Introduction:
After nearly four years of running a Dual X5650 workstation, it died out on me couple weeks ago thus I dismantled and sold most of the parts, it was running a Tyan S7002 motherboard, for some reason Tyan boards haven't been very reliable for me considering that the machine ran 24x7 / 365. After deliberating whether to upgrade to a more modern technology or to just replace my current motherboard with ASUS Z8NA-D6C, I decided to take advantage of Intel's C602 chipset along with Xeon E5 CPU's.
Why?
Many people have asked me what are the reasons for so much computing power. Well my answer remains fairly simple. As some of you may or may not know, I work in a datacenter and I am tasked with testing application(s) meant to run on multi-cpu and multicore servers and workstations, thus my workload is heavily processor and I/O oriented.
Usage:
As I mentioned above that the system is both processing and I/O oriented, that mean that it will be running; VMs, IDEs (For those who are not programmers, an IDE is an Integrated Development Environment, used for programming, testing/debugging, and organization.) While I have a nice workstation at work, this one will be used at home so that I don't have to spend countless nights at work.
Now that I have described the average usage of the said machine, I will show the specifications of my old workstation compared to the upcoming build.
Previous Setup:
Motherboard: Tyan S7002AG2NR
CPUs: 2x - Xeon X5650s
RAM: 6x - Kingston 8GB = 48GB total.
I/O: Adaptec 6805 w/ 4 x 250GB Western digitals in RAID10 and 2 x 40GB Intel 320 SSDs.
GPU: nVidia Quadro FX-3700
My previous build handled testing and development quite nicely, at full load the CPU usage almost never exceeded 80% neither did the memory.
For those wondering why do I have SSDs in RAID, well it is mostly because after working in a datacenter for a quite time, you see things fail that shouldn't besides running my drives in RAID I also backup important files onto a hard copy (CD/DVD) and also upload them for off-site storage, while many might think that this is excessive I think that you can never be too careful.
I think it is time for me to stop rambling about my old build and get to the part that we have all been waiting for, the Dual E5-2640 build!
Component List:
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A75 - 181.99 @ Newegg
- The original plan was to purchase a Case Labs MH10 case, but since I will not be water-cooling I decided not to get one.
CPUs: Xeon E5-2640 x 2 - 914.99 @ NewEgg
Motherboard: Supermicro X9DAE - 435.99 @ Superbiiz
RAM: I have two choices here - 64GB total.
- Kingston KVR1333D3D8R9S/4G - 4GB x 16 @ 1333MHz
- Kingston KVR13R9D4K4/32 - 8GB x 8 @ 1333MHz
I will most likely choose the 4GB x 16 route due to the fact that I do not need expandability to 128GB of ram, however since either choice is free it all depends on what we have left over from server builds (All RAM is ECC Registered.)
RAID and I/O:
RAID Card: - Areca ARC-1882-8i that I will also receive for free and honestly I'd buy it myself mainly because I prefer web based management compared to Java environment that both Adaptec and LSI use.
Boot Drives: Intel 520 SSD @ 60GB in RAID 1 - 89.99 x 2 @ NewEgg
Storage/Workload Drives: 500GB WD VelociRaptors x 4 (2.5" For RAID Enclosure) - 159.99 @ NewEgg
ODD: Whatever slim CD/DVD drive I have around the house.
Boot Enclosure: IcyDock MB994IPO-3SB for SSDs - 85.99 @ NewEgg
Storage/Workload Enclosure: IcyDock MB994SP-4S for WD VelociRaptors - 76.99 @ NewEgg
PSU: SeaSonic Platinum 1000W - Not included in price as I bought it a while ago.
GPU: nVidia Quadro 2000.
Edit: I have decided to go with a GeForce card, since I only need support for 2 - 3 screens, I feel that I do not need the premium of an underpowered Quadro card, I know that Quadros are made for accuracy not speed.
CPU Coolers: Prolimatech Megahalems - 2 x 69.99 @ NewEgg.
Fans: Akasa Vipers 3 x 140mm and 3 x 120mm. I bought those for my gaming pc, and I've got to say that they're some nice fans, and if I am not mistaken 140mm Vipers have the highest CFM out of all 140mm PWM fans, the only downside is that they're yellow.
Now the only thing that is left to do, order all the parts which I will start to do so within a week, and of course pictures of the build progress.
