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What Does a $16,000+ PC Look Like, Anyway?
justechn writes "Tom's Hardware has an article about custom PC maker Puget Systems, who had just finished a custom $16,000 PC for one of their clients. So what exactly goes into a $16,000 system? How about: Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, and Cooler Master Stacker 810 case. In addition to all that hardware, it also runs very quiet and very cool. The temperature of the CPUs is 36 C at idle, 45 C at load."
Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, andCooler Master Stacker 810 case. By a remarkable coincidence, these are almost exactly the hardware requirements for Windows 8!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
But will it blend?
$16,000 bought you a high-end Compaq desktop. Not a server, only one CPU, one disk, etc.. And that was when $16k was real money!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I thought those were the bare minimum specs for the Crysis sequel?
Now can we PLEASE get rid of that "Macs cost more than Windows" meme? :)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
If I recall correctly from the comments on Tom's website, the buyer is using the machine to generate fractal art.
Rather, what is the purpose of a system like that that can't be served by a cheaper alternative?
Bragging rights over throwing away 16k on a computer?
Because they're Velociraptors - they're extraordinarily fast... much more so than the Samsung drives. If you have a segment of data that has a much higher access frequency, that space would be a great place to put it.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
They started to install Gentoo on it but unfortunately they are still compiling the system.
You'd think that for $16,000 they could have put a couple SSDs in there.
I'm guessing the answer's "speed". The VelociRaptor's are 10,000rpm, whereas the SpinPoints are 7200rpm.
Oddly, Raid-5 (2D+1P) + an online hot spare == 4.
But, you know, that's just new math.
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
and yet when they go all out on a system like this, they don't even choose one as the system drive?
How very inconsistent.
Except Tom's Hardware neither designed this system nor was it the purchaser of the system. So I don't see what the inconsistency could possibly be.
I'm just trying to figure out what sort of moron expects 16 cores and 8 hdds to be quiet?
You could save yourself thousands just by ditching the "near-silent" requirement, and investing in some good earphones.
I'm going to agree with Ninnle; it's all about ostentation.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Actually, I was thinking that for four quad cores, i.e. 16 cores, and 2 GB memory per core, $16k is pretty damn cheap. Consider that 5 years ago if you wanted that kind of computing power you had to buy dual opteron boards and have eight of them communicate over gigabit ethernet (cheap but slow) or infiniband (fast but ~$1k per node, so add $8k to the price, that's half the price of this cluster just for the interconnects). I use a cluster of similar configuration and it sure cost more than $16k when it was new. Granted, with separate cores you get to bypass the interconnects but you have to use a shared memory bus which can saturate and form a bottleneck. As far as I know, whether you want a separate core or multi-core system depends on your application, but shit, $16k for what amounts to a small cluster is still a great deal especially since they preassembled it.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Well, who has time to read the summaries anyway?
Super Star Destroyers?...*goes back to watching ESB*
1) Single Cooling Loop - with 4 quad-core processors, this machine could net much better bang-for-the-decibel out of a dual loop system - one loop handling one pair of processors, second loop handling the other pair. Optimally speaking, a quad-loop system (individual loops per processor) would net even better results.
2) Video cards have fans, too! - Find yourself a video card that uses cooling pipes or similar technology, rather than fans. Those little fans spinning really fast make _LOTS_ of noise.
3) Speaking of noise - WD300 Raptors? Congrats, you just put the noisiest modern hard drives in a machine "built to be quiet" - if no expense was to be spared, why is this thing not outfitted with Solid State Disks???
4) Problems with the liquid - in addition to number one above, the reservoir is mounted at the bottom of the case? That's an amateur mistake right there. Reservoir at top of case = any air infiltration gets trapped at the reservoir. Additionally, the "angled barbs" are 90-degree bends - not exactly what you want in a low-flow system, backpressure is going to kill that pump, or at least cause it to whine incessantly, even at lower flow settings.
5) PSU - Corsair HX 1000W PSU - why not a PC Power and Cooling ultra-quiet unit, or a SilenX-modded solid cap PSU? Instead, they opt for a PSU rated at 57dBm?
Amateur job, Puget, very amateur. If anyone feels the need to build a super-quiet box, they really should shop around and look into these type of issue, or suffer sever disappointment.
E
This is common FUD and the same was said of Linux until a few years ago. Don't confuse application scalability with OS scalability. Windows 2003 and 2008 server scale well and properly support NUMA systems (2000 and NT did not)... however most applications are not written or run in a scalable manner. The OS has no knowledge of an applications threading or memory access patterns and unless the application takes some proactive measures, performance will suffer on any platform. And.. I don't see what's so hard about right clicking an app in program manager and clicking "set affinity". Affinity can be permanently set with the imagecfg utility.
link: http://www.b3ta.com/links/287816
Some of us don't care for quiet. Once you work in a server room for more than a day, you learn to block it out. Much like a wife's nagging...
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
It was purchased in the late nineties for a 3D artist at a dotcom; the company folded a year or so later. The few employees that stuck around received hardware in lieu of their final paychecks.
Dual 333 MHZ P3s. Nvidia Riva 2. Half a gig of ram. Dual 10k RPM 14GB U160 SCSI drives attached to a Adaptec 19160 (The 19160 *still* sells for at $100, 10 years later. Who knows how much it cost at the time...). High speed (for the time) Plextor SCSI CDRom reader and writer.
With a few minor upgrades here and there (video card, a little more ram, a few replaced power supplies), it remained my main system til about 2005. Even played WoW on it. The only real reason I don't use it anymore? Lack of 48-bit LBA support -- couldn't stick a drive larger than 137 gig on it, which in this day and age, just doesn't quite cut it for a desktop.
Replaced it about a year ago -- picked up $300 worth of parts at Fry's, and built a machine that out-spec'd the original in every way, except drive speed.
Those SCSI drives would still be sweet, if they weren't so damn small.
And once you get out, you wonder why you haven't heard anything except ringing in your ears...
The worst part is they need a machine this powerful to keep up with how fast the national debt is increasing.
today is spelling optional day.
No, not for personal use or gaming. It will run Linux with a Xen kernel and is intended to replace nearly all of our old individual servers. Everything from the piddly servers like DNS, LDAP, Kerberos, and our minimal web services to the AFS db servers. No file services on that beast though, I'm not crazy - no disk I/O-RAM access contention please. My plan is to copy an entire OS image of /usr into a RAMFS filesystem in the top level Dom 0 domain and then cross mount that as RO in each Xen instance. We'll also stick small SQL server and other dbs copies in local tempfs RAMdisks too. Everything in RAM will be snapshotted and saved to physical disk periodically. Those deltas will then be copied to a remote fail-over server periodically as well.
It should be both reasonably stable and blindingly fast.
Another machine will handle AFS and some NFS file services, which has up to sixteen SATA disks attached to two 8 port 3-Ware RAID cards, thus spreading I/O load across two PCI buses. No, we don't need all that disk space - we need the I/O performance. It too should be reasonably fast. We're gearing up to connect that either by several channel bonded 1Gb to a CISCO 6509, or - if we're lucky - we'll just go 10Gb optical. We'll see how the finances work out there.
This is how departmental IT is done. Or, at least, it's how it *should* be done. I spent less than $25K on these two computers and they will replace well a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of accumulated hardware purchased over the last ten years and now fully depreciated.
It could be for a music studio. That doesn't quite explain the soundcard... but hell, throw it in for backup if we're already up to $15,800.
I could easily see a song with 50 tracks with filters needing the horsepower... to run comfortably.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
If you want to see a $16,000 computer why not just go to the Apple online store? You should be able to get there pretty easily by maxing out a Mac Pro. :)
I like to assume most Burmese, Liberians and Yankees can figure out the rough conversions themselves.
The RAID5 is probably planned for longer term bulk storage since it can be a tad slower than Raid1.
RAID 5 isn't worth it. If you want to put four drives in a RAID, use RAID 10. Writes are faster on RAID 10 than on RAID 5, and if two drives fail, there's only a 33 percent chance of needing to restore everything from backup, compared to 100 percent for RAID 5.
Who the hell are "USians"? And what is their relation to UKians, IRians, CoAians, CAians, RUians, and morons like yourself?
It's United States of America, people! That makes us Americans. If you don't like it, too bad. You don't hear us referring to Australians as CoAians, British as UKians, or other inhabitants of Continents/Islands by acronym bastardizations, do you? No, because that would be stupid. Just like referring to Americans as "USians".
If you absolutely must avoid the word "Americans", why not try something more traditional? Like Yankees or Yanks? It's not like we take offense to the term or something. (Unlike "USian" which is just so insanely stupid and uneducated that it grates on the nerves.)
I'm not hand waving it away. Which benchmarks, which applications? I can find benchmarks that have Opteron's outperforming Xeon's and vice-a-versa. There are benchmarks where Vista outperforms Windows 7 and ... again... vica versa.
Making blanket statements like "Windows doesn't scale" is FUD. It's correct to say that Samba scales much better on linux than Windows 2003 File Server does on the same hardware. However, Oracle Database server scales equally well on both platforms.
As always... use the right tool for the job and make an informed decision. Which it sounds like you did for your environment. However, having supported Java App Servers, Seibel, Oracle, MS-SQL, etc. in HP/HA environments I can tell your blanket statement is not correct.
If you want performance, avoid RAID-5 and go straight to RAID-10. RAID-5 has horrible write performance.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
Virtual instruments mostly. A lot of current audio plugins (VST/DX, no experience with macs) are real (and i mean REAL) CPU/RAM hogs. Today, even a simple fm synth with a bit of magical dsp thingamabobs is going to eat into your CPU big time. For instance, Image-Line's Sytrus, a brilliant software FM/Additive synth can eat anything up to 30% of processing time. As for RAM, there are gigantic sample banks out there, easily bigger than a blu-ray disc (Vienna Instruments for example) that don't come with a custom VSTi/DXi sampler, and are thus unoptimized for low/mid-end usage.
And the sound card? IMO, that's pretty much audio voodoo, with differences unhearable between this high-end piece and cheaper products designed for studio usage (eg. the E-Mu 0404/1212m line). You could make the argument that the AC/DC converters do a better job, but the truth is, more distortion and noise gets through from your external hardware than from the card itself. On that, however, I wouldn't quote me, that's just personal experience, and I haven't been around audio production that much.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
Who the hell are "USians"? And what is their relation to UKians?
UKians? No such thing.
They're GBese, you insensitive clod!
*Hey buddy, look what I ordered.. the coolest machine ever build to date.. Spend 16k on this little beasty.. bet you are jealous now huh?*
Cool, I bet this can run Crysis pretty damn fast!
*erm, no.....*
Pretty insane if you ask me.. Even if you don't have a use for a graphicscard.. you'd still have some pride right? :)
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Mammography
It figures someone on slashdot would spend 150K for a computer that allows you to look at breasts.
Actually its for running a pirated version of Photoshop CS3.
It's United States of America, people! That makes us Americans.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), the USA does not constitute all states of America, so people living in those states are also technically Americans (just like all people living in European countries are Europeans, people living in Asian countries are Asians, and people living in African countries are Africans). Unfortunately, the citizens of the USA have appropriated the term to refer exclusively to themselves, and many people in other countries consider such narrowing of the scope of the term inappropriate.
Me, I think the idea of rewriting the dictionary definitions when they're already well established, for good or bad, is silly. But they do have a point regardless.
Or stick it in the next room over...
That's a SPECIFIC application, which was not performance optimized, even by Microsoft's own admission.
The next version of that APPLICATION, released as part of .NET 4.0 has "10x" the performance. That SCREAMS unoptimized to me.
I've seen benchmarks of properly multi-threaded applications like video and image rendering software scale 1.9x or better on Windows.
Realistically, the NT kernel has something like a 1% overhead, if that, especially for CPUs other than the primary. User-mode applications can cheerfully use 100% of each core, the kernel will not get in the way, so why would you think scalability is anything less than 1.9x for the second core over the first one?!? Do you seriously think there's some task it's running on that core at 50% load ALL OF THE TIME? Or that it'll schedule 50% of the time and throw the rest away?
Even if you get into inefficient applications that do a lot of locks, message passing, and I/O, take a look at SQL Server scalability. My experience is that it only begins to lose steam at 16 cores or so, and that's probably an application issue as well.
There's people running Windows on 128 and even 256 CPU machines (google "HP Superdome").
Server can use 4 cpu sockets vista / xp can not.
As for the sound card just to have basic sound? some 2 and 4 cpus board don't have on board sound / crap on board sound.
I used to be the sysadmin for a high school. The thoroughly incompetent Web design teacher had a very simple method of ordering computers: go to Dell's website, build-to-order the most expensive computer, and select the most expensive of every option.
I burst her bubble by telling her that the school district had standardized on one OptiPlex and one Latitude. She had a screaming fit because she couldn't get some overpriced Inspiron that lets you listen to CDs with the cover closed. The district purchasing director said she could have it if she could justify needing that for job. So she didn't get it.
This $16,000 WS2003 box sounds like something a trust-fund baby would get.
...Why would anyone choose to run Windows 2008 Server as their desktop OS...
Well, rumor has it he was going to run Windows Vista, but quickly realized that even $16K worth of hardware still only rates a 4.3 on the Vista perform-o-meter.
...and if this is not a desktop then why the fancy sound card?
Again, that's an easy one. Have you ever heard how beautiful a BSOD on Server OS is these days? No? That's because no one puts sound cards in servers anymore. You should check it out one time, rumor has it they actually hired John Williams to write the score for a page fault. Damn thing is even THX-certified.
This build is like Chewbacca, who is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense. I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense!
Yup, we're all in agreement. While they were at it racking up the $$$, they should have just contracted Porsche to design the damn case. Would have likely broke the $20K "barrier"
...does it run linux ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Try not to speak authoritatively about things you clearly know nothing about:
http://www.rungeek.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/taskmanager2.jpg
And if you want detail:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768048.aspx
The "poor utilization" in the article is a relative term. For most apps running under Windows, scalability to multiple CPUs is not hampered by the kernel. There have been improvements to I/O and networking on many-CPU servers, but it's just a fine tuning, not a massive leap forward.
600% scalability on 8 CPUs - this is SQL 7 on NT4 mind you!
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/technology/images/performancepreview-chart1.gif
Is that a nice linear scalability graph of a Windows application I see?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oGCeAi-2i3Q/RuWC4LFEeQI/AAAAAAAAAD0/7B6g8tYUVac/s1600-h/BarcaWinrar.gif
But clearly I'm an idiot. I run Windows XP 64-bit on a quad-core CPU, and I really do get 4x the WinRar compression speed. I've timed it, because I use it to compress my backups, so it matters. It's 4x faster. Am I an idiot? Do I have difficulty telling time? You tell me.
If they don't like the name American, then they can call us United States of American, or... American for short. Seriously, for the individuals that want to Nitpick about the name, there is no place called "America". There is "North America" and "South America". I'm pretty sure that "North American" is universal understood to be someone from any country in North America.
I build a faster computer which only costed a small percentage of that Opteron-Beast:
An Intel5400-Board with two 4Ghz QuadXeons and two GT280. Ok, it only has 16GB and four drives but this would be easily corrected nowadays.
I personally use an Intel5000XVN-Board with two 2,5Ghz QuadXeons, 16GB RAM, two 500 Harddrives and an Geforce 8800, waiting for the GT2xx-Line to become mature and passive cooled ---- BECAUSE MY WHOLE SYSTEM IS PASSIVELLY COOLED BESIDES ONE SINGLE 40CM FAN RUNNING AT 50RPM.
The whole System did cost a lot less than â2000 and consists of standard hardware allover.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Are you really from the US? I kind of don't believe you because "Like Yankees or Yanks? It's not like we take offense to the term or something." You call someone where I'm from (the south) "Yankee" and you're likely to be punched in the face.
I don't get why this monster needs to be quiet. Since, as mentioned, the video bandwidth is not important just put the darn thing in some sort of mini server room (eg. the corner of your basement) and remote into it. If you can afford a $16k PC you must have a massive pad with lots of far away corners ideal to put this in. Hell put a rack in there and do it right with server grade hardware instead of this mickey mouse hack. Even if video was an issue you can go a long way (~50ft) even without going optical and get decent video bandwidth. Many more cost effective ways to go other than this liquid cooled abomination which will depreciate real quick.
Depends on whether space is expensive for you or not.
First assuming space is not at a premium
Netbooks/nettops have atom processors with only one core, low clocks and not brilliant performance per clock. For double the price you can probablly get a desktop with a quad core processor with each core being faster than the atom in the netbook/nettop
Server hardware is way more expensive than desktop hardware per unit of CPU power. OTOH for some workloads the larger ram and caches may be a superlinear benifit.
So depending on the workload either midrange desktop hardware or midrange server harder.
If space is at a premium then you want something that will let you pack the cores densely without paying ridiculously over the odds. Probablly 1U servers with dual quad core processors.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I just configured a DL580 G5 tower at HP.COM. With four 6-core processors and 256GB of RAM fully populated with 16 300GB SAS drives, Dual P800 SAS controllers and the usual goodies you're looking at $70,000. And that's before you buy a decent graphics card and a monitor.
No, it's not Vista compatible and it won't run Aero without additional hardware.
BTW, it would make a lousy media center PC too. Fans sound like a helicopter, the lights dim when you turn it on. On the upside if you put a couple decent graphics cards in it and install Linux, you can watch 100 videos at the same time.
Since when is expensive hardware a big deal for /.? It's much more difficult to make the hardware inexpensive.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Seriously, for the individuals that want to Nitpick about the name, there is no place called "America".
Right, and wrong. Under the US' educational system, South America and North America are distinct, separate continents, but for other countries the continent is America and the division of north, south and sometimes, central is solely to simplify reffering to areas of such a large continent. Like East Asia or Northern Africa, neither of which is a separate continent.
I'm pretty sure that "North American" is universal understood to be someone from any country in North America.
Not really. Since most people in latin-speaking countries understand "American" as "someone born in the continent of America", on most dubbings of TV shows it is translated as "estadounidense" (meaning "someone from the United States"), but it is also sometimes translated as "North American" and casually, if someone says that "northamericans are a bunch of idiots", Canadians usually need not be offended ;)
Seriously, for a pejorative term started by the british (to differentiate the "American English" from the real, true Englishmen), you guys have taken this *way* too far. Just invent a new word already, or try to translate "estadounidense" in a manner that doesn't sound too bloody stupid, and give "America" back to the continent named after Amerigo Vespucci. Or just STFU when we call you USians ;)
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
What would twice as much money bought me 10 years ago? Then I realize I can probably build a better computer than it for 1/20 the cost today. It isn't really an investment when you buy a supercharged computer, but more of a passing fling.
God spoke to me.
I think that 50 [cheap netbooks] would be pretty quick in a Beowolf cluster. (Well... an XP gaggle... but I digress)
Depends on your problem, but for most of them the network latency is a killer if you're trying to do it over wifi. My guess is the sweet spot for most use cases is more like 10 mid-end desktops with gigabit ethernet connected via a reasonably high end switch.
Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5.
What a crap. Just throw in two 15k SAS drives for system in RAID-1 (if you so eager for mirroring) and four 1TB drives in RAID-10 - it will be much faster
Also, they made a couple mistakes. Firstly they used 75W Opterons (8350) instead of 50W ones like in my list above (8350 HE) - pretty stupid considering their whole focus was to build a silent system ! Secondly instead of 10k RPM drives they should have used SSDs which are much cheaper per IOPS. Thirdly since they didn't build it with more than 32GB RAM, why pick an expensive mobo supporting 128GB ? They could have saved $400 by choosing one with fewer memory slots supporting "only" 64GB.
Not advised, while this rig might finally get you that elusive score 5.0 on vista, linux would run so fast it would be faster then the speed of light, catch up with itself so that if you ever decided to shut it down it would actually be shut down before you had it booted up, destroying the entire universe in the process and just try claiming that on your home insurance.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Compare that to building the thing yourself, with the exact same components: probably under 1/3rd the cost.
At that price, he could almost justify a Mac Pro! (But seriously: a similar Mac Pro could likely be configured for less!)
Oh, and seriously: at $16k, I'd expect the system to be small, fanless, and near-hermetic. And, I'd like to see how "quiet" that system is in 12 months once the fans start to take a little wear.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers