A Workstation for Sensitive Experiments?

etrgQUARK asks: "I am in charge of infrared spectrometers at our research center. One of the setups is used to measure the orientation of monolayers at the air/water interface, i.e. the signal we have to detect is very weak and noisy. We already have a great setup with quality components and electronics, except for one piece of hardware: the computer hooked up to acquire the data. How important is the computer in noise-sensitive data acquisition? What are your experiences? Do you have any suggestions on a workstation suitable for such tasks or is it a waste of money to use anything but the average computer system? Unfortunately, the software used is Windows-only."

Comments

Backup

[Doctor Tesla]

And of course, not entirely dependent on the "sensitivity experimentation" factor, but still: make sure to backup the results as much as possible. Try to have at least one external store of the data. After all, that could be one of the weakest links in your long chain of experimentation.

Computer should be a non-factor

[xtal]

I design and deploy custom data logging solutions, signal conditioners, etc.

Computer at the end of the chain should not be a consideration whatsoever. The system under monitoring should be completely seperate; by the time the computer is involved, it should be recieving a conditioned, pre-amplified, or digital data stream over a galvanically/optoisolated connection.

If the introduction of a computer device causes a problem, there are other issues to consider.