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sharkeeper
Lifer
Mission critical workstation??!
Googer
Lifer
Stability is the most important part of any Buisenss machine, performance takes second place here. Even if it's just a secretary's machine for typeing reports and answering emails, System stability is always the number 1 factor you consider when building a PC for any type of enterprise use.
sharkeeper
Lifer
Yes exactly.
Matthias99
Diamond Member
The OP said nothing about it being "mission critical"; he said:
Googer flipped out and went off the deep end, it seems. 😕
A server motherboard with Registered ECC RAM is probably not a bad idea, especially if SMP will help you (it does help with most compilers; I don't know what your app/apps do or if they are multithreaded). Even running with just one CPU, these boards tend to be very stable and very well-built. That said, if you are going to use a single CPU, you can save some to a lot of money by using "desktop" parts. It's not like stock machines built with desktop parts and non-ECC RAM blow up every 24 hours.
SCSI drives are *somewhat* more reliable than SATA/IDE, but this is because the drives themselves are somewhat better built. The SCSI protocol does have *some* error detection/correction built into it, but frankly, counting on this to protect your data is a bad idea. A RAID1 of two IDE/ATA drives would be far more reliable in terms of MTBF than a single SCSI disk, and the difference in MTBF between a SCSI and IDE/SATA RAID1 would be irrelevant for a non-mission-critical system.
A super-expensive power supply is probably not going to help stability all that much over a "regular" name-brand power supply. If you care about uptime and stability, it should be on a line-conditioning UPS anyway. And it doesn't sound like this guy wants to put tons and tons of hard drives, or even a fast video card, into this system, so a huge power supply would just be wasting money. A solid 300-350W PSU from a reputable manufacturer would be just fine.
Matthias99
Diamond Member
OK, but there's a difference between "stability" (ie, system runs for days/weeks on end and doesn't randomly crash while running programs) and STABILITY (ie, 100% uptime, system has redundant everything and all top-of-the-line parts run at stock or even below-stock settings, carefully controlled OS and network environment, full battery backup, 24/7 support standing by to replace failed drives, etc.)
This guy seems to just need the former, which costs a lot less money.
Matthias99
Diamond Member
I think your original list of parts looks OK.
Things to note:
Opterons at the same speed and cache sizes run exactly the same as regular Athlon64s -- if anything, a couple percent slower because of the ECC RAM. Going to a dual-processor setup would give you all the normal benefits of having two processors -- it can run two threads simultaneously. On some Opteron boards, the two processors share memory, which can hurt performance slightly -- on others, they each have their own RAM. The Tyan board above uses shared memory. As long as your compiler is multithreaded (and most are these days), dual CPUs should give a 50-90% performance boost in compilation speed. I don't know what size and type of compilation you're talking -- a 90% boost to an hour-long compilation you do multiple times per day is huge, while a 50% boost to a 2-minute compilation you do once a day is not all that much.
However, the 242 costs $230 and is only about as fast as an Athlon64 2800+ (1.6Ghz, 1MB L2). For $460 plus the difference between a server and non-server MB, you could have a solid desktop board and a 3800+ or 4000+ Athlon64, or a 3200+/3500+ and several hundreds dollars taken off the price. Like I said, I don't know how much of your limitation is CPU horsepower or how much SMP will help your particular workload.
As some other people pointed out, you might be better off with just one large partitioned drive rather than two Raptors and then a third drive for storage. You need to keep backups of your data in any case.
If you get a motherboard that takes a 24-pin PSU connector (EPS12V), you might want to look for a PSU that has the matching connectors already. Newegg's description of that Tyan board is rather vague in this regard.
Why would I be better off using a single large partioned HDD than multiple? I have always heard that it causes more headaches to have multiple OS's partioned across the same HDD. Is this not the case? I also thought it would quicker to have 2 raptors and then just a large storage file. Would the difference be negligible?
As far as execution time, most of my time would be spent running a compiled code, usually for days at a time. The actual act of compiling the code is fast. The code will also be written to be done in series machines, not parallel. But, as I said before, the runs that take multiple days will be sent out to my central server anyway, so I don't have to worry about that. Does this help in establishing what I am looking for? If so, does it seem like it would make more sense to get a single CPU or multiple? If not, please let me know what else you need and I will do my best to answer it.
Thanks again
As far as execution time, most of my time would be spent running a compiled code, usually for days at a time. The actual act of compiling the code is fast. The code will also be written to be done in series machines, not parallel. But, as I said before, the runs that take multiple days will be sent out to my central server anyway, so I don't have to worry about that. Does this help in establishing what I am looking for? If so, does it seem like it would make more sense to get a single CPU or multiple? If not, please let me know what else you need and I will do my best to answer it.
Thanks again
Googer
Lifer
[*] A server motherboard with Registered ECC RAM is probably not a bad idea, It's not like stock machines built with desktop parts and non-ECC RAM blow up every 24 hours.
Agreed
[*] SCSI drives are *somewhat* more reliable than SATA/IDE, but this is because the drives themselves are somewhat better built. The SCSI protocol does have *some* error detection/correction built into it, but frankly, counting on this to protect your data is a bad idea. A RAID1 of two IDE/ATA drives would be far more reliable in terms of MTBF than a single SCSI disk, and the difference in MTBF between a SCSI and IDE/SATA RAID1 would be irrelevant for a non-mission-critical system.
Ever since people stoped using SCSI to burn CD's , I think people are begining to forget why SCSI is used in the first place. SCSI provides a level of error Control not found on ATA drives either serial or parallel. ATA Has none.
[*]A super-expensive power supply is probably not going to help stability all that much over a "regular" name-brand power supply. If you care about uptime and stability, it should be on a line-conditioning UPS anyway. And it doesn't sound like this guy wants to put tons and tons of hard drives, or even a fast video card, into this system, so a huge power supply would just be wasting money. A solid 300-350W PSU from a reputable manufacturer would be just fine.
I agree that he should be using a ups, but PC Power and Cooling is one of two PSU companies that make PSU's for Tyan. This board or any other SMP board wont work with a standard ATX or BTX PSU. IT has an 8pin AUX motherboard Connection that is needed for SMP.
The OP said nothing about it being "mission critical"; he said:
Googer flipped out and went off the deep end, it seems. :confused
Matias I did not say Mission Critical system thats sharkeepers words. Just a mission critical component, The PSU is the one part that is responsible for keeping everything going. It does not matter if it is for games or engineering. The PSU is a mission critical part of a stable and reliable system. And No it does not give you and more FPS in Far Cry.
Matthias99
Diamond Member
(note: please don't write your replies in italics and underlines; use the [ q ] tags to indicate who wrote what.)
(modified to be more like what I actually said)
Exactly. Buying "workstation" parts does not assure you of more stability than "desktop" ones.
And the number of times you have seen ATA controllers miswrite data (other than on a failing drive) is? The difference in reliability between ATA and SCSI controllers in this regard is negligible. You're FAR more likely to suffer a disk failure than you are to suffer a failure of either kind of controller. And you need to keep backups of any important data anyway, as lots of things (from user error to viruses to catastrophic disasters) can wipe out your data. In the grand scheme of things, even if ATA was an order of magnitude less reliable than SCSI (and I do not think it is), I still wouldn't be worrying too much about it.
Like I said, on the SMP board you do need a PSU that has the right connectors (or else you need adapters for them).
From Tyan's page on the board, it says this about power:
I'm not sure what "8-pin AUX motherboard Connection" you're talking about. Any ATX12V or EPS12V PSU should work with this board (although you may need a 20->24-pin adapter for an ATX12V PSU). I don't know about BTX, but I wouldn't run an ATX board on a BTX PSU in any case. You can get an adapter from a regular molex to the second 4-pin 12V connector.
I have seen no convincing evidence that extremely expensive and/or overpowered PSUs give better stability than a more reasonably rated one from a name-brand company. Are PCP&C PSUs really nice? Sure. Are they hideously overpriced? IMO, yes.
It's just that you seemed to be saying he couldn't possibly build a workstation with the parts he recommended, as it would be unstable, unreliable, etc... this is, frankly, not true. I agree you shouldn't skimp or go bottom-of-the-barrel on any parts in a workstation -- but I'd say the same about a regular 'desktop', too.
(modified to be more like what I actually said)
Exactly. Buying "workstation" parts does not assure you of more stability than "desktop" ones.
And the number of times you have seen ATA controllers miswrite data (other than on a failing drive) is? The difference in reliability between ATA and SCSI controllers in this regard is negligible. You're FAR more likely to suffer a disk failure than you are to suffer a failure of either kind of controller. And you need to keep backups of any important data anyway, as lots of things (from user error to viruses to catastrophic disasters) can wipe out your data. In the grand scheme of things, even if ATA was an order of magnitude less reliable than SCSI (and I do not think it is), I still wouldn't be worrying too much about it.
Like I said, on the SMP board you do need a PSU that has the right connectors (or else you need adapters for them).
From Tyan's page on the board, it says this about power:
I'm not sure what "8-pin AUX motherboard Connection" you're talking about. Any ATX12V or EPS12V PSU should work with this board (although you may need a 20->24-pin adapter for an ATX12V PSU). I don't know about BTX, but I wouldn't run an ATX board on a BTX PSU in any case. You can get an adapter from a regular molex to the second 4-pin 12V connector.
I have seen no convincing evidence that extremely expensive and/or overpowered PSUs give better stability than a more reasonably rated one from a name-brand company. Are PCP&C PSUs really nice? Sure. Are they hideously overpriced? IMO, yes.
It's just that you seemed to be saying he couldn't possibly build a workstation with the parts he recommended, as it would be unstable, unreliable, etc... this is, frankly, not true. I agree you shouldn't skimp or go bottom-of-the-barrel on any parts in a workstation -- but I'd say the same about a regular 'desktop', too.
Matthias99
Diamond Member
To the OS, different partitions on the same drive are basically equivalent to different partitions on different drives. It makes no real difference.
If you insist on separate drives, you would be better off, I think, with one 74GB Raptor (or high-speed SCSI drive) with multiple partitions (one for each OS), and then a large storage drive. But unless you feel your application will be heavily disk-bound (you have given *no* information that I can see about what it does, so I cannot even venture a guess here), I doubt it will run much if any faster on a SCSI drive than a 7200RPM IDE/SATA drive. Obviously, if your application needs a very fast disk, you should get the fastest disk you can -- which would be 15KRPM SCSI (or a striped RAID array of some sort if you need very high STR).
If most of the time you are going to be running a single, non-multithreaded program, I think you would get a much better bang/buck from a 'desktop'-type system with one very fast CPU (like a 3800+ or 4000+ Athlon64) than a 'workstation/server'-type system with two slower ones.
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