Hello,

I know there are daily threads about buying PCs and things like that, but i need something more powerful than these threads typically advise.

So here is what the setup needs to be able to do:

2x 30"

I want to be able to play WoW, AIM, Firefox, PT3, FTP, PS, all at the same time without lag (ie I want to be able to datamine 18 tables or w/e while playing WoW or any other game without trouble).

I decided to go for the 2x 30" because I have one already and my 2 20" are a few years old and so they'd look weird being a little faded while the 30" is insanely bright.

I want it to be able to run for long periods of time, turning it off once a week or so.

I want to put it together myself. I don't know anything about the insides of computers, but I think I'd be way happier with the final product if I spent some time deciding what should go inside and not buying a prefabricated product with 100 annoying software suites already installed.

So here are the big questions I guess:

Do I get Vista or keep XP?

One HD or two? What kind?

Do I just need one video card or do I need 2?

Should I get a huge power supply and an over the top cooling system to ensure it lasts a long time?

What processor will last a while?

Any other minor suggestions?

Thanks a lot in advance. If this thread is successful I'll definitely post some pictures and stuff.

Dumb side question--my office has berber carpet. I leave my current desktop on that because I don't really care what happens to it. I shouldn't do that with a new one, right? Creates too much static and dust and stuff. What should I put it on?

So here are the big questions I guess:

Do I get Vista or keep XP?

I would recommmend Vista 64-bit

One HD or two? What kind?

Probably best with 3 hard drives - perhaps 4 if your really serious
#1 thats a 64gig flash drive for strictly your OS
#2 High speed (pos raid) strictly for your PT database - probably around 320gig
#3 High Speed (pos Raid) strictly for your games - prob 500gig
opt. #4 Regurlar - 1terabyte - dump drive for music/movies/porn

Do I just need one video card or do I need 2?

Definetly get 2 brand new Nvidia graphics cards - 9600gts or whatever the best ones are - make sure your motherboard supports SLI and both at 16x slots

Should I get a huge power supply and an over the top cooling system to ensure it lasts a long time?

Make sure its an expensive good power supply its easy to get caught up with something that says 1000w but make sure its continues power not peak
And yah really good cooling system is a must - were you want to go to the extent of water-cooled well i wouldn't do it if i planned to build it myself but it might be a good idea

What processor will last a while?

Quad core intel - ask for the best it is the best

Any other minor suggestions?

Your gonna be spending lots of money and yes you might be a hero for building this yourself from newegg.com but honestly look at Dell - Alienware division or IBM Blackbird - there highly respected and sick so i'd probably tell you to go with them

Thanks a lot in advance. If this thread is successful I'll definitely post some pictures and stuff.

Dumb side question--my office has berber carpet. I leave my current desktop on that because I don't really care what happens to it. I shouldn't do that with a new one, right? Creates too much static and dust and stuff. What should I put it on?

After thinking about this for 2 seconds - what your really might consider doing is just buying to tower computers. Running all that **** off on computer is gonna bog down any set-up. but if you have to computers its gonna save you money probably cause you don't need the tity top of the line type **** well i mean you gonna want good solid stuff in both computers but yah...definetly much much smarter idea
+llike every 30' monitor has mulitiple imputs so its really not that difficult to get monitors working on one screen or the other + actually easier if you plann on playing games

I assume $$ is no object? If so, this thread will be fun.

I just want something that can handle what I specified. I don't want to spend 5k or anything because I'll probably end up replacing it within 3 years anyways.

Also, is there any way I'd be able to use my old desktop to datamine full tilt and have the observed HHs sent to my new desktop? Could I just have my observed HHs in a shared folder and then have PT3 from my new desktop import from that shared folder? Sounds too easy.

you read my mind

************************************************** *********


A US military supercomputer has broken the petaflop speed record by performing one thousand trillion calculations per second. The ‘Roadrunner’ machine was developed at the Los Alamos Laboratory and uses AMD Opteron chips and the Cell processors found in PlayStation games consoles. It will be used to model climate systems before being classified by the Army to work on nuclear explosion modelling. “We replace our high-performance supercomputers every four or five years,” said Andy White, leader of supercomputer development at Los Alamos.

“They become outdated in terms of speed, and the maintenance costs and failure rates get too high.” White explained that the use of two kinds of chips represents a revolution in supercomputing. ‘Roadrunner’ uses fewer than 20,000 processors while the next fastest computer, IBM’s Blue Gene/L, uses over 200,000 and runs at half the speed. The Los Alamos machine uses 7,000 multi-core Opteron processors and parses the data to 12,960 enhanced Cell processors using 57 miles of fibre-optic cabling. The device consumes three megawatts of power, enough to run 1,000 homes.

Use your old desktop to datamine and turn it into a PostgreSQL server. There is a how-to on the Pokertracker.com forums.

<---------------------QFSN

Vista/XP: I have no idea on this as I haven't used Vista
Hard drives: at least 2; WD Velociraptors are the fastest from what I understand, and for datamining a ton of tables and doing lots of database stuff you'll want at least one of these. If you want to get fancy you can buy two and run them in a RAID 0 array (system treats both as a single HD, every time data is written half goes on one drive half on the other, results in faster read times).

Video card: Depends on how serious the gaming you do is. If it's just WoW and isn't very graphics-intensive (compared to, say, Crysis) one will probably be ok (though I have no idea if a single card can run 2 30"s, someone else who's tried can comment - however, it's no big deal if you have to get a $70 video card to run your 2nd 30", the question here is whether you want two high-end cards running in SLI).

PSU/Cooling: You want quality parts, sure, but nothing over the top. Cooling is only necessary if you overclock (which I suggest you do for the kind of performance you're looking for).

Intel processors are the best right now and they'll all "last awhile." For running all those programs at once you'll want a quad-core. I imagine you'd probably want 8 GB RAM as well. Even with all that though, I'm still not sure if you can run WoW lag-free at the same time as PT3 and 18 tables of FTP, and god help you if you have a HUD going at the same time. I don't currently have a quad-core though and I expect that would make a big difference for multitasking compared to a dual-core.

Also, I'm usually one of the last people to recommend waiting for the next big thing to come out, but for the kind of power you're looking for Intel has a new processor line coming out at the end of this year/beginning of next year called Nehalem, which is their next big jump in processor technology after the Pentium 4->Core 2 Duo shift. While it will obviously be expensive as **** at first, I expect it will also be quite fast compared to what you can buy right now.

Seems a lot easier to get a $500 desktop for mining, and a solid Poker/Game PC, instead of trying to make 1 Uber-PC do it all, IMO.

this looks like a bunch of normal servers, not one supercomputer.

Feel free to complain to the author of the article, which I copied verbatim. Let me know if you would like a direct link to the article.

A lot of supercomputers are just a bunch of normal servers running the right software to work together very fast.

Also, I didn't think the 64G SSHDs were very fast yet, at least not enough to justify the price.

OP, go to AlienWare or VooDoo and you'll be able to get what you are looking for.

+1 for separate machines, rather than one Super Computer, build a super system. This will allow you to specialise each to its intended purpose. Your old PC might even be Ok for the PT / datamining server. You might be able to get away with just throwing in some more RAM (and switching to a 64bit OS if necessary) and maybe a high efficiency power supply, since it will be on all the time.

If you really want to spend some money or get fancy, building redundancy into the server might be a way to go. Its not as exciting as an uber PC, but having redundant power supply, network / internet, file storage etc would mean you were running 24/7.

I think some online players have both their normal and a backup internet (e.g. cable and DSL). This seems to be the best kind of redundancy for an internet player to have.

Also: automated backup to tape (or maybe even to DVD). Remember, RAID is not a form of backup!

www.falcon-nw.com

Get the Intel Skulltrail motherboard and 2x QX9775 CPUs. Problem solved.

Or maybe this. www.cray.com

Ended up being too lazy to build one myself (SURPRISE SURPRISE) so I bought this instead:

223-5578 1 XPS 630, Intel Core2 processorQ6600 (2.40Ghz,1066FSB) w/Quad Core Technology and 8MB cache
313-6078 1 Black Bezel Chassis
311-8296 1 4GB DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz
330-0341 1 Dell USB Keyboard
320-6315 1 No Monitor
320-6362 1 Dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT
341-6276 1 320GB 10K RAID 0 SATA with NCQand 16MB DataBurst Cache
412-0688 1 Image Restore
420-4927 1 Windows Media Player 10
420-7975 1 Microsoft Windows XP Pro,ENG
420-5769 1 Internet Search and Portal
420-5924 1 Icon Consolidation Application
330-0283 1 Dell Resource DVD with Application Backup
310-9573 1 Dell 2-Button Optical Mouse
420-7468 1 ADOBE ACROBAT READER 8.1 DIM/INSP
313-6082 1 48X Combo and 16X DVD+/-RW
420-7205 1 Power DVD 7.0
420-7206 1 6 Channel,Dolby,PDVD,7.0
420-8152 1 Roxio Creator 10 Dell Edition
313-2758 1 Integrated Audio
313-6138 1 No Speaker Requested
461-8389 1 No Virus Protection Requested
412-0148 1 No Internet Service Provider Requested
412-1397 1 No Productivity Software requested
412-0360 1 Soft Contracts - Banctec
902-0931 1 Warranty Support,1 Year Extended
950-3338 1 2 Year Limited Warranty
960-8700 1 Warranty Support,Initial Year
989-2478 1 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Extended Year(s)
980-7181 1 Type 3 - Third Party At Home Service, 24x7 Technical Support, 1 Year Extended
989-2477 1 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year
985-7920 1 Type 3 - Third Party At Home Service, 24x7 Technical Support, Initial Year
330-0172 1 S and P Drop-in-Box Marcom forDHS Desktops
310-8591 1 You have chosen a Windows XP System
420-7091 1 DataSafe Online Dim/Ins/XPS
420-7092 1 DataSafe Online Dim/Ins/XPS 1YR-FREE
987-4817 1 Insp Datasafe 3GB,1YR(Incl in price),DHS
988-0099 1 To activate your online backupaccount, go to Start, Programs, DataSafe Online

Instead of ordering online, I called them and chatted with someone for a bit. They ended up giving me an additional $200 (there was like $400 instant savings too) off the price, 1 year extra warranty for free, and free overnight shipping just for asking.

How did I do?

I don't mean this to be a whiny rant, but I just thought I'd say that I downgraded from Vista to XP after a three month test trial one on a new machine recently (Quadcore, 4GB RAM, etc). Or rather, I tried it for 3 months and got frustrated.

Conclusion: Vista sucks, stick w/ XP until the next major OS release. But I guess everyone's mileage varies.

I dont care about the software ****, but...

That 10K HD looks very sweeeeeeet. The rest is pretty std. and really good hardware.
My system would look pretty much the same if I had to buy it today.

weak sauce.



imo

In all seriousness, that's what supercomputers are nowadays, big stacks of "normal" computers tied together. Depending on what type of workload they are intended to tackle, they may have some unusual parts like super-highspeed, low-latency interconnects (i.e. networking), or they may be tied to exotic storage arrays, but many of them are just a big pile of regular old pcs with 100% commodity off-the-shelf parts.

The magic is in the software.

The technical term is "Cluster". You can actually set one up yourself with random PCs if you learn enough linux... i did it once and signed up for some online group that does computing for cancer research of some sort.

lol

Buy a laptop for mining. Problem solved.

Goggles, how is that computer handling multi-tableing with HEM etc? Im on the verge of buying the same thing.

I use PT3, not HEM.

I have no problem datamining 18 tables while playing World of Warcraft, IMing, browsing, etc.

Good machine so far. Only problem was that Dell didn't have the right NVIDIA drivers for my graphics cards so I couldn't set up multiple displays correctly until I reinstalled the right ones.