Xeon E5-1650 HP Workstation VS i7 3930K Custom PC

[dima777]

Hello,


I need your advice in finalizing the decision on the workstation that I will use to work a large-scale number crunching project. I need a computer to both finalize the analysis system framework and also for the production pc to later perform the daily analysis of the stock price data. My 2009 laptop is simply not coping any more….The number crunching project would involve recalculating five or seven 300-500 Mb Excel files in sequence each day and posting the results for my site visitors who pay for this service…..I need to make sure the pc I have will be able to handle such huge workload and will also stay stable – so that this can be done on a recurring basis…I would not be able to afford a single day off out of this project….

I am selecting between

Xeon E5-1650 HP Z 420 (1 x Xeon E5-1650 / 3.2 GHz - RAM 8 GB - HDD 1 x 500 GB - DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM - no graphics - Gigabit Ethernet - Windows 7 Professional 64-bit - Intel vPro Technology )

and a custom build PC that will feature i7 3930K processor, the 16 gb of ram (twice the 8 mb in the HP workstation) plus a SSD disk and a Philips display and a video card (all of these I would need to buy for the HP workstation)….

Custom build PC surely allows much more freedom of component selection but I am very worried that the components might not fully match….or they will fail to co-work properly altogether a little bit afterwards – in the midst of the important number crunching run made for the PAYIGN customers……

Xeon E5-1650 HP Z 420 in turn sounds great - Apart from the fact that I need to buy all those additional parts (like SSD and Display and a video card)….I wonder if the workstation based on the lower speed CPU like the E5-1620 can pull it off equally or similarly fast???

I really need extremely stable system for this project….

Another thought is just buying one lower end custom PC based on the i7 3730K CPU – finalizing the system on it and then to purchase a Xeon based workstation later on for the production…..and use the i7 3730K as a backup system….


I also had a question – do you think Xeon E5-1650 is much more stable than i7 3930K?

Thanks and please let me know what you think,

Dave

 

[somethingsketchy]

If you need stability, I would personally go with a RAID array, instead of a single disk. Even if you went with a RAID-1 array, your system will have some fault tolerance, so you can continue some computations (though you can't run forever) until you replace a defective disk in the array).

A bigger benefit with the HP system, is you have some sort of warranty to work with, if something fails. With the custom system (obviously) you'll be on your own to fix and replace a broken part. Since this is being used for business/commercial/profit, I'd go with something that had a business (or enterprise) warranty guarantee.

 

[dima777]

If you need stability, I would personally go with a RAID array, instead of a single disk. Even if you went with a RAID-1 array, your system will have some fault tolerance, so you can continue some computations (though you can't run forever) until you replace a defective disk in the array).

A bigger benefit with the HP system, is you have some sort of warranty to work with, if something fails. With the custom system (obviously) you'll be on your own to fix and replace a broken part. Since this is being used for business/commercial/profit, I'd go with something that had a business (or enterprise) warranty guarantee.

thank you very much for your reply.....yes they provide the guarantee that should help if anything fails.......I wonder what you think of the i7 3930k stability as opposed to its Xeon version e5 1650?

 

[Reversed]

You might want to look into getting some ECC memory as well if stability is your priority.

 

[dima777]

You might want to look into getting some ECC memory as well if stability is your priority.

thank you for your reply....I wonder if a XEON E3-1230V2 based system can pull of recalculating 500 MB excel files thousands of times daily???? Please let me know what you think of the following server (it costs 2 times less than the top z420 workstation using the e5-1650 Xeon):

DELL PowerEdge T110 II TOWER Quad Core Xeon E3-1230v2 3.3GHz(8MB cache 69W Turbo), 4GB DDR3 1333MHz

do you think this server can be used as a workstation instead of the HP z420?

 

[Reversed]

thank you for your reply....I wonder if a XEON E3-1230V2 based system can pull of recalculating 500 MB excel files thousands of times daily???? Please let me know what you think of the following server (it costs 2 times less than the top z420 workstation using the e5-1650 Xeon):

DELL PowerEdge T110 II TOWER Quad Core Xeon E3-1230v2 3.3GHz(8MB cache 69W Turbo), 4GB DDR3 1333MHz

do you think this server can be used as a workstation instead of the HP z420?

Well, you're missing out on 2 cores/4 threads and quad memory channels in comparison with the E5-1650. If you can afford it I would go with the HP over the custom PC for reasons already mentioned.

Edit: The quad xeon comes in a socket 1155, so you wouldn't be able to upgrade it later yourself. The hexacore xeon is socket 2011.