can take multiple single socket cores.

When intel's nephalem came out there were a couple of rumors that Asus was working on something like that, but I guess that never actually came to pass.

I'm pretty much done with considering dual socket now. With the 3930k being this good at a so much lower price-point I really don't see the need for anything more than that.

 

So the board of choice with this core could be an Asus P9X79-E WS. 

Any alternatives out there I should be looking at or is this the one to buy?

Does this board have fairly modern bios software? Will I have to update it?

 

Regarding the RAM:

So I could just put my 6 sticks of tripple channel RAM into 6 of the 8 slots and be okay? Or do I have to only use 4 / buy 2 more and use all 8?

I thought I knew about how to work with RAM, but apparently the rules aren't as clear as I thought they were...

 

Thanks again.

[stevv]

 

 

I've been looking at a couple of benchmarks and I think a watercooled and overclocked Intel 3930k is it. Too bad that you can't run these as duals.

Would be interesting to see a MB manufacturer go rogue and just build a board that can take multiple single socket cores.

 

 

I'm pretty much done with considering dual socket now. With the 3930k being this good at a so much lower price-point I really don't see the need for anything more than that.

 

 

Regarding the RAM:

So I could just put my 6 sticks of tripple channel RAM into 6 of the 8 slots and be okay? Or do I have to only use 4 / buy 2 more and use all 8?

I thought I knew about how to work with RAM, but apparently the rules aren't as clear as I thought they were...

 

Thanks again.

Unfortunately, intel has hardware "locked" out the possibility  of multi non-xeons.. requiring chipset and processor support. 

 

The xeons are waaaay overpriced!  If the top i7 cost a mt. Everest climb... the xeons are like going to space.  lol

 

You can just use the 6 sticks.  It will run in dual channel.  at 4/8 sticks it will run quad channel.  you can test it out in dual and quad channel and see if it's worth adding two more sticks.  Also wouldn't hurt to check compatibility (though any major brand should have no issues, unlike stupid fussy ecc rams).

 

Also, ivy bridge e launching this coming month... (source)

[sotiris.bos]

Go for an AMD FX-9590 if you don't want to overclock

[Rekhyt]

Go for an AMD FX-9590 if you don't want to overclock

 

Bad idea. Higher price (although not so sure now that they've slashed the price) and waaaay less performance. See pages 9 - 15 of this benchmark for details.

 

The watercooled 3930K is an awesome option, you won't regret it. Mine overclocked pretty smoothly up to 4.6 GHz and I'm by no means a good overclocker, so you shouldn't have any problems getting that extra performance.

 

You should do your homework on the 4930K though, see if you're interested. Personally until they give me more cores I'm not too exited and therefore not very informed.

 

A big part of the reason for buying the P9X79-E WS for me was aesthetics, I won't lie; although the plx chipsmay come in handy some day as well as a few other features.But you can get a away with a less expensive one. Here's the Asus motherboard round-up,  look at the options for socket 2011. You could go for the P9X79 WS, or the Pro/deluxe SKU's for instance.

 

There are other brands but I like going Asus for a workstation. In any case you don't have to worry about the BIOS; they're recent enough, and updating them is very easy these days anyway

[legopc]

if you want boss preformance for 3d stuff i would go with dual cpu config 

[sotiris.bos]

Go crazy and get 2x E5-2687W Xeons, a raid controller and 4x 3TB WD Red in raid 5, a Seasonic power supply and maybe throw in a Tesla if you need more CUDA. Why do you need 6Gb SATA? If you want top SSD bandwith get a pcie one.

[WoodenMarker]

What kind of software are you running?