Building a CAD computer

[MrBaseball]

Im building a CAD computer for an employee at work. Im not sure if its worth going with a dual Opteron 244 system or just get a P4 3.2 GHZ. I have to make sure this is a stable system. Anyone know of any stability issues with the amd opteron chipsets on the Tyan Thunder K8W?

Software that will be used: Pro E, Mastercam, Vericut 5.3, Autodesk Inventor.

Harware:

(2) AMD Opteron Model 244 1.8 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache 64-bit Processor ? Retail

TYAN Motherboard for Dual AMD Socket 940 AMD CPU, Model "Thunder K8W (S2885)

Chieftec ''Dragon Servers''Blue Aluminum Server Chasis without Power Supply

Lite-On Black 52X32X52 CD-RW Drive, Model LTR-52327S

(2) Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model WD360GD, OEM Drive Only

Antec 550W Power Supply, Model "TRUE550 EPS12V"

PNY Quadro FX 500 Video Card, 128MB DDR, DVI, 8X AGP, Model "VCQFX500"

(2) 512MB DDR PC3200

 

[Duvie]

Nope I think that looks great...Do you need 2 36.7gb HDD's??? maybe one big 74gb raptor or 1 36.7raptor and a 120gb storage drive....


Also are you going to be running dual monitors as well???

I run Autocadd 2004 Architectural Desktop, Viz renderer, Land Development Desktop, etc... My P4 at home is blazingly faster thenmy work pcs so I do a bunch of work at home...I would love to get dual monitors but I would need to update my card that does not have dual head capabilities

 

[mechBgon]

Let me throw in a couple of random remarks:

[*]If you need a suggested case fan, Panaflo L1A 80mm 12-volt fans are a nice balance of airflow & quietness.
[*]Because Opterons have dual-channel memory controllers, and there are two of them, and on the Thunder K8W they do in fact both have their own pairs of memory banks, I believe you'll need four modules at the minimum if you want the CPUs to really hit their stride properly. I'll check the owner's manual and get back with you on this 😀
[*]I'd get Corsair Registered ECC if I had to pick a brand, or else Mushkin R-ECC, because they seem to take customer support as a point of honor.
[*]Thought about SCSI? 5-year warranty, command queueing, yada yada... 36GB Fujitsu MAS-series (15000rpm) are looking like the top overall performers, while the Seagate Cheetah 15k.3's have a nice mix of performance and quiet idle noise. Just a thought 😀

 

[MrBaseball]

I was thinking about running RAID 0 with the 2 Raptors. Only 1 monitor for now, but we might get him another one later.

Do you think its worth going with the dual Opterons? Would it be atleast equal to a P4 3.2 GHZ if the application doesn't support dual processors?

 

[MrBaseball]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Let me throw in a couple of random remarks:

[*]If you need a suggested case fan, Panaflo L1A 80mm 12-volt fans are a nice balance of airflow & quietness.
[*]Because Opterons have dual-channel memory controllers, and there are two of them, and on the Thunder K8W they do in fact both have their own pairs of memory banks, I believe you'll need four modules at the minimum if you want the CPUs to really hit their stride properly. I'll check the owner's manual and get back with you on this 😀
[*]I'd get Corsair Registered ECC if I had to pick a brand, or else Mushkin R-ECC, because they seem to take customer support as a point of honor.
[*]Thought about SCSI? 5-year warranty, command queueing, yada yada... 36GB Fujitsu MAS-series (15000rpm) are looking like the top overall performers, while the Seagate Cheetah 15k.3's have a nice mix of performance and quiet idle noise. Just a thought 😀

I'll check out the prices on the SCSI drive + card. Im trying to keep this as close to $2000 as possible. Would it be a big performance increase to use the 1 SCSI drive over the 2 Raptors in RAID 0?

I was planning on using Crucial RAM. Would it be better to use Carsair or Mushkin?

 

[Markfw]

Would it be a big performance increase to use the 1 SCSI drive over the 2 Raptors in RAID 0?

Not sure on this, as I haven't used raptors, but even an 8 meg cache 7200 rpm SATA gets whipped by my 8 year old 9 gig SCSI in an XP2400 system. I may have to go back to SCSI for everything since it is making my Athlon64 3000+ OC'ed system look bad.

Edit: Oh, and with dual 244's if you do go SCSI, you WON'T be disappointed. My 3000+ screams with SATA. My next upgrade may be raid5 SCSI.

 

[mechBgon]

I was just having a look at the Thunder K8W manual to see about the memory question. Their DIMM chart made my brain hurt 😛 but it does look like you will want a minimum of four memory modules if you want to see two Opterons run at true full throttle. Crucial is a good brand too... since you hadn't spec'ed a brand initially, I was just trying to steer towards a known name-brand of some kind 😱

As for SCSI versus Raptor RAID0, I haven't tried a Raptor, RAID0 or otherwise. SCSI's indisputable advantage (so far) is in command queueing, although we should begin to see that seeping into the SATA arena soon. When you get into an elevator with eight other people, it doesn't go to the eight floors in the order in which the buttons were pushed, now does it... and when eight requests are made to a SCSI drive at once, it doesn't necessarily handle them 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 if it would be more efficient to do it in another order. But ATA drives, guess what... yeah. So SCSI works smarter, not just harder. It is also (usually) warranted to literally run 24/7/365 for five years, which could pay off in the long run (yeah, some Raptors are still carrying 5-year warranties too).

If I had the money, I would certainly try the "new" Raptor, the 74GB model, to see how it performs against my Cheetahs in real-life I/O-intensive stuff like the construction of an Office2000 Administrative Installation Point. But right now... I don't have the money 😉

 

[MrBaseball]

ok, thanks for letting me know about the RAM. I probably would have found that out the hard way 😀

Im going to look around and compare the prices of the SCSI card vs the Raptors. If they are around the same, then I might go with the SCSI. This computer is only going to be used for cad and all the files are saved on a network drive when he is done for the day. Is the user going to notice the benefits of the SCSI drive? What part of CAD modeling would the command queueing make a difference?

Thanks for typing out the explanation of the SCSI command queueing. That was a good explanation. 😀

Any recommendations for a good SCSI card if I go with one of these:

Seagate 37GB 15,000RPM SCSI Hard Drive
Capacity: 37GB
Average Seek Time: 3.6 ms
Buffer: 8MB
Rotational Speed: 15000 RPM
Interface: SCSI Ultra320 68 Pin
Features: 3D Defense System
Manufacturer Warranty: 5 years
Remark: OEM Drive Only

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: MrBaseball
I was thinking about running RAID 0 with the 2 Raptors. Only 1 monitor for now, but we might get him another one later.

Do you think its worth going with the dual Opterons? Would it be atleast equal to a P4 3.2 GHZ if the application doesn't support dual processors?

I think the opterons are worth it for a workstation class PC...1 24 opteron will do well against the 3.2 with no HT optimization taking place....2 will definitley be better....

HT may seem like 2 virtual (logical) cpus but there is no substitue for 2 physical cpus....


I noitce in my CADD apps there is little optimization for dual cpus so make sure those apps are threaded for it....Autocadd site says 2002 version can gain form HT or dual cpus in regeneration.....

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: MrBaseball
ok, thanks for letting me know about the RAM. I probably would have found that out the hard way 😀

Im going to look around and compare the prices of the SCSI card vs the Raptors. If they are around the same, then I might go with the SCSI. This computer is only going to be used for cad and all the files are saved on a network drive when he is done for the day. Is the user going to notice the benefits of the SCSI drive? What part of CAD modeling would the command queueing make a difference?

Thanks for typing out the explanation of the SCSI command queueing. That was a good explanation. 😀

Any recommendations for a good SCSI card if I go with one of these:

Seagate 37GB 15,000RPM SCSI Hard Drive
Capacity: 37GB
Average Seek Time: 3.6 ms
Buffer: 8MB
Rotational Speed: 15000 RPM
Interface: SCSI Ultra320 68 Pin
Features: 3D Defense System
Manufacturer Warranty: 5 years
Remark: OEM Drive Only

If you're questioning what SCSI would offer your user, then also question why you would want RAID0, and why you were planning to get a Raptor & SATA instead of a standard IDE drive to start with. What are the Raptor's advantages to your user compared to a 7200rpm drive? 😉 Raptor's got quick seek times (but SCSI is quicker), Raptor has high sustained transfer rates (but SCSI is higher), SATA allows cable lengths of up to 1.5 meters (but SCSI is 10 meters, internal or external too), Raptor is theoretically capable of hot-swap (SCSI too, given proper equipment), and... uh, SATA allows one drive per cable (SCSI allows 14, although the cable will look like someone's small intestine! :Q).

Anyway, I didn't mean to turn this into a Raptor-bashing thread. My seat-of-the-pants usage of an upper-end ATA drive on a system similar to mine leaves me gloating over my 15000rpm Cheetahs, no matter what benchmarks may say. An Office2000 AIP creation-fest, with the SCSI drives going hammer-&-tongs on about 1GB of little files, instead of mincing around trying to be silent... ahhh, it's music to my ears 😎 And they are just snappy in general usage. Now, the Raptor might be superb, I've not tried one yet. The 74GB model has fluid bearings (finally) and supposedly has command queueing capabilities (but do the controllers?).

For a SCSI controller, if you're using a single SCSI drive or a couple solo SCSI drives, then you could use anything from a $40 LSI Logic Ultra160 card on up. Ultra160 is fast enough for one or two SCSI drives. If you'd like to do RAID0, then an LSI Logic MegaRAID 320-1 with 64MB of onboard cache would be fun, plus it's a natural for one of the Thunder's PCI-X buses, but that's about a $350 card (see ZipZoomFly.com). Adaptec's 29320-R can do basic RAID0 or RAID1 (no onboard cache) and is a PCI-X card too.

Whatever else you budget for, may I suggest a respectable UPS if you don't have one; APC SmartUPS 750XL is nice (got a couple at work for our servers).


edit: for the record, I'm using one LSI Logic Ultra160 and one Adaptec 19160 for my Cheetah 15k.3 and Cheetah X15-36LP respectively, looks like this and hey, neat-O, the terminators light up too 😎.

 

[Mingon]

PNY Quadro FX 500 Video Card, 128MB DDR, DVI, 8X AGP, Model "VCQFX500"

That card is based on the fx5200 and as such not really that great a performer even with nvdia's quadro driver. I would go with a 5900nu which should cost similar amounts but will be a much better card even without the Quadro drivers.

 

[MrBaseball]

Has anyone used a mb with the AMD AMD 8131 + 8111 chipset?

I emailed the companies of the software we will be using and none of them has tested their software on an Opteron machine.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: MrBaseball
Has anyone used a mb with the AMD AMD 8131 + 8111 chipset?

I emailed the companies of the software we will be using and none of them has tested their software on an Opteron machine.

I'm not sure why that would matter. The software runs on Windows ? Then it will work. The Opteron's run all windows software. What are you worried about ?