OK. My dad's work need a super system. They were going to buy 10 Dell Core i7 machines (double what they need, for redundancy) but I suggested an SR-2 build. They need low storage, high clock rate and good cooling. I suggested this: Any suggestions?
A little curious as to what is requiring the 2x 1500W PSUs... Given we power 3x580s and 2x 5680s off of a single corsair AX1200 with ease...
Let them buy the Dells. Seriously do you want to be the free tech support for a £8k build, when the company is all the down time losing more money because of something you spec'd?
You make someone buy something, something goes wrong with the thing he bought and who is he going to blame? Dells tend to come with good warranties. Good warranty is pretty damn important when the system is used for actual work. Ofcourse I don't know anything about the details, what the system is for, what kind of company it is etc, etc, etc. It all just sounds like something I would stay very, very far away from. Peace.
I wouldn't be doing any support, My dad's head of the IT department and he was telling me how he's fed up of Dells and having to have things constantly replaced/repaired (they always have at least 10 broken) so 1 quality build like that, overclocked will be better than 10 pieces of s***. Basically I know more than my dad about the best hardware etc. so he asked me for advice. I see where you're coming from though, thanks.
I say go for it. Are you getting paid...lol. Do a project log as well, would be an interesting build. I would love to building systems like this all day. For reliability sake I wouldn't bother overclocking it though.
I'm not sure exactly what it's for, all I was told was it's extremely CPU strenuous and needs high frequency RAM, and not much storage. Oh and bulldogjeff I was fully intending on doing a worklog and why would I want payment for doing something that awesome? As long as I get to play Crysis on it that's enough payment
Seems to me that a lot of money is being wasted. Why do you need a GTX580? Or an SSD? Or two 1500w PSUs? None of these things are going to increase performance.
If the company needs to run multiples CPU intensive proccess then getting a farm of 10*2600k would offer several times the processing power.
Get a proper server/workstation case (eg. a Supermicro) and definitely don't watercool. Consider ECC RAM too, and the graphics card is probably unsuitable.
probably at most you are goning to need a 570 or 560 GTX, 580 is overkill and a waste of power and money. Watercooling is a bad idea! Just stick decent coolers on the CPUs and ensure you have good airflow throughout the case!
Agree with all of the above. The key to a proper work PC is stability. This means watercooling and overclocking are out of the question. As has been mentioned ECC RAM would also be highly recommended. I would also consider what Jipa said about allowing them to purchase the Dells. If anything does go wrong, then the finger will immediately be turned your way. Furthermore, as a company the warranty (and tech support) will be of great importance to them which is something you won't be able to offer 24/7. The system seems to imbalanced. If you're building a system for someone then you need to know what the system will be used for so you can choose the important components correctly. Try and find this out and we can offer more specific advice. Hope this helps and good luck!
Here we go, trimmed about £2000 off your build with little to no impact to the end user. It obv just a little guide, personaly i would get dell to provide the machines or use the Scan 3XS System to build the workstation, atleast you get support and quality components that way!
Scan do pre overclocked SR-2 Bundles which come with a warrenty to back it up. Is the GFX just for display or is there GPGU computing? All a 580/480/570 ETC is going to do is use unnecessary power, add unnecessary heat, and add another another thing to worry about. Why don't you just stick a passive cooled GFX? i can't see the point of the PCI SSD. This seems like the type of rig that will be left on and only shut down at holidays? Might just be worth getting a cheap SSD as they are less likely to drive failure without requiring server quality HDD's. I have to agree with the EEC ram. Just remember socket 2011 is arriving soon. A farm of 2600Ks would be alot faster and cheaper.
I've just learned that they have an account with Dell so they get a discount , they're getting a Dell. Oh well...
What about form factor? I.E. rackmount or tower? SSDs and 1TB HDDs sound like they're excess to requirements, as does any graphics card over £30 - what is this machine going to be doing? You can pick up a 24-core Dell R910 or 4x 8-core R510s at list price for not far off the cost of your first proposal, and nobody pays list for Dell server servers. EDIT: Started posting this before the above post - clairvoyant or what??
Why did noone touch on the 6(!!!) D5's???? As one, possibly 2, would be enough me thinks. Not going to happen now anyways.
