Feedback for my Web Development Server/Worstation Build

[jiewmeng]

Use case:

- As a Web Development Server

- Run LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

- Others: FTP, Node.js (Server Side JS), Cloud9 IDE, Virtual PCs (Virtual Box)

- In the future: Python, Ruby on Rails

Considerations:

- Heat: Air con on during office hours only

- Power Efficiency: I like to be Environmentally Friendly & save on Electricty Bills at the same time

- Performance: Of course! In this case, Virtual Box will be most resource intensive I suppose

My Build:

- Intel Core i5 2400 (Or perpaps a i3 2100 will be more value for money? No Virtualization Tech for Directed IO VT-d (Will Virtual Box benefit much from it)?)

- Asus H57M-Pro

- 4GB Kingston DDR3 (2x2GB) (Is PC3 10600/1333 CL9 a Dual Channel DDR3 RAM? With the above motherboard, is this the correct RAM?)

- Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB SATA3 (My boss actually suggested a SSD tho, is it a good idea? I am thinking perhaps RAID 1 or 5 will give me performance close to SSD + more storage?)

- Cooler Master Elite 371 (Case)

- Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (CPU Cooler) - Is it true that Sandy Bridge Stock Cooler is bad? I am thinking tho since heat is an issue in office, maybe a non-stock cooler will be useful?

- Cooler Master Blade Master 120 (Case Fan)

- Cooler Master GX550 (PSU) (Maybe 450W will suffice also?)

Aside:

I am thinking I will have a similar build if I want 1 for my home too, except it will look like below

- Intel Core i5 2400

- Asus H57M-Pro

+ 8GB Kingston DDR3 1333MHz (2x4GB)

+ 2x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA3

- Cooler Master Elite 371 (Case)

- Cooler Master GX550 (PSU)

+ Samsung S24A350H (LED/LCD)

+ Creative T12 (Speakers)

Diff is marked by + and removed CPU Cooler, Case Fan

For home use, in addition to the use cases above, I will use

- Notepad++, NetBeans, Aptana Studio, maybe Visual Studio (Development IDEs)

- Photoshop/Illustrator or GIMP/Inkscape/Blender

- I will only access from LAN at most

Also I may get a GPU in future

What do you think about my build? Anything I should change etc?

Edited May 9, 2011 by jiewmeng

[allen2]

With this kind of setup you aren't going to be very power efficient, you should check for industrial boards for mobile cpu. You might divide by 3 the power consumption of your setup.

If you're planning to let your office computer on when air con is off, then the industrial boards are more robust.

For storage, you might go with ssd but will be expensive for the same capacity.

For raid 5, you'll need at least 3 drives.

For raid 1 and raid 5 setup, you should use a dedicated hardware raid controller (Lsi/3ware are the best in my opinion) with read/write cache and battery backup unit.

But in my opinion, you should buy a real server (from dell, hp or ibm) as they are made to be servers and come with real support.

[jiewmeng]

@allen, but mobile CPU's have very low performance too? When u say industrial boards what do u mean? Server motherboards?

Also I think support is not very important here as its a development server + my boss says its ok not to have warranty. Plus in my opinion, its more fun this way!

2 questions, hope you dont mind

1. is it true that writing to SSD often will lower the SSD lifespan (more than that of normal HDDs)? If so probably SSD will not be good for development? as I was save, test over & over again

2. Is motherboard RAID very lousy?

Thanks in advanced

[allen2]

2) Motherboard raid (intel in this case) should not be used for work but if you don't care loosing files and also it puts another load on the cpu and doesn't have a R/W cache and is heavily based on how the driver handle the raid work (distributing datas between the differents drives).

1) Recent ssd use algorithms to avoid failure and have a spare space to replace the faulty clusters like hard drives. The MTBF of both technologies are quite high enough now to ignore those problems.

As for the industrial motherboards and mobile cpus:

- see there the benchmark comparing both desktop cpu and mobile ones. As you'll see a mobile cpu like an i7 2820QM has almost the i5 2400 performance on most tests for only a TDP 45W and has the hyperthreading functionnality (8 virtual cpus).

- see google or you can check there a reseller providing almost all models.

[puntoMX]

Get the SSD but don't use them for storage, so, for storage a RAID setup on those 5400-5600rpm drives is good. Now use the SDD ONLY for your programs, but not for "virtual memory" (any kind) and also not for a scratch disk for software like Photoshop/Illustrator. This way you will use the SSD where it's made for and get the best lifespan out of it. Now your new topic will be "what is the best SSD", well, all depends on what you are spending. Mostly, I would go for a Kingston or Intel (same stuff) when money is limited but as you will use this machine as your workstation, go for something more powerful from OCZ, like the Vertex 3. Note that transfer rates given could be misleading as some SSDs use compression to write so looking for real life benchmarks would help you a lot more. I personally like the 4x PCI-E cards, RevoDrive, with 120GB on them from OCZ.

Now, monitor, look at IPS based screens. CPU, the i7 2600, a ATI video card, simple, HD5830 are simple and cheap (110USD), and why would you need speakers on a workstation?

... And go for 8GB (2x4) please!...