Office needs new workstations

[gsaldivar]

Where the hell are you working that an ENTRY LEVEL computer operator make 50 grand a year? I know people with master's degrees that cant land a 35k a year job to stay afloat.

50K is rather average for a computer operator, and conservative for one that is moderately qualified. Keep in mind that salary varies widely by area, by personal experience, and will tend to be much higher for an operator that can do all the stuff the OP is talking about...

heavy 3D work (rhino, sketch-up, 3D max, revit) including heavy rendering, and parametric modeling; LOTS of AutoCAD; Lots of photoshop, illustrator work

 

[tricky_p]

50K is rather average for a computer operator, and conservative for one that is moderately qualified. Keep in mind that salary varies widely by area, by personal experience, and will tend to be much higher for an operator that can do all the stuff the OP is talking about...

just to chime in - it really depends on where/what field you're in. I could see 50K being average for a large firm, but i work in a relatively small firm, in a major city, where our operators are also full-time designers and we get paid less than that.

 

[gsaldivar]

just to chime in - it really depends on where/what field you're in. I could see 50K being average for a large firm, but i work in a relatively small firm, in a major city, where our operators are also full-time designers and we get paid less than that.

Even if your designers are getting poverty wages of 35K, a 5K workstation investment is still only a tiny tiny slice (less than 3% in this case) of the company's investment in that worker.

Going cheap on a 35K worker and wasting 8 hours a month of their time would cost the company $1,615 every year, or $8,077 over the course of your 5-year projected equipment lifespan. And that's for each employee. If you have a team of five "charity" workers at 35K, throwing only three hours downtime per month due to crap systems will cost your company $15,144 over that equipment's lifespan...

Only if you're getting your labor for free does it make sense to cheap out on hardware and let your people deal with the consequences!

That being said... you may find that, for your company, there is a sweet spot of investment vs. performance and an acceptable amount of downtime. Obviously performance costs money, but in "workstation" class equipment those investments will yield diminishing returns because you're approaching the limits of what technology can deliver.

If your investment lands short of the "sweet spot" range you would be underpaying for equipment, and paying more for your labor to deal with the consequences of that. Landing beyond that range would be overpaying for equipment, in the effort to achieve imperceptible gains in performance at the marginal benefit of reduced labor costs.

You may not be expected to have all the answers, but a good researcher should be familiar enough with these numbers to get a feel for where the "sweet spot" is for your company's specific situation.

Good luck!

 

[imagoon]

Even if your designers are getting poverty wages of 35K, a 5K workstation investment is still only a tiny tiny slice (less than 3% in this case) of the company's investment in that worker.

Going cheap on a 35K worker and wasting 8 hours a month of their time would cost the company $1,615 every year, or $8,077 over the course of your 5-year projected equipment lifespan. And that's for each employee. If you have a team of five "charity" workers at 35K, throwing only three hours downtime per month due to crap systems will cost your company $15,144 over that equipment's lifespan...

Only if you're getting your labor for free does it make sense to cheap out on hardware and let your people deal with the consequences!

That being said... you may find that, for your company, there is a sweet spot of investment vs. performance and an acceptable amount of downtime. Obviously performance costs money, but in "workstation" class equipment those investments will yield diminishing returns because you're approaching the limits of what technology can deliver.

If your investment lands short of the "sweet spot" range you would be underpaying for equipment, and paying more for your labor to deal with the consequences of that. Landing beyond that range would be overpaying for equipment, in the effort to achieve imperceptible gains in performance at the marginal benefit of reduced labor costs.

You may not be expected to have all the answers, but a good researcher should be familiar enough with these numbers to get a feel for where the "sweet spot" is for your company's specific situation.

Good luck!

Amen.

This is the part most people ignore when buying gear. The perfect example is the IT staff that "builds their own to save $$." Add the IT labor... the extra licensing costs (you know you dont get as good of a deal as HP or Dell no matter how much you tell yourself it is cheaper) add in the week of down time trying to find a system board that is no longer built etc and it starts to add up. The reason that Dell and HP are "expensive" is because they have built the costs of failures in to the price head on (it is called front loading future costs). IE their price, even after a discount, is far closer to the actual price the home brew gear will cost. (If not cheaper due to bulk etc.) Another way to look at it is this: If a 3 year warranty on a Dell is $65, what they are really saying is they expect that they will need at least $65 a computer sold with 3 year warranties to pay to fix all claims on all the machines sold. That is the kind of number that needs to be added on top of "home brew" etc.

The issue you will run in to however is the people (execs) that see IT as nothing more than an expense and as such never see value in replacing 8 year old gear. They are the people that really need to have the stuff above explained to them and even then it is taken as "IT propaganda" in many cases.

To many get stuck on:
Accounting line item:
computer hardware: $2500

 

[mfenn]

Do you think the quadro 4000 would suffice or is the 5000 really worth it?

The Quadro 5000 has about 50% more CUDA cores, so yes I'd say it's worth it in terms of the extra cost.

Comparing the processors. Is there a noticeable difference between the W3565 and the E5620? My co-worker is really pushing for the E5620 citing the difference in thread count.

The two chips aren't really comparable because the W3xxx series is for 1P configurations whereas the x5xxx series is for 2P configs. Those are in two completely different ballparks. If you plan to go for a 2P config, I would not sacrifice a ton of single-threaded performance by going with the low 2.4GHz clock of the E5620. I'd say that you'd want to go for at least the X5660 in a 2P config.

Lastly RAM. I feel like Dell jacks up the price, would we be better off buying it separately and installing it?

I agree with the posters below. You are paying a Dell (or HP or whomever) to provide a fully integrated solution that is 100% validated to work. Anything you do to screw with that formula is just throwing away a ton of manhours to save a few hundred bucks.

Thanks a lot for everyones help/comments!

Glad to help!

 

[Paperlantern]

It is not insane for an entry level CAD operator. The ones here make more than that.

Yeah I suppose CAD level work would be much better than what i was thinking with the term "Computer Operator". Makes sense.

And I totally agree with everything said here. Most of the time the cost far outweighs what would be saved in the long run, but the initial cost, for MANY execs, is the number that they SEE, the others are fictional until made real 4 years later and half the dept is standing around with failed equipment.

 

[bamacre]

Just a consideration, if you were liking the Dell T3500 but not liking the price, there are two things you could do to bring the final cost down. Order with minimum CPU and memory, and install yourself an i7 960 and 12GB non-ECC (6x2GB) memory. Standard 1.5V Hynix, Samsung, Nanya, Value Kingston or Micron will work just fine. Just remember, while the T3500 can run an i7 cpu, you'll need to run it with non-ECC memory.

 

[tynopik]

Just a consideration, if you were liking the Dell T3500 but not liking the price, there are two things you could do to bring the final cost down. Order with minimum CPU and memory, and install yourself an i7 960 and 12GB non-ECC (6x2GB) memory. Standard 1.5V Hynix, Samsung, Nanya, Value Kingston or Micron will work just fine. Just remember, while the T3500 can run an i7 cpu, you'll need to run it with non-ECC memory.

The whole point of the Dell system is the support guarantees. If you're going to put your own memory and (especially) cpu in, why bother with Dell in the first place? Just go straight to the egg.

 

[bamacre]

The whole point of the Dell system is the support guarantees. If you're going to put your own memory and (especially) cpu in, why bother with Dell in the first place? Just go straight to the egg.

Like I said, it's an option. It may not be attractive to him, but I thought I'd throw it out there. And to be honest, there aren't many, if any, inexpensive case designs out there that can compare to a lot of Dell's higher-end models. Dell can charge >$1000 for 12GB of memory which can be had elsewhere for what, $120?

 

[tynopik]

-nevermind-

 

[mfenn]

Just a consideration, if you were liking the Dell T3500 but not liking the price, there are two things you could do to bring the final cost down. Order with minimum CPU and memory, and install yourself an i7 960 and 12GB non-ECC (6x2GB) memory. Standard 1.5V Hynix, Samsung, Nanya, Value Kingston or Micron will work just fine. Just remember, while the T3500 can run an i7 cpu, you'll need to run it with non-ECC memory.

Sure, if he wants to get fired when the memory and/or CPU that he bought aren't compatible or have warranty issues down the line.

 

[tricky_p]

Yes, we are going with Dell mainly for their support - thats why we will probably need to go with their ram

 

[bamacre]

Sure, if he wants to get fired when the memory and/or CPU that he bought aren't compatible or have warranty issues down the line.

Obviously I wasn't advocating he go against his own employer's wishes. :biggrin:

As for compatibility, I've had my hands on many T3500's, some of them running i7's and non-ECC memory.

Yes, we are going with Dell mainly for their support - thats why we will probably need to go with their ram

Just an FYI, Dell has no problems supporting the rest of the system when you're running after-market memory. The T3500 is a very nice system, you'll notice the quality of the machine just after pulling it out of the box. If you plan on running higher-end video cards, the T5500 or T7500 would be a better option though. May want to check out their Outlet store, they come with the same warranty, and usually a cheaper price tag.

 

[imagoon]

Like I said, it's an option. It may not be attractive to him, but I thought I'd throw it out there. And to be honest, there aren't many, if any, inexpensive case designs out there that can compare to a lot of Dell's higher-end models. Dell can charge >$1000 for 12GB of memory which can be had elsewhere for what, $120?

$1000 for 12GB? 8GB DIMMS are $271 (without my corp discount) right off their webpage. I bought 96GB of 1333mhz ECC for $2000 from Dell....

Might want to check your prices... I really do wonder where these numbers "appear."

 

[mnewsham]

Using 16gb dimms in the T7500 it would be $4k to get 96gb

 

[bamacre]

$1000 for 12GB? 8GB DIMMS are $271 (without my corp discount) right off their webpage. I bought 96GB of 1333mhz ECC for $2000 from Dell....

Might want to check your prices... I really do wonder where these numbers "appear."

I was a little off, they are charging ~600 for 12GB (6x2GB) for the T3500. They used to charge a higher premium. What model do they offer 96GB for $2k?

 

[imagoon]

I was a little off, they are charging ~600 for 12GB (6x2GB) for the T3500. They used to charge a higher premium. What model do they offer 96GB for $2k?

Actually before I spoke.... does the T3500 use registered ECC? I have found that the registered memory in the larger sizes have been higher than the "server" class RAM for some reason.

*I was looking at the straight per stick price of 8GIG 1333mhz registered ECC. The 96gig I bought was specifically for Dell Poweredge R610 which shares ram with most of the Precision T series desktops T7500 specifically for me.

 

[bamacre]

Actually before I spoke.... does the T3500 use registered ECC? I have found that the registered memory in the larger sizes have been higher than the "server" class RAM for some reason.

*I was looking at the straight per stick price of 8GIG 1333mhz registered ECC. The 96gig I bought was specifically for Dell Poweredge R610 which shares ram with most of the Precision T series desktops T7500 specifically for me.

The T3500 should use unregistered ECC, not sure though, I usually picked up T3500's in their outlet with low-end dual cores, and replaced them with i7's.

 

[tricky_p]

To close the loop i thought i would post an update.

We ended up ordering the T5500 with 2 E5620s, 6gb ram, and the GF 5000. I know that i will immediately be pushing for more ram - 6 seems to be pretty low.

Thanks for everyone's input. It certainly helped shape the decision, but ultimately our contracted IT firm weighed in and made the final recommendation.

 

[mfenn]

To close the loop i thought i would post an update.

We ended up ordering the T5500 with 2 E5620s, 6gb ram, and the GF 5000. I know that i will immediately be pushing for more ram - 6 seems to be pretty low.

Thanks for everyone's input. It certainly helped shape the decision, but ultimately our contracted IT firm weighed in and made the final recommendation.

Hmm, the RAM recommendation seems really odd to me. Since you're doing dual processor, I think the only validated 6GB config would be 6x1GB DIMMs. Coincidentally, I'm pricing out RAM for server configs right now (the T5500 is basically an workstation R610), and the sweet spot is in 4GB and 8GB DIMMs right now. 2GB DIMMs are already horrible cost per gig, so I would shudder at how bad 1GB DIMMs are.

I'd also take a very hard look at the models that you're currently running and what you plan to run in the future. It may be the case that 6GB is simply not enough memory.

The E5620 is probably a bit slower than I would go, but that's less of an issue.

 

[gsaldivar]

Hmm, the RAM recommendation seems really odd to me. Since you're doing dual processor, I think the only validated 6GB config would be 6x1GB DIMMs. Coincidentally, I'm pricing out RAM for server configs right now (the T5500 is basically an workstation R610), and the sweet spot is in 4GB and 8GB DIMMs right now. 2GB DIMMs are already horrible cost per gig, so I would shudder at how bad 1GB DIMMs are. I'd also take a very hard look at the models that you're currently running and what you plan to run in the future. It may be the case that 6GB is simply not enough.

The E5620 is probably a bit slower than I would go, but that's less of an issue.

I agree with this assessment. I would consider 6GB of RAM to be unacceptable for the tasks described in the OP. Whoever recommended this configuration might not have had a full understanding of the requirements or may simply not be aware of how RAM intensive those tasks can be...

 

[tricky_p]

thanks for weighing in guys. I completely agree about the RAM - I was pretty upset to see 6GB recommended. Hopefully we can upgrade ram on our own very soon.

 

[piasabird]

At our school we carry a blanket insurance policy for out of warranty computers.

Remember murphy's law; "Whatever can go wrong, will!"