Please critique my workstation build list for work

[DarkThinker]

At work we all have powerful ThinkPad laptops, however, me and my boss were discussing that we are in a real need for a powerful and modern machine. A Workstation / Part-time Apps / Workhorse test machine of sorts.

We are an engineering company. The workstation will be mainly used for applications like Virtual Box, LabView, PSPICE, Software testing, file sharing, media burning and so on.

I plan on installing like 5-6 Operating systems under Virtual Box to test hardware / software we use under different OSs. The virtual machines don't necessarily need to all run at the same time, but I estimated that 6 to 8GB of DDR3 ought to be more than enough.

My boss was considering having me order a machine, but I quickly convinced him that we can get much more bang for the buck for less if I build it myself for around $1000.

Last time I built a machine, was long ago, when I used to be a PC gaming addict, I remember the last machine I built long ago, was a well overclocked rig with an ATI X800XL AMD 64 3200+ in addition to some cooling goodies here and there.

But those days are long gone and gaming is not the objective here sadly.

Anyways, to make a long story short, here is the machine I have configured. I went back and forth in between making it a core i7 920 or Phenom II 965 BE machine. I think AMD's offering is better especially that it's $100 cheaper than the i920 and I doubt the performance advantage is $100 worth. I used the $ that I save with the Phenom II and the cheaper AM3 motherboard to add an SSD for a boot drive.

As much as I would love to run Fedora Linux as my host OS, I am going to go with Windows 7 Ultimate or maybe Professional as a host OS and have whatever OS I need in it's own VM.

Given what I said above, do you guys think I could have done better than this list? If so let me know.

Specs:



CHIEFTEC Dragon DA-01BD-U-OP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case


Reminds me of the Antec SOHOs of long ago, I think this is a pretty professional looking full tower, I like it. But I would love to have a nice black aluminum full tower instead, but I don't want to pay much, suggest one if you know a good cheap one.


AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor Model HDZ965FBGMBOX

I just love the price for this Quad-Core, I don't think there is any better choice at the moment...or is there?


GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

Looked like the right choice for a non-gaming rig, but I bet someone might have a better suggestion for the price.


HIS H545H512 Radeon HD 5450 (Cedar) 512MB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card
Not sure about this one, but it looked right to me, I am sure a better options exists for the price.


SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive


Again , not sure if it's the best, but it looked about right for the price and what I need. Thought, I might later decide to add another drive for a safe Raid 1 setup/


CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX6GX3M3C1600C7

Not sure about this one, it looked right to me, I am sure a better options exists for the price.

RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-630SS 630W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Modular LED Power Supply

I want a modular PSU. I was going to go with a n Antec 550W BP550 as I would have more confidence in it for reliability, but I just like the power overhead of this one, unless someone has a better suggestion for the price.


Imation M-Class 27509 2.5" 32GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Not sure, but looks like the best choice for the %, never bought an SSD before, but I am sure some of you have.


LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Burner SATA Model DH-4B1S-08

Not sure if I am going to go ahead with this pricey addon, but I love the idea of backing up tons of our precious data on a few 25-50 GB disks and keeping it in a safe, rather than backing up to HDDs.

Plus a BlueRay ought to come in handy for some other things too.


LITE-ON Black 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS424-98 LightScribe Support


Looked about right, LightScribe should come in handy for the business too.

 

[Markfw]

You need 2 or 4 sticks of memory for that motherboard. And don;t buy a raidmax PSU, they are crap. Get a Corsair or an OCZ.

As for the SSD, get an OCZ Vertex or an Intek X25m.

 

[DarkThinker]

You need 2 or 4 sticks of memory for that motherboard. And don;t buy a raidmax PSU, they are crap. Get a Corsair or an OCZ.

As for the SSD, get an OCZ Vertex or an Intek X25m.

OK, point taken about the memory. But why would I go with the OCz over the imation, the imation has higher speeds and not mention the longer warranty + lower price.

 

[Howard]

buy a dell or hp

 

[grimpr]

8GB RAM is a must, nothing fancy, just cheap value ddr3/1333, and the more cores the better for your VMs. I would suggest going to AMD due to the not so far,Q2, release of its Phenom II X6 hexacore line of cpus, good and economical upgrade path, VM bliss. Cut the cost a little by choosing an 955 instead of the 965, take care to pick a C3 stepping.

Markfw900 knows what he's talking about SSDs, prefer an already established brand. OCZ has excellent support,warranty and quick firmware updates/fixes.

For PSU, consider Seasonics,Corsairs and Enermaxes.

A fat and fast hard disk drive, like the Samsung 1TB F3 will help. Good choise.

Take overall care of the components that you will choose, study about potential problems and incompatibilities in the forums, because this is a live production system and not a cheap overclockers thrill.

 

[Dadofamunky]

First, don't waste your company's money on an AMD build. I think for the engineering applications you're dealing with, particularly virtualization, Intel Nehalem is the only logical choice. Also, I would consider ***NOT*** building a machine from scratch. If you wind up getting a bum motherboard or other component, you will be stuck with the responsibility for fixing it and valuable work-days will be spent fighting the problem and frankly it really isn't worth the pitiful $100-$200 you might save. That company is spending cash on every hour you spend doing this activity which is really not directly related to your mission as an employee. It's a huge risk building something from scratch for a professional application, both for you and for the organization. In the work context, speaking from experience, I do ***NOT*** recommend going this route. IT will not thank you, and you will likely suddenly find yourself with another job task that is really outside your realistic purview as an employee. Get a big fat Dell for a thousand bucks and spend your time adding value through the software installation, which is far less risky.

 

[theAnimal]

RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-630SS 630W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Modular LED Power Supply

I want a modular PSU. I was going to go with a n Antec 550W BP550 as I would have more confidence in it for reliability, but I just like the power overhead of this one, unless someone has a better suggestion for the price.

For that price, I would recommend lower wattage and non-modular. Get a properly sized high quality PSU. I'd suggest Seasonic S12II 330. If you absolutely must have modular, then Antec TruePower New 550.

 

[grimpr]

Wise words from Dadofamunky. But his claims for lack or bad virtualization capabilities on AMD CPUs are, excuse me, simply ridiculous. I had build dozens of Intel and AMD systems for typical VM work,3-6 VMs, nothing too serious, and they blaze through the VM's very fast and very reliable, especially with Linux as host OS.

 

[iluvdeal]

I'll second the opinion on NOT building a PC yourself for work. It seems like you are indulging in your own pleasure here rather than viewing this from a business standpoint. While you may think of it as a fun project, you need to consider it from the company's perspective and take a look at the big picture here. You told your boss it's going to save the company money as you can build a more powerful PC for less money, however it's likely to cost the company more money in the long run if you do it yourself. You aren't just paying a system builder like Dell for parts, you are also paying for a support contract with them. That is worth something. If something goes bad on the server, it's mud on their face and it's their job to fix it. Now if your DIY server goes bad, it's your reputation at stake and it's your time being used up to fix it, time that should instead be spent doing the actual job your company hired and is paying you for. Can you imagine if the computer doesn't boot up one day? It could be anything: bad PSU, video card, bad mobo, you could easily spend a whole workday debugging it. You've just cost the company money since you have to pull yourself from your real duties to fix it. There's the machine down time cost as well. BTW, not RAIDing a vital workplace system because you are trying to save money is a huge mistake as well.

What's going to make your company ultimately successful is having their employees working on that project which is going to generate them millions of dollars hopefully. Those employees must be kept productive. Saving a few hundred on a server is not going to make or break the company. Interfering with worker productivity because someone has to go off and fix a toilet, copy machine, or computer rather than work on that million dollar project does affect your company though. Don't do it.

 

[classy]

buy a dell or hp

Especially if this is for work

 

[Dadofamunky]

Yeah, Grimpr likely has a point about virtualization. When you have four real cores, any differences are generally minor between platforms. I would still stick with Intel, myself... And yeah, in this context saving a couple hundred bucks by doing it yourself is a false economy. I've never worked for an established company that encouraged building DIY systems and placing them in a mission-critical workflow. Just a really bad idea. As others have also explained very well. And even for an early-stage startup, or even ESPECIALLY in that case, where dollars must be hoardd carefully, doing this kinda thing might seem kinda romantic but is a big mistake.

 

[TekDemon]

OK, point taken about the memory. But why would I go with the OCz over the imation, the imation has higher speeds and not mention the longer warranty + lower price.

Because the only good SSDs today are the ones from Intel (and a couple rebranded versions of the Intel SSDs) as well as the SSDs using the Indilinx controller, which includes the OCZ Agility and Vertex lines. Other indilinx drives include the Patriot Torqx line, the Super Talent UltraDrive, and the G. Skill Falcon.
These are the only drives that support TRIM under Windows 7, and frankly the only drives with random write performance that isn't downright awful right now.

The Kingston E and M series SSDs are Intel rebrands, and I believe Dane-Elec and ADATA also sell rebranded some 1st generation Intel SSDs but I'm not sure if they have any G2 products (that support TRIM).

 

[ShawnD1]

buy a dell or hp

Yep. If the computer you build fucks up, you're in big trouble. If it's an HP, it's HP's responsibility.

 

[HannibalX]

I've been building my own workstations for years but I'm an IT guy and if the machine goes down, no big deal. I don't know what your posistion in the company is though. If you're not in IT, buy a high end Dell or HP box, chances are your IT people won't support your custom box anyway - and the other point made, do you want to trust your job to a custom box? Not saying Dell or HP are better, they probably aren't but if it fails it's on them, not you.

 

[HannibalX]

This is what I would build for a workstation. On a side note, the term "workstation" gets tossed around a lot and a lot of folks seem to misunderstand the role of a true workstation. Processing power is important, but more than that, is reliability and stability. This means choosing components based on those things first and speed second. To further that, it means avoiding "gaming" branded components for the most part, like OCZ stuff or products that are marketed in flashy ways, or gimmicky products.. That's just my experience after doing this a while. Also, redundant storage on the box is a requirement, at least for me. That means RAID5. You aren't looking for the largest or fastest array, though it doesn't hurt, you're looking for the ability to not lose the box should a single hard drive bite the dust. Now, if this is just a general purpose work desktop, it's not needed. For me, on a workstation it is.

Edit: Build below.

 

[HannibalX]

Antec P183 Case
SeaSonic X650 PSU
Supermicro MBD-H8Dii+-F-O Dual SF Motherboard
2 x AMD Opteron 2435 2.6GHz Six Core CPUs
16 x Kingston 4GB DDR2-800 ECC Fully Buffered RAM
6 x WD VR 10,000RPM 150GB HD SATAII (You could go with SAS drives here as well)
Areca ARC-1231ML-4G Hardware RAID Controller PCI-E 4GB

Of course, all these components are debatable. We could go round and round just on the RAID controller, and the one I posted wouldn't necessarily be my final choice either. I'd have fun building the workstation but the truth is Dell or HP will sell you one just as good.