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CAD Workstation

T

Twinpeaksr

Senior member
Looking to replace my Old Dual Athlon MP 1600 with SCSI with something more up-to-date. Main things that I am considering are:

SCSI vs SATA
Intel vs AMD
Different CPU/Chipsets/Sockets
Single Core vs Dual Core
Singe Chip vs Dual Chip

Any Ideas? I also will be using a File Server with a Gigabit Backbone.

So what do the experts out there (or the non experts with something to say) think? It has been years since I built a system and I need a refresher course.

Thanks!
 
i'd definetly go with a dual core opteron. Stay with a single chip I believe it's socket 940 (could be socket 939) and the seagate cheetah scsi drives are ridiculously cheap, i don't know about performance but i'm talking like $40 for a 74gb drive. For your purposes, I would check out the seagate 7200.10 series. Great spead plus 16mb buffer.
 
I do love the SCSI speed, but the cost is the concern. Where are you finding 74GB for $40? I need a lot of them! I was leaning to Dual Core, any concerns on the chipsets changing? 940 or 939?

Not sure what is coming over yet, still trying to figure out what is changing. Trying to keep under $1500. I would like to keep it quite, right now it is in a rackmount case, and is very loud.

Keep it coming, I appreciate it!
 
what scsi do you already have?

assuming the software can take advantage of it, i would go a dual core dual cpu set (4 cores) w/ 2-4GB ram and then atleast 1 15K u320 scsi hdd for boot and some larger 10K one storage/data hdds.

those hdds acegazda linked to are u160 and are older, so they will run much hotter and quite a bit louder than current gen or 1 gen old 10-15k scsi hdds. the price is nice though but you would want to put them in cages with a lot of airflow directly over them. imo i wouldn't go with them because of the heat generation, and i like scsi.

if you go sata, just get however much space you need. most of the boards you will be looking at that are dual/dual (dual 940skts) will have 4x sata ports and many single dc m/bs (skt939) will have 4x sata ports too.

the main difference besides the obvious of having 1 or 2 skts is that the 940 setup will require using ecc ram, where a 939 won't. to further confuse things, amd makes opterons in both 939 and 940 chip configurations.

one last thing, the end of july intel is dropping prices like made so a lot of us are hoping amd will do the same thus sparking a price war :evil:
 
Thanks for the good info, I currenty have an Adaptec 29160 with a 10K Seagate Gen 5 I believe. Mass sotrage is not an issue, my other system will be a 0.9TB RAID Array.

It Seems that Dual Core is a running theme, the question is SCSI or SATA?

Thanks!
 
i would do a mix of both scsi and sata, use the 10K you have if it large enough for a os/app drive (or move up to a newer gen 36-74GB 15K) and then a 300GB sata for other stuff, or 2 large satas if your program benefits from a scratch hdd. if are going a single cpu then go a dual core, either a opteron 170 or x2 4200, good bang for buck (both skt939) 🙂
 
After Much Thought, I have selected the following as my probable replacement:

ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
Thermaltake RX Copper Heatsink (CL-P0296)
CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB (x3 for 1.5GB)
MSI Gefroce 7600GS NX7600GX-T2D256E
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA (Check out the Linux Server thread, that has 0.9TB for my storage needs)
Plextor PX-755SA SATA DVD-RW
Antex TX640B Case w/400W Smart Power
Dual Viewsonic VA1912 19" LCD Widescreen
Plextor PX-AV100U (For Video Input from external VCR, TV, and DVD)

Any thoughts? Total was less than $1500. Thanks!
 
No need for SLI, but the board had everything else that I was looking for with it, and most people seem to have good luck with its stability.

I Could go with 2GB, probably wouldn't hurt!

The termaltake was chosen because I have had good eperience with thier coolers, The Arctic is something to consider though. Do you know if the copper is solid or hollow?

Thanks!
 
go the 2x1GB

the stock cooling on the 3800 is fine for even a moderate o/c.

i would save some $$$ and not go the sata dvd-rw - there is no advantage to it over the $40 benq or necs other than cable size, seriously. and iti is not like plextor even makes their own drives, they just rebadge some other companies (i was surprised about this too, but if you read on cdfreaks.com you will see it is true).
 
Originally posted by: Twinpeaksr
No need for SLI, but the board had everything else that I was looking for with it, and most people seem to have good luck with its stability.
Click to expand...
Perhaps this might be suitable?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131569

The termaltake was chosen because I have had good eperience with thier coolers, The Arctic is something to consider though. Do you know if the copper is solid or hollow?
Click to expand...
What copper? The "pipes"?
 
Originally posted by: Howard
Originally posted by: Twinpeaksr
No need for SLI, but the board had everything else that I was looking for with it, and most people seem to have good luck with its stability.
Click to expand...
Perhaps this might be suitable?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131569

The termaltake was chosen because I have had good eperience with thier coolers, The Arctic is something to consider though. Do you know if the copper is solid or hollow?
Click to expand...
What copper? The "pipes"?
Click to expand...

good find on the board 🙂 any idea how it o/cs?
 
The ASUS board looks good, the only thing I see is the lack of SATA 3.0GB. Otherwise it meets it all. Something to consider.

I Chose the Plextor SATA because I am very tired of dealing with PATA cables. I know there is no performance boost, but it seems cleaner. Can also disable the PATA all together in the BIOS. I found the less stuff that I have to run the less problems, and better performance. I have had bad luck with a lot of brands of CD/DVD Drives (Samsung, NEC, Creative, and Acer to name a few), But Plextor has always been solid for me.

The copper I am refering to is the heat pipes. If they are hollow, there will be a lot less heat transfer then if they are solid. Though it sounds like there is no need for a different cooler as the OEM one seems to work well (I am not going to OC this, I would rather have stability).

Thanks for all the input, keep it coming!
 
Originally posted by: Twinpeaksr
The ASUS board looks good, the only thing I see is the lack of SATA 3.0GB.
Click to expand...
It's useless.

The copper I am refering to is the heat pipes. If they are hollow, there will be a lot less heat transfer then if they are solid.
Click to expand...
If they were solid, the heat transfer rate would be much, much, much lower. Google "heat pipes"
Though it sounds like there is no need for a different cooler as the OEM one seems to work well (I am not going to OC this, I would rather have stability).
Click to expand...
Keep the stock cooler, then. It'll save you money.
 
These aren't just hollow copper rods. They are heatpipes. They are filled with a liquid that evaporates upwards in the cooler bfore condensating back down, releasing heat very efficiently. They are designed to work no matter what orientation they are in. Heatpipes work better then solid or hollow copper.
 
That makes a lot more sense if they are heat pipes. Still think I will stick with Stock, don't see much benefit to either cooler.

So I take it all are not impressed with SATA 3.0 vs SATA 1.5?
 
Originally posted by: Twinpeaksr
That makes a lot more sense if they are heat pipes. Still think I will stick with Stock, don't see much benefit to either cooler.

So I take it all are not impressed with SATA 3.0 vs SATA 1.5?
Click to expand...

sata 3.0Gbs is just a theoretical speed. most 7.2k rpm hdds, either pata or sata will have a sustained transfer rate at max of ~60MB/s transfering big files, it goes down a low when you transfer smaller files. the 3.0Gbs is just if you are using multiple hdds in a striping raid enviornment moving large files. for the single hdd setup there is actually no benefit as ata100 isn't saturated by any single drives, even the newest gen 15K scsi keep it under 100MB/s str.

it is kind of like saying this garden hose can handle 2000 gph, but your source only has the capability to put out 20 gph
 
So I see, kind of what i thounght, there is not a Drive interface that actually uses the whole thing. I was not sure if you actually saw an improvment is speed or not. I know SCSI had a boost when it changed the BUS speed, but it was not a ratio to the change nor would it even exceed the bus rating that it replaced (IE Ultra160 to Ultra 320). Thanks!
 
Originally posted by: Twinpeaksr
So I see, kind of what i thounght, there is not a Drive interface that actually uses the whole thing. I was not sure if you actually saw an improvment is speed or not. I know SCSI had a boost when it changed the BUS speed, but it was not a ratio to the change nor would it even exceed the bus rating that it replaced (IE Ultra160 to Ultra 320). Thanks!
Click to expand...

not a single drive anyway. if you run them in a striped raid then you can exceed 150MB/s, but i would not recommend running a striped raid unless it was stuff ou really needed the bandwidth for and also stuff that wasn't very important.

personally i use u320 hdds on u160 cards since i am just using 32bit pci slots and have never had any issues. a friend of mine ran 2x15ku320 18GB in a striped raid and all he did was max out the pci bus @~125MB/s...
 
True, you get into RAID, and high device counts, Then your BUSes start to be the bottleneck. Single, or even 2 drives usually does not cause an issue. Sorry to be unclear, sometimes I gloss over parts!
 
Originally posted by: Twinpeaksr
True, you get into RAID, and high device counts, Then your BUSes start to be the bottleneck. Single, or even 2 drives usually does not cause an issue. Sorry to be unclear, sometimes I gloss over parts!
Click to expand...

no probs 🙂

what speed scsi are you running?
 
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