To wait or not to wait....

[suryad]

Tyan Thunder K8WE (S2895) motherboard

2 x AMD Opteron 252

CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) Unbuffered DDR 433 (PC 3500) Dual Channel Kit

Thermaltake Tai-Chi VB5001SNA (with liquid cooling system)

2 x Hitachi Ultrastar 147GB U320-SCSI 15000RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer

2 x Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200 RPM 16 mb cache SATA II

Apple 30 inch LCD Cinema HD Display

What do you guys think? This is for work mostly...play afterwards

I am just debating if I should wait for the upcoming new socket from AMD and also as you may have noticed I have left the options for graphics cards left wide open...most likely Nvidia because its chipset and cards are quite mature unlike ATI's mobos. Any suggestions?

[ripken204]

wow thats an expensive mobo. if u were to get the M2 and you wanted to make sure that it was reliable, then you would have to wait over a year from now. they are suppose to be coming out around summer next year but those will be mainly for them to test us on.

what is ur current setup?

[suryad]

As for the Socket M2 I did not realize that it would be so long to see them available in the market...and since I intend to build this soon enough, then it is not making sense to wait for a technology that is not even out yet.

I have been doing some looking around and this is what I am seeing.

A DCC from Apple with the following specs:

- 2.5GHz Quad-core PowerPC G5

- 2GB 533 DDR2 ECC SDRAM- 2x1GB

- 2x500GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm

- QUADRO FX 4500 512MB SDRAM

- Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel)

- AirPort Extreme + Bluetooth built-in

- 16x SuperDrive DL (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

Cost: $9122

A DCC machine from VoodooPC

Voodoo OMEN Dual Opteron SLI & SCSI Ready Motherboard

- Voodoo Stealth 650 Watt Modular Silent Power Supply

- 2 x AMD Opteron Processor Dual Core Model 275

- 2 GiG Corsair 3500LL Pro Memory Kit

- 2 x 147 GiG HGST Ultrastar SCSI 15000 RPM

- 2 x 500 GiG HGST Sata 7200 RPM

- 2 x Pioneer Dual Layer 16X DVD+-RW

- 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX

Cost: $11,133

Home built setup:

- Tyan Thunder K8WE (S2895) motherboard

- 2 x AMD Opteron 275

- CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 3500 ram

- Thermaltake Tai-Chi VB5001SNA (with liquid cooling system)

- Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1

- 2 x Hitachi Ultrastar 147GB U320-SCSI 15000RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer

- 2 x Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200 RPM 16 mb cache SATA II

- Apple 30 inch LCD Cinema HD Display

- Nvidia Quadro FX 4500

- 2 x Plextor PX-716A DL DVD+/- R/RW Drive

- Creative GigaWorks S750 7.1 Speaker System

Cost: $10,632

That is because I chose the FX graphics card to show the price differences. If I went with dual Geforce 7800 GTX's with 512 mb memory I would save another 600 bucks easy and the price would drop to 10k but I am assuming with taxes and shipping and handling the price will be around 500 bux more estimated.

Pros over the Apple setup is:

- dual dvd burners, SLI, SCSI

Pros over VoodooPC

- price! The voodoopc is configured with 2 x geforce 7800 gtx's and still the price is over 11k! And also the price does not include a monitor or speakers!

As for the current setup, I have a 3.4 ghz 1 gig ram 26 mb ATI graphics card 60 gig 7200 rpm hard drive with a dvd burner. This is a laptop. I also have access at home to a 64 bit laptop with 768 mb memory and 60 gig hdd and a desktop with an athlon 2 ghz oclocked to 2.3 ghz 1 gig ram 260 gig hdd and a 6800 graphics card. These machines maybe sufficient for now. But if things work out for the better, they will not be enough for us. No way. That is why I started researching on building a kickass machine that will last for a very long time.

Edited November 13, 2005 by suryad

[ripken204]

wow, if u can afford it, make that one yourself. sataII is a hige plus

[suryad]

Haha yeah. Problem is I cant afford it right now. I will know hopefully by the end of this week. But I can only imagine building this rig...I might need a hardened power supply...the stock 400 W is going to die!! I think 650W is a minimum requirement!

Edited November 14, 2005 by suryad

[suryad]

Ok I decide to make this post so people can give me feedback on the parts I have chosen.

The motherboard can be found here:

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html

The case specs can be found here: http://www.thermaltake.com/xaserCase/taich...a/vb5001sna.htm

The newer PSU is here:

http://www.thermaltake.com/purepower/w0049/w0049.htm

The memory can be found here:

http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/produ...8-3500LLPRO.pdf

The SCSI drive can be found here:

http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/m...b86b31bac4f0a0/

The SATA hard drive can be found here:

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsa...081,705,00.html

The sound card can be found here:

http://www.creative.com/products/pro...&product=14064

The speakers can be found here:

http://www.creative.com/products/pro...3&product=9306

The keyboard/mouse setup can be found here:

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/pr...ONTENTID=10777

Edited November 14, 2005 by suryad

[ripken204]

sweet case. you may want to consider dual psu's

have 1 psu dedicated to the hdds+cd drives

but you should be fine with just one since you dont have alot of crap to hook up. btw, why the watercooling? what is you "work" that you need to do on this thing or are you paying more attention to you gaming side, lol.

[suryad]

It could be a bit of e-p**is syndrome but no...this is for the company I am helping found....if you are interested I can post the link to it ...I dont want to be shamelessly plugging my company around. We are a startup with some really good ideas. We are a production company and we already have filmed our pilot episode and are now in the process of editing and all that fun stuff.

This rig is so that we dont need to upgrade in the forseeable future. This will be a multipurpose DCC machine with everything from making music to editing and so forth. It will also run as a gaming rig...haha whenever I get my leisure time that is :-D

[suryad]

I chose water cooling because that way I wont have to hear the fans too much while working. This kind of power is going to generate a lot of heat. I mean I can already count 4 fans for 2 gpus and 2 procs...and then fan on PSU, plus the bunch of fans on the case....so that could get noisy fast. Hence the water cooling.

[suryad]

Alright looks like he 512 mb Geforce's came out...and with rumors of even higher clocked Nvidia parts coming out after New Year's! Dangit! I think I shoul be more patient and aim for post new year's to create my machine...

[suryad]

Version 2 of the comp:

Version 2 of the system with some help from Athildja:

- Tyan Thunder K8WE (S2895) motherboard

Click here

- 2 x AMD Opteron 275

- CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) bUnbuffered DDR 433 (PC 3500) Dual Channel

Click here

- Thermaltake Armor VA8000BWS

Click here

- Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1

Click here

- Creative GigaWorks S750 7.1 Speaker System

Click here

- 2 x Hitachi Ultrastar 15K147 147GB SCSI 15000RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer @

Click here

- 2 x Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200 RPM 16 mb cache SATA II

Click here

- 2 x Plextor PX-716AL DL DVD+/- R/RW DriveClick here

- Apple 30 inch LCD Cinema HD Display

Click here

- Logitech® diNovo™ Media Desktop™ Laser

Click here

I am still looking into the PSU issue as well as the ECC memory issue. Apparently seems like that i would need a different PSU for the workstation mobo and the mobo in question might not work without ECC memory. I would really like to avoid using the ECC memory if I can. Once again any comments are appreciated. The links are fixed this time around.

[ripken204]

take a look at the cm stacker for a case

[suryad]

Never heard of that case but will give it a shot. Thanks ripken.

[suryad]

I think I am leaning more towards the Armor. They are similar cases and both are heavyweights in terms of their featuresets. I just get the feeling the Thermaltake is a slight bit better and I have had experience with Thermaltake's before and they are great products.

[Zxian]

To quote...

Holy moth....