New Workstation Build... What do ya think?

Show off your quiet rig.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

New Workstation Build... What do ya think?

Post by pwscottiv » Tue Aug 28, 2007 7:38 pm

So I do a lot of CAD and CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) on the computer and my previous system was about 5 years old, so I just built a new one last week. Let me know what ya think.

Specs:
  • Motherboard: Supermicro H8DA8-2

  • Processors: 2x 3.0GHz Dual-Core AMD 2222 (Socket F)

  • Memory: 8GB ECC Samsung PC2-5300 DDR2

  • Video Card (30" LCD): nVidia Quadro FX 4600

  • Video Card (2x20" LCDs): nVidia Quadro FX 3500

  • Monitor (Primary): Dell 30" LCD

  • Monitor (Secondary): 2x Dell 20.1" LCDs

  • Hard Drives (Working): 4x 146GB Seagate Cheetah 15.5k U320 SCSI

  • Hard Drives (Backup/Storage): 2x WD Enterprise 750GB

  • Power Supply: Toughpower 1200w W0133

  • Drives: Plextor 760A, Zip 250MB, 11 in 1 Card Reader

  • Input Devices: Wacom Intuos2 12"x18" Tablet, Spaceball 5000

  • Printer: HP 2800dtn (13"x19")

  • Sound: SB Audigy2 ZS Platinum, Logiech Z-5500 Speakers

  • Case: Lian-Li PC-71 (Modified)

  • Fans: 4x 120mm and 6x 80mm Scythe S-Flex

  • Heatsinks: 2x Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme

  • Sound Abatement: Sonex Classic Acoustical Foam, Dynamat Extreme
Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Last edited by pwscottiv on Tue Aug 28, 2007 8:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

bonestonne
Posts: 1839
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:10 pm
Location: Northern New Jersey
Contact:

Post by bonestonne » Tue Aug 28, 2007 7:50 pm

wow. just wow. i've seen some really nice dual CPU rigs before, but that one definitely takes the cake for now.

is that an HD video camera i see on the desk? i do lots of video work for my school, i wish we had HD.

i have the same graphing calc! whoo!

three mice?! i'd get lost with just that mousepad/tablet.

i just have to ask....4 cheetahs? why 4? 2 in RAID is plenty, but i see why two 750's would help...CAD design for anything is really hefty work.

what were the specs on your old rig?

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Tue Aug 28, 2007 7:56 pm

bonestonne wrote:wow. just wow. i've seen some really nice dual CPU rigs before, but that one definitely takes the cake for now.

is that an HD video camera i see on the desk? i do lots of video work for my school, i wish we had HD.

i have the same graphing calc! whoo!

three mice?! i'd get lost with just that mousepad/tablet.

i just have to ask....4 cheetahs? why 4? 2 in RAID is plenty, but i see why two 750's would help...CAD design for anything is really hefty work.

what were the specs on your old rig?
Thanks!

Nope, the camera is a Panasonic DVX100, which does 720p. It does have three 1/3" CCDs, so it produces great quality 4:3 video.

Old Rig Specs:
**********************
iWill DX400-SN Mobo
2x 3.0GHz Xeons (603pin)
4GB ECC Samsung RDRAM
nVidia QuadroFX 3000
Dell 30" LCD and 2x Dell 20.1" LCDs (one 20.1 offline)
4x 146GB Seagate Cheetah 15.5k U320 SCSI, WD Enterprise 750GB, Plextor 760A, Zip 250MB, 11 in 1 Card Reader
Misc: Lian-Li PC71, Logiech Z-5500 Speakers, Wacom 12"x18" Tablet, Spaceball 5000, HP 2800dtn, etc, etc
**********************

As far as the SCSI drives go, I had them on my last system, so I just migrated them over... I do plan on setting them up in stripped raid for extreme speed. My WD drives are mirrored for safety.

As far as the cad work goes the worst thing I've had to do (which I'm actually doing as we speak) is point cloud manipulation... The image below is the engine compartment of my truck. It started out as over 20 million poins that I created with a CMM arm based laser scanner.

Image[/img]

bonestonne
Posts: 1839
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:10 pm
Location: Northern New Jersey
Contact:

Post by bonestonne » Tue Aug 28, 2007 8:15 pm

ack! RD RAM is the devil! i have an older P4 that runs it, i'd love to never use that machine again [and i probably never will, as i might give it to my sister].

although i do have to wonder...how hot are those cheetahs? i almost got a small one for my old server because its my old workstation and it could use a performance boost, but with the low capacity of the ones available and the high speed, i was afraid it would make the [already] hot box much hotter. luckily i got that rig new CPUs, and its my school computer.

my one itching question is why you opted the 2x dual core rather than jumping a quad so easily. performance-wise i see your reasoning though, SCSI, two separate buses, etc and so forth...but with such cheap quads, i have to wonder.

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Tue Aug 28, 2007 8:29 pm

bonestonne wrote:ack! RD RAM is the devil! i have an older P4 that runs it, i'd love to never use that machine again [and i probably never will, as i might give it to my sister].

although i do have to wonder...how hot are those cheetahs? i almost got a small one for my old server because its my old workstation and it could use a performance boost, but with the low capacity of the ones available and the high speed, i was afraid it would make the [already] hot box much hotter. luckily i got that rig new CPUs, and its my school computer.

my one itching question is why you opted the 2x dual core rather than jumping a quad so easily. performance-wise i see your reasoning though, SCSI, two separate buses, etc and so forth...but with such cheap quads, i have to wonder.
As far as RDRAM goes I have some I'm selling... Want some? lol.

Yeah, the Cheetahs MUST have forced air cooling (even if you're only bench-testing them). I have two 80mm fans blowing fresh air on the lower drive bay and one 120mm fan blowing fresh air on the upper drive bay. That is enough to keep them very cool.

My strategy behind buying AMD dual-cores is that I'm betting on that the future quad-core (and maybe eventually octal-core) processors they make will eclipse the performance of Intel's offerings. AMD has a superior architecture that should prove to allow quad-cores all the bandwidth they need... Intel's current Socket 771 architecture does not have enough bandwidth to fully support dual quad-cores. AMD says they'll stay with the same Socket-F architecture through mid-2009, so in 2010 this system should still be able to fully compete with whatever is out there... At least that's my hope. This system also allows me to eventually go to an SLI video configuration, so I can eventually double the horsepower on my main 30" monitor. The Intel socket 771 does not allow you to ever use SLI technology, nor do any of the dual-socket systems ever have dual PCI express x16 slots, which are a requirement for the nVidia Quadro FX video card line. Let's hope my strategy works out... From recent reports on the Barcelona (AMD's new quad-core) it's going to beat the crap out of the Intel quad-cores.

MikeC
Site Admin
Posts: 12285
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Contact:

Post by MikeC » Tue Aug 28, 2007 8:44 pm

It looks like a pretty hot system. Certainly a very working space. 8)

Internally, it's clear that so many drives makes cable management difficult; you might get slightly better airflow/cooling with tidier cables.
pwscottiv wrote:For having four 15k SCSI drives, six 80mm fans, four 120mm fans, and one 170mm fan in the power supply it's surprisingly quiet. Maybe not silent, but maybe below 23db(A) at 1m. Wish I had a way to test it...
As long as it's quiet enough for you, that's what really matters. But I doubt strongly that it's anywhere near that low in SPL. My main rig on the carpeted floor under my desk measures around 22-23 dBA/1m -- and it has just 3 smooth 120mm fans running at <700rpm, and two suspended Samsungs. The noise of your drives alone has got to be over 35 dBA/1m.

(To be specific, the Cheetah 15.5k U320 SCSI drives are rated for 3.2 Bels sound power at idle. Compare that with 2.2~2.4 Bels for the single platter Barracuda IV & V which were about as quiet as quietest current 3.5" drives. We measured the B-IVs to be somewhere around 20-21 dBA/1m SPL; the quietest Samsungs were maybe one dBA higher. This means one Cheetah would measure ~30 dBA/1m. 4 of them would be 6 dBA higher in level. And we haven't even mentioned seek noise.)

Like I said, as long as you're happy with it... ;)

bonestonne
Posts: 1839
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:10 pm
Location: Northern New Jersey
Contact:

Post by bonestonne » Tue Aug 28, 2007 9:01 pm

oh sweet. it'll be good to see how barcelona and penryn compare.

just constantly looking at that rig makes me think spagetti dinner. even just one SCSI chain is a nightmare [i've never managed to get it to work myself though].

the only changes i'd make would be flipping the PSU over and mounting it higher if theres room for the 120mm? fan above it. i'd also reverse the airflow from front to back, only because i'd worry about those CPU's kicking too much heat onto the drives.

i would have picked a case with more 92 or 120mm fan mounts than 80, only because of my bad experience with Antec Tri-Cools in another case i have...that i recently stopped using for the time being.

but no matter what its a nice build for so much packed in....

i'd also remove the audio cables from the optical drives to the sound card. with windows XP all audio data is carried through IDE or SATA cables, so the audio output on the drive really doesn't do much of anything. only exception would be if it was one of those fancy drives that could play CDs without even needing your computer to be on, in which case it would probably be needed.

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Tue Aug 28, 2007 9:43 pm

MikeC wrote:It looks like a pretty hot system. Certainly a very working space. 8)

Internally, it's clear that so many drives makes cable management difficult; you might get slightly better airflow/cooling with tidier cables.
pwscottiv wrote:For having four 15k SCSI drives, six 80mm fans, four 120mm fans, and one 170mm fan in the power supply it's surprisingly quiet. Maybe not silent, but maybe below 23db(A) at 1m. Wish I had a way to test it...
As long as it's quiet enough for you, that's what really matters. But I doubt strongly that it's anywhere near that low in SPL. My main rig on the carpeted floor under my desk measures around 22-23 dBA/1m -- and it has just 3 smooth 120mm fans running at <700rpm, and two suspended Samsungs. The noise of your drives alone has got to be over 35 dBA/1m.

(To be specific, the Cheetah 15.5k U320 SCSI drives are rated for 3.2 Bels sound power at idle. Compare that with 2.2~2.4 Bels for the single platter Barracuda IV & V which were about as quiet as quietest current 3.5" drives. We measured the B-IVs to be somewhere around 20-21 dBA/1m SPL; the quietest Samsungs were maybe one dBA higher. This means one Cheetah would measure ~30 dBA/1m. 4 of them would be 6 dBA higher in level. And we haven't even mentioned seek noise.)

Like I said, as long as you're happy with it... ;)
The Cheetahs are definitely very loud (relatively) when they're reading/writing. However, you should consider that I did line my entire case with Dynamat Extreme... This made a very big difference. When you tap on the case you hear a dull thud instead of the metallic clank noise that I got when the case was unlined. I also put Sonex sound absorption foam inside of the front cover. Also, three of the Cheetahs are suspended on rubber grommets, so there's less vibration being transmitted to the case. That said, I have to agree with you that those drives are probably creating the most noise of anything. Except for the Quadro cards when the system starts up, because those things are super loud.

I do wish I could get it to be quiet enough where it is truly silent, but I don't think there's much more I can do without getting rid of the SCSI drives... Unfortunately, they do preform better than any SATA/IDE drive out there... Maybe not by a huge margin for most stuff, but for internal operations they're just about twice as fast as even SATA Raptors.

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Tue Aug 28, 2007 10:02 pm

bonestonne wrote:oh sweet. it'll be good to see how barcelona and penryn compare.
Yep, I'm waiting with baited breath.
bonestonne wrote:just constantly looking at that rig makes me think spagetti dinner. even just one SCSI chain is a nightmare [i've never managed to get it to work myself though].
SCSI ain't so bad... You just have to make sure your jumpers are configured correctly and than you're fine.
bonestonne wrote:the only changes i'd make would be flipping the PSU over and mounting it higher if theres room for the 120mm? fan above it. i'd also reverse the airflow from front to back, only because i'd worry about those CPU's kicking too much heat onto the drives.
I did want to have the PSU configured like that, but in order to mitigate some of the noise from escaping through the blowhole I decided that it would be best to drill the hole as far back as I could get it... To keep the hole looking clean I opted to drill from the inside, which left the PSU tray a bit in my way.
My airflow is bottom to top, not front to back, because I felt it was best to work with convection... If this was a rackmount case then I would have had ALL of the fans blowing front to back. However I have it setup so cool air is blowing directly on the most critical areas... Two 80mm fans in the lower back blow cool air onto the CPUs and memory, two 80mm fans in the front blow cool air on the lower drive bay and one 120mm fan blows cool air on the upper drive bay. To pull the hot air out I have one 120mm fan on the top, two 80mm fans on the uppermost back (just above the PSU) and the PSU fan blows out as well. so that ends up being a pretty well balanced system considering that convection is helping pull the hot air to the top as well. I personally feel very confident in how I designed the airflow... However, IF I was to change anything, I would change the airflow and fan side of the front CPU such that the hot air from the back CPU was not getting sucked into it, but there isn't as much space on that side and pushing air through a sink is better than pulling, so that's how I'm probably going to keep it, unless I get a compelling reason to change it.
bonestonne wrote:i would have picked a case with more 92 or 120mm fan mounts than 80, only because of my bad experience with Antec Tri-Cools in another case i have...that i recently stopped using for the time being.
Well, I used the case from my last system to save a bit of money. It's still pretty much one of the largest cases out there, and for what I'm packing in there IMHO it needs to be that large.
bonestonne wrote:but no matter what its a nice build for so much packed in....
Thanks!
bonestonne wrote:i'd also remove the audio cables from the optical drives to the sound card. with windows XP all audio data is carried through IDE or SATA cables, so the audio output on the drive really doesn't do much of anything. only exception would be if it was one of those fancy drives that could play CDs without even needing your computer to be on, in which case it would probably be needed.
I had no idea that was true... I just moved from Windows 2000 Pro and this was the first time I'd ever had a system on XP (I'm actually running XP x64 Pro). So I really don't need those, eh? If not then I'm definitely taking that crap off... I already have enough cables to get in my way in there.

koegs
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun May 22, 2005 10:14 pm
Contact:

Post by koegs » Wed Aug 29, 2007 12:08 am

Really hot setup you have. :twisted:

A link to that wallpaper would be nice.

Nick Geraedts
SPCR Reviewer
Posts: 561
Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 8:22 pm
Location: Vancouver, BC

Post by Nick Geraedts » Wed Aug 29, 2007 12:33 am

pwscottiv wrote:From recent reports on the Barcelona (AMD's new quad-core) it's going to beat the crap out of the Intel quad-cores.
The only problem with this... by the time AMD gets Barcelona out the door, Intel will have Penryn finished and done. Intel showed off a two CPU, quad-core Penryn system a while back, and a single 3.33GHz Penryn Quad (12,800 in Cinebench10) is almost able to keep up with a dual Barcelona setup:
AMD wouldn't comment on the record on what their upcoming Barcelona processor would score, but people in the know said that AMD is getting ~16,000 with a pair of their Barcelona processors on Cinebench 10.
Although I will agree with you about the fact that current Conroe-based Xeons are memory limited. We've got a cluster of 20 dual CPU X5355 systems at my university, and pretty much all of our heavy simulations are memory bandwidth limited. For that fact, and the fact that you'll be able to "double up" with SLI on the main monitor, your socketF setup has it's advantages.


All in all - you can't really complain about the performance on that setup - it's a screamer. :)

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Wed Aug 29, 2007 1:27 am

koegs wrote:Really hot setup you have. :twisted:

A link to that wallpaper would be nice.
I made it myself, because nobody makes 4950 x 1600 wallpapers... What resolution do you need it to be?

jaganath
Posts: 5085
Joined: Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:55 am
Location: UK

Post by jaganath » Wed Aug 29, 2007 1:38 am

I think the wallpaper's awesome as well...can you get it down to 1024x768 or will it lose too much detail?

qviri
Posts: 2465
Joined: Tue May 24, 2005 8:22 pm
Location: Berlin
Contact:

Post by qviri » Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:32 am

A system this nice with only a mediocre Logitech keyboard? Tsk.

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Wed Aug 29, 2007 4:26 am

qviri wrote:A system this nice with only a mediocre Logitech keyboard? Tsk.
LOL, I was considering swapping that out for something that's newer in design... What do you recommend?

Chris Chan
Posts: 436
Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:15 pm
Location: Michigan

Post by Chris Chan » Wed Aug 29, 2007 5:45 am

That's about 10x as much computer as I'll ever need. That wallpaper is really cool and would look good on my laptop; could I get it in 1024x768? I don't think there's a Mac OS-tan wallpaper.

qviri
Posts: 2465
Joined: Tue May 24, 2005 8:22 pm
Location: Berlin
Contact:

Post by qviri » Wed Aug 29, 2007 10:23 am

pwscottiv wrote:LOL, I was considering swapping that out for something that's newer in design... What do you recommend?
An IBM, but that may be just me. They don't typically appeal to the gaming crowd, but damn they make awesome work keyboards.

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Wed Aug 29, 2007 11:32 am

qviri wrote:
pwscottiv wrote:LOL, I was considering swapping that out for something that's newer in design... What do you recommend?
An IBM, but that may be just me. They don't typically appeal to the gaming crowd, but damn they make awesome work keyboards.
Why are they better?

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Wed Aug 29, 2007 11:52 am

jaganath wrote:I think the wallpaper's awesome as well...can you get it down to 1024x768 or will it lose too much detail?
Here ya go:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1027/126 ... 75_o_d.jpg

Nick Geraedts
SPCR Reviewer
Posts: 561
Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 8:22 pm
Location: Vancouver, BC

Post by Nick Geraedts » Wed Aug 29, 2007 2:23 pm

qviri wrote:A system this nice with only a mediocre Logitech keyboard? Tsk.
What's wrong with Logitech keyboards? I've always found them to be relatively high quality. I picked up the MX3200 kwyboard and mouse combo the other day and it's fantastic. Great feel to the keys, good wrist support, and Logitech mice have always been good to me. The back and forward buttons on the mouse are nice and quiet as well. ;)

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Wed Aug 29, 2007 2:40 pm

Nick Geraedts wrote:
qviri wrote:A system this nice with only a mediocre Logitech keyboard? Tsk.
What's wrong with Logitech keyboards? I've always found them to be relatively high quality. I picked up the MX3200 kwyboard and mouse combo the other day and it's fantastic. Great feel to the keys, good wrist support, and Logitech mice have always been good to me. The back and forward buttons on the mouse are nice and quiet as well. ;)
Well one thing that really pisses me off is that my F-lock always resets to the Off position every time I restart my computer... It's effing BS. What completely idiotic idea on Logitech's part.

koegs
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun May 22, 2005 10:14 pm
Contact:

Post by koegs » Wed Aug 29, 2007 11:39 pm

pwscottiv wrote:
koegs wrote:Really hot setup you have. :twisted:

A link to that wallpaper would be nice.
I made it myself, because nobody makes 4950 x 1600 wallpapers... What resolution do you need it to be?
Full Resolution would be nice, i will crop it to my needings.

Chris Chan
Posts: 436
Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:15 pm
Location: Michigan

Post by Chris Chan » Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:08 pm

My f-lock stays in the normal setting, because I didn't bother installing the driver for my S510. I love this setup since it's cool-looking and is actually pretty decent for a membrane keyboard. If I had the desk space, I'd use one of my old Model M's though. Only problem with the S510 I've had is that the mouse used to eat batteries when I used it like 8ft away from the receiver.

kittle
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 336
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2006 4:44 pm
Location: San Jose, CA

Post by kittle » Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:38 pm

Very nice setup there!

Pic is blocked from work so i cant see the images.

Im in the same boat with scsi drives. after using them for several years, im spoiled by their speed.. and dont want to go backwards to sata. 2x 10krpm 74gb drives an 18gb system drive and a 180gb drive spread across 2 systems.

One word of warning about the supermicro boards -- they dont quit. I got a P4DC6+ back in 2001 and ive been waiting for it to croak so i have an excuse to upgrade my server. But its outlasted 2 power supplys, 1 HD and a set of cpu fans... so fair warning =)

what OS are you using? I missed that if you said so in your posts. xp x64? or vista? or other?

pwscottiv
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:46 am
Location: OR

Post by pwscottiv » Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:16 pm

kittle wrote:Very nice setup there!

Pic is blocked from work so i cant see the images.

Im in the same boat with scsi drives. after using them for several years, im spoiled by their speed.. and dont want to go backwards to sata. 2x 10krpm 74gb drives an 18gb system drive and a 180gb drive spread across 2 systems.

One word of warning about the supermicro boards -- they dont quit. I got a P4DC6+ back in 2001 and ive been waiting for it to croak so i have an excuse to upgrade my server. But its outlasted 2 power supplys, 1 HD and a set of cpu fans... so fair warning =)

what OS are you using? I missed that if you said so in your posts. xp x64? or vista? or other?
Thanks! Yeah, too bad you can't see the pictures. I've heard both good and bad things about Supermicro, but I really didn't have much of a choice when it came down to it, because nobody else currently offers a board with all the features I need. Hopefully I won't have any problems with my current power supply, as I spent an arm and a leg for it. I'm running Windows XP x64 Pro.

bonestonne
Posts: 1839
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:10 pm
Location: Northern New Jersey
Contact:

Post by bonestonne » Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:55 pm

I can't complain about Supermicro boards...they're a bit steep, but they've got features. my old Xeon rig is actually running a Supermicro S2DGU board...surprised it didn't hit me earlier. no burst caps, no bulging caps, although a few are less stiff than they used to be. its survived a drop or two at least, trips to my school overnight recording sessions with a turntable, a rock show. another thing about my S2DGU is that its running on a single 300W PSU right now. when it was given to me, it had been kept open on a piece of plywood and powered by a massive 600W dual PSU i use it for troubleshooting the rig now and then, but never really needed it.

the board was also on the floor by my desk for almost 2 months, where it had been kicked several times [not purposely though]. still there, still running.

i wouldn't necessarily trust a supermicro to die...but damaged caps would be more of a threat.

Post Reply