link to some hardware (not an ad)

[vizwhiz]

hi There

 

say Elliot, check This out and let me know what you Think of This

i am not hardwired for hardware, so i am asking your opinion, ok?

 

http://www.mce.com/shop/product_detail/product_id/22296/category_id/1174

 

i cant Tell if This is a good buy or not

it said workstation but goes to a server page

appears to be "bare-bones" = cpu "capable"

doesnt show exact memory if it is installed

and needs a graphics card

but idle curiousity is getting The better of me

any comments greatly appreciated

Randy

[Elliot]

Hey Randy,

 

My dual Xeon has the board previous to that one. I like it... Depending on the day I think the AMD is better.... some days I think the Xeon are better. I gave away my Xeon to my daughter... She is very close to here. She is a very creative young girl who is determined to do something on the field of arts. I am a proud Dad, she is good with painting with oleo. Now she is doing that on the computer.... It is incredible what she can do with Corel, Photoshop and Photo Paint.

 

I seriously look at that case.... at the end I changed and used a very light case called LiChiang or something similar. My case was about $260.00. Then I put 700 watts power supply for about 150.00. I love my case, it is on wheels and it is very light. It is made of aluminum. I used the same full size on both machines. However, the case you are looking at has the hot-swapable capability. My case you have to turn off the machine, disconnect the power, and then all the drives are mounted on a cage that you slide out of the case. I think it is convenient but I do not plan to remove the drives once installed.

 

I understand the case you are looking at is kind of noisy. Something I learned from the nightmare with the MSI motherboard was the following. When they place the word "server" on the unit it means they are aiming at a sever client. That means many things. Some of this servers are blade servers and they are in a hot room needing a cooling and noise is not a problem. So they build these units to have a hi-flow cfm venting that produces more noise than an F104 on a takeoff run on a wet day... Perhaps you heard them at Luke's AFB. I had to return my MSI motherboard because I couldn't live with the noise on the unit.

 

Check these people out http://www.8anet.com/merchant.ihtml?pid=2108&lastcatid=4&step=4. You can get that Supermicro for 420 to 475 drop 200 for a case and you have a hotwheel on the go. I have two Supermicro boards and they are very good. However, I also like the Tyan and their support. Tyan support is really good.... I hope they don't change.

 

You know that I like my Opterons but I recommend the Xeons. Is strictly based on the NUMA-PAE configuration on the Opterons. This configurations is needed to make the machine a screaming eagle. Enabling the Numa-PAE makes the machine not compatible with some of my programs. I blame Microsoft on this one. I have a dual boot capability on my Opterons. When I want to use the Nikon software I boot up as a regular dual machine without the advantage of 2gb of ram for each CPU. When I want to render I boot up with the NUMA-PAE enabled and the machine recognizes the 4gb.... even better it assigns 2gb to each processor. It is a real multitasking machine....

 

Be carefull about the SSCI wording, all what they are saying is that they are compatible with Adaptec SSCI. You still have to buy some SSCI board. In my case I got the full blown adapter... the 2020... I think it was like 429.00 (not sure... just getting older)

 

With the new Tyan 2895 now the Opterons are going to have the dual PCI Express with SLI technology that the Supermicro doesnt have. I am waiting here to see what people start reporting on Tyan. I am ready to upgrade and use the Quadro 3400 with the Opterons.

 

I am very confused, I think these machines I put together are very fast... but I also think they are not really necessary for doing renderings. You can get a dual Xeon 3.0 or 3.2 and still be very fast. The price differencial is easily 900.00 to 1,000 on similar machines. If you drop the SSCI raid there is another 1,100.00 saved.

 

If they eventaully come out with the 64bit architecture for Windows, then these Opterons are supposed to be fast... we will see.... I no longer trust the marketing guys....

 

The bottom line... I think that case is good, probably noisy, heavy and big. For sure, to expensive.... If you are just going to assemble the machine and leave untouched for a while..... you then don't need that server kind of case... All you need is a practical full size case that will accomodate the Supermicro motherboard.... Look at the footprint of the SuperMicro.... it is a large one.....

 

Go on http://www.pricewatch.com and do a search on the board. On the SuperMicro http://www.supermicro.com they have a list of their wholesalers and some retailers. I happen to know a guy in Florida that is a dealer - distributor. He is Brazilian and takes his business very seriously. He is very good and ussually can beat almost everybody on pricing. There is another guy here in Atlanta, his name is Tan and his company is http://www.the3dshop.com he is an integrator. He know his business of assembling high end video machines very well. He is good and he has good prices.... you have to really negotiate with him. He is reliable....

 

I bought most of my components from Monarch Computers here in Atlanta. I paid more for the components but at the end it paid off. I had some trouble with the board and memmory issues. They returned my money and got me what I needed. These people are not very well liked by some customers. I guess people that if you buy over the internet you loose on that personal touch. They are local, when things didn't work as expected I just went there and they reacted quickly and without giving me the run around. A month later I decided that the memory I had was not the right one, too slow, I went there with 8 sticks of 1gb each and asked to get 8 sticks of .5gb with a faster speed rating. They charged me some re-stocking fee of around 168.00 and gave me what I wanted.... no questions and a nice smile.... The machine went up in performance.

 

Building these machines is easy if you are a techno geek. At the end you don't really save any money. It just the satisfaction of knowing what is under the hood. If you hate screwdrivers and reading instructions then..... just get it from Dell, they have some real good sales on Wednesday and Thursday....

 

Good Luck

 

PD:

I have a friend that spent 8 years building a plane and he just flew it twice. Similar to what I do with these machines.... I use them every day but... goodnes some of these young kids posting gorgeous images on this site make me embarrased of having spent so much money. When you read on the posting here you find they have a single 1.8ghz machine with .5 gb of ram and 64mb of video ram.

 

Lately my favorite phrase is "I am back to my 2D and the shop" I mean our manufacturing shop which is how we get paid... not by the renderings. My partner can build an actual product sample faster than me doing a 3D model. He does the prototype on our research lab with minimum tools. We are a small company our research lab is a 20 by 15 room with no heating.... He he he He tells me that with what I spent on all these computers we could have purchased a small laser cutting machine, a lathe or another brake press

 

You don't want to hear what the General thinks (My wife soon to be promoted to 4 star admiral) Yeap.... from General to Admiral...!