Parts in a dream computer system

[Aqualize]

Hello

As many people have som real dream car etc. there are also those who know what they would but into a dream computer right away. At least me.
A quick search didn't come up with any previous thread about this topic.

I will start off with a AMD based system, as I haven't seen any good dual xeon motherboard for a home/gamer computer (e.g. SLI etc). The configuration should be updated with the barcelona cores when they becomes available, and then I hope it's more competitive against intel.
I've only considered internal parts of the system except cooling, some water cooling but I don't know enough in that field about what is "good".

Bring on your own system or give remarks on mine! I've tried to balanced it a bit, so I'm not going to buy some special RAM Solid state drive with a lot of memory for like >$20 000.

• Motherboard: Asus KFN32-D SLI (med SAS). A Socket F (s1207) motherboard with SLI and other expansion ports well placed. Has 6 SATA/300-ports and 2SAS-ports. But those will not be used except for the dvd burner and the RAM-disk.

• Case: Chieftec Mesh bigtower CA-01 (silver black). A lot of space for harddrives.

• CPUs: 2 AMD Opteron 2222 SE. 2 dual core processors running at 3 GHz.

• Main memory: 8 2GiB A-Data DDR2-667 (PC2-5300) registred ECC.

• Videocard: 2 well choosen Nvidia 8800 Ultra cards in SLI. I think BFG has some good ones with water cooling that only occupies one slot in height.

• RAID card for SATA-drives: Areca ARC-1261ML. It has 16 SATA/300 ports and uses PCI-e x8, of course it will be equiped with the maxium of 2 GiB memory.

• Top-end harddrives: 2 Fujitsu MAX 147GB SAS (MAX3147RC). For the OS and applications that benifits on low access times.

• Middle-segment harddrives: 4 WD Raptor 150 GB. For games etc that doesn't need any data security. All 4 will be used in a RAID 0 array on the areca card.

• Storage harddrives: 8 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1000 GB. All in a RAID 5 array on the areca card.

• Harddrive enclosure for the raptors: 1 Enhance StorPack S34. 4 3,5" drives can be put into this and it occupies 3 5.25" slots.

• Soundcard: Creative soundblaster X-Fi Fatal1ty. I don't like creative, but right now there isn't any good alternative (?).

• DVD-burner: NEC ND-7173

• PSU: PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR. Will it be enough?

• Low access time temporary storage: Gigabyte i-RAM. Works like a SATA drive and can have up to 4 GiB of memory.

 

[JAG87]

wait,

we are building a server for home/gaming purpose?

 

[Aqualize]

Well. Whatever you want. If you are dreaming all night about building the supreme server so be it.
For me it was home/gaming/workstation.

 

[JAG87]

i understand that, but you are buying server parts. 16GB of ram wont do you any good with 32 bit applications, even if you have 64bit OS. and 1 quad core is preferrable to 2 dual cores.

so i ask again, why did you choose the parts you listed?

 

[Aqualize]

Sure, 8 GiB will do fine. I wanted to be a bit excessiv. I'm well aware of the need for 64-bit code for applications that need more than 2 or 3 GiB of memory. Or you can run several 32-bit applications.

Is intel's double-dual-core-on-one-chip solution really preferrable to 2 cpus, each with their own memory controller? Of course using some NUMA aware OS. Putting aside that the core 2 architecture is better than K8. And the resurrection will come in a few months with K10
Finding any xeon motherboards for SLI seems hard.
If I would go with a core 2 extreme quad it will be the problem with getting SLI and another two PCI-E ports (SAS-controller that isn't onboard and SATA-raid).

I choose these two SAS-harddrives because storagereviews test showed that it and atlas 2 had the best desktop/gaming performance. I know that the newest cheetah from seagate had a much larger sequential transfer rate but it excelled in server applications.

Raptors are quite obvious.

The rest of the components doesn't need so much of justification (simple things like choosing the fastest CPU for that sockel etc.).

 

[JAG87]

i agree with your other components, but you are quite the fanboy if you dont realize that a 3ghz+ intel quad kickes those 2 opterons in the nuts. and produces less heat in the case, requires only 1 heatsink and costs less (266 dollars for a q6600 now). And if you are budget less, you can always get yourself phase change cooling and have a 4ghz+ quad core.

im sorry but I dont share your point of view.

 

[ForumMaster]

Alright then. My dream rig would be:

CPU: Intel Quad Core QX6850 3.0Ghz

Motherboard:
ASUS P5K3 Deluxe/Wi-Fi

RAM:
4GB Super Talent DDR3 1600 PC 12800

Graphic Card:
2 MSI NVIDIA 8800 Ultra OC'ed to 655Mhz in SLI

Speakers:
Logitech Z5500 505W 5.1

Sound Card:
HT OMEGA CLARO Plus+

PSU:
Thermaltake Toughpower W0133RU ATX12V / EPS12V 1200W Power Supply

Monitors:
2 SAMSUNG SyncMaster 305T Black 30" 6ms(GTG) DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor

Mouse:
Logitech MX Revolution

Keyboard:
Logitech G15

OS HD:
2 WD 74GB 10k RPM Raptors in RAID 0

Data Storage:
2 Samsung Spinpoint T 500GB 7200RPM SATAII

Cooling:
ZALMAN Reserator 2 Water Cooling System for CPU, and graphic cards.

Case:
Cooler Master Stacker 830

DVD Drive:
SAMSUNG SATA DVD Burner

OS:
Windows Vista 64bit Ultimate Edition Retail DVD

i think that it. this thing should scream.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I've already got the specs, as it is going to be my next build.

CORE COMPONENTS ($2140)
$135 SuperMicro SATA enclosure (2) $270
$157 Super Talent 2gb FB-DIMM ECC (4) $640
$352 Intel Xeon E5310 1.6GHz quad core (2) $704
$336 Supermicro X7DVL-E-O mobo (1) $336
$190 Ultra X3 1kw PSU (1) $190

STORAGE I ($2160)
$110 Western Digital 500gb SATA (12) $1320
$660 Areca ARC-1130, 12-port PCI-X (1) $660

CASE COOLING ($124)
$11 Delta Triple Blade 92x25mm low speed (8) $88
$18 Delta Triple Blade 120x38mm low speed (2) $36

WATER COOLING ($310)
$2 Primoflex 1/2" ID PVC clear tubing (10) $20
$60 D-Tek FuZion CPU block (2) $120
$91 Danger Den DD12V-D5 pump (1) $91
$48 Swiftech MCR320-QP-K radiator (1) $48
$17 Swiftech MCRES-Micro reservoir (1) $17
$14 Danger Den fillport - black (1) $14

STORAGE II ($2160)
$110 Western Digital 500gb SATA (12) $1,320
$660 Areca ARC-1130, 12-port PCI-X (1) $660


Sorry for the bad formatting, but I copied & pasted from OneNote.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

OP: If you are going to use the Areca controller with 2gb cache, make sure you have the battery backup.

 

[magomago]

I prefer god's computer.

It'd probably have an infinite number of processors running at an infinite speed
have infinite ram, and solid state hard drives of infinite capacity
ooh and a videocard of infinite power in infinite SLI mode - and it would work because the mobo has infinite PCIE slots

yeaaah that is my dream computer