New build
 

Well, I have been in the bush for too long and completely out of the loop for a number of years. I want to replace my antique copper plated calculator with something a bit faster than an electronic abacus.

So, what is available? I don't have time to read countless forums, i.e., the reason for the post here. If I do it, cost is no object. A bunch of points and Q's:

Motivation is prime95, with light office use during daytime.

I don't game. Is there a compelling reason to go for a high end GPU? I hear about GPU clients, is there a GIMPS version that is user and team friendly?

I need to stay on a server boart - my Adaptec card requires a 64 bit PCI slot. The chump change I spent on a server boart years ago has been well worth it - 6 years hassle free service, most of it 24/365 with [B]years[/B] between reboots.

Given the above, there will be no overcloaking.

Current OS is server 2003, I really like it and want to stay - is this possible? Linux is not an option.

I keep hearing about core count etc. Are there mutli cpu boarts available? (note to youth: these were popular during the dark age). I consider this path price effective, as I intend to have several identical builds, and a 2 or 4 cpu solution avoids redundant boxen (and the hassle of importing the parts).

I'll need a good UPS, any comments? I will be generating my own power and there will be interruptions - the setup has 2 gensets; if (when) one goes down the other kicks in after 15 seconds.

I assume this will be Intel - no fanboy stuff please.

In summary, this will be a monster ...

[QUOTE=PageFault;271520]
Motivation is prime95, with light office use during daytime.

I don't game. Is there a compelling reason to go for a high end GPU? I hear about GPU clients, is there a GIMPS version that is user and team friendly?
Linux is not an option.

I assume this will be Intel - no fanboy stuff please.

[/QUOTE]
Are you sure you aren't a fanboi yourself?

Let's start with AMD versus Intel...AMD produces chips with more cores that do a little less apiece, Intel produces chips that have fewer cores doing a little more per core. The results of this arms race are cheap, capable processors that are ever improving.

Windows versus Intel... In my (and many others) experience, Windows crashes on a weekly basis..Windows update is often to blame....Linux (I use xubuntu on my highest-end machine) runs for weeks or months, until the power supply glitches. I have a machine that became unusable under Windows, due to the growth of Windows itself. GIMPS itself doesn't care, some of my computers run Windows, others run Linux, they all run P95/mprime and, when they have the GPUs, mfaktc and cudaLucas.

The high end machine I'm talking about actually had Lavalamp choose its parts...the ASRock 880GM mobo setup with AMD Phenom II x6(6 real cores) ran about $500; the main regret is not getting a bigger power supply to support more GPU than the GTX440 I eventually added for another $150. The main problem with the build was CPU pin 997; it got bent over somehow, and I only found it as I disassembled the motherboard for return to the manufacturer.

Do you want to run a GPU? You bet....go look at what Lavalamp has been doing, cleaning my clock on Operation Billion Digits...they are decent at LL tests (cudaLucas) and awesome at TF. But they don't do P-1, not yet...and the GPU clients at the moment require you to get your own assignments and upload the results manually. I'm working, slowly, on mfaktc automation.

How many CPU sockets on your motherboard? Generally, the volume is in single CPU socket motherboards, and therefore they are most cost effective in terms of compute horses per $. However, a server-class motherboard will support multiple CPUs, and those CPUs do have a few more compute horses each. But you will be spending more than double your money to double the performance. However, some tasks (especially the final linear algebra step of GNFS, which is being used to factor 2^1061-1 and similar numbers) simply don't work even with Gigabit ethernet connections between the machines.

I'm not sure where the maximum efficiency in computations per joule is. I think the IBM blue gene processor card probably has the record, but I have no idea if you can get one, and it almost undoubtedly will never run Windows.

:smile:
So let's start by asking what your budget is....then we can figure out what league of machine to get. Hope this discussion helps.

I expect that I could do this with about 5000 USD and I'm not holding to a figure, should there be something interesting that I am not aware of (and there will be much). What I don't want is something overly esoteric or arcane, it has to be something I can do myself and run standard applications

Monitor, keyboard, mouse and [URL="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vtec-Usb-Coffee-Warmer-Port/dp/B000BYW7OM"]gadget[/URL] [URL="http://http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/usb-gadgets/c208/"]included?[/URL]

If you want Prime95, you want a basement full of cheap boxes - 6-core AMD or 4-core Sandy Bridge are probably the price points to look at, and you can probably get a dozen. If you want standard office work, any old PC from PC World will be adequate, and your price point is half an order of magnitude too high.

It doesn't appear that you have the necessary background to make very useful use of a high-end GPU, so I would save the money. I though I had the background, acquired the GPU, and found that I didn't use it.

What do you feel you gain from your 64-bit Adaptec card that a standard SSD attached to a standard 3Gbps SATA controller doesn't currently offer you? Boards for current CPUs almost always lack 64-bit PCI slots because PCIe is so much faster.

Fivemack:
Moderate GPUs running cudaLucas or mfaktc are pretty productive in terms of GIMPS work, they just require you to manually pipe the work. That part doesn't require huge amounts of background, and a number of folks have been doing lots and lots of TF on them. Programming, of course, is a different story.

Oh, and you might like the dual-screen setup you get with your GPU. Add $200 for a nice extra monitor. $50 for a KVM switch if you want to run multiple machines from one monitor.

And my 6 core AMD does office stuff just fine.....unless the power blinks, in which case I have to reboot it. Takes 30 seconds, including logging back in and restarting mfaktc..

@OP: How do you keep Windows working for months at a time, especially when it runs memory hogs like autocad and Altium (electronics) Designer? I'd like some pointers on that trick....I hate it when I come in in the morning and my computer needs a re-boot, losing all my open windows.

I'll try to answer the questions you asked as best as I can, however I'll leave the UPS one for someone more qualified.

[QUOTE=PageFault;271520]I don't game. Is there a compelling reason to go for a high end GPU? I hear about GPU clients, is there a GIMPS version that is user and team friendly?[/quote]Up to you really, they're great at trial factoring (which currently requires two or three CPU threads), less great at LL testing (but still a little better than a high end CPU). What type of work will you be looking at?

[QUOTE=PageFault;271520]I need to stay on a server boart - my Adaptec card requires a 64 bit PCI slot. The chump change I spent on a server boart years ago has been well worth it - 6 years hassle free service, most of it 24/365 with [B]years[/B] between reboots.[/quote]Depending on the exact version of the PCI-X spec it is, (and it would be a very good idea to find this out in case it's a 5V card), it may not actually require a full PCI-X slot, and could happily run in a regular PCI slot, just slower. As in 133 MB/s bandwidth instead of 533 MB/s. Exact make and model of the Adaptec card would be good here.

It is possible to get server boards with PCI-X slots on them still, but before speccing up a full on server system, perhaps you could describe your current setup in more detail, and say a bit more about what you want from a new system. Lots of cheap boxes can potentially outperform a single expensive box for the same price, providing you've got the space. Additionally, is there a power budget to think about?

It may also be worth examining whether you would want to upgrade your storage system too (I am assuming this Adaptec card is a SCSI, or perhaps SAS, RAID card). Newer, faster, bigger hard drives are available as well as PCIe RAID cards. This would also have the advantage of not having to open up your current machine to transplant the drives.

[QUOTE=PageFault;271520]Current OS is server 2003, I really like it and want to stay - is this possible? Linux is not an option.[/quote]Yes, and the standard editions of Windows Server 2003 and 2008 support up to four CPUs, and up to 32 cores I believe (real or virtual, since they both look the same to the OS).

Intel do make some 8 core server CPUs, so you could have 32 full cores in a system, but you would have to disable hyperthreading, or buy the Enterprise edition of Windows Server.

[QUOTE=PageFault;271520]I keep hearing about core count etc. Are there mutli cpu boarts available? (note to youth: these were popular during the dark age). I consider this path price effective, as I intend to have several identical builds, and a 2 or 4 cpu solution avoids redundant boxen (and the hassle of importing the parts).[/quote]Yes, multi CPU boards exist, however whether they are more cost effective is debatable. Again, it depends on your needs.

[QUOTE=PageFault;271520]I assume this will be Intel - no fanboy stuff please.[/QUOTE]I'd probably go that way, they compete better at the high end than AMD, and the high end is where it seems you will be. It does also seem to me that they have more robust chipsets.

Let me remind lavalamp publicly...I have no serious regrets with the Phenom II x6 6-core...If I upgrade, it's going to be from one machine like that to 2, the second one running sandy bridge....

Tom's Hardware has two reviews:
[url]http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3960x-x79-performance,3026-15.html[/url]
[url]http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833.html[/url]
which seem to me to show pretty clear that Phenom is outclassed. It's only bright point is that it's a cheap six core, but the $215 Intel i5-2500 will get better performance anyways on four cores.

Also, a Xeon server processor review, I don't know much about them.
[url]http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e3-c206-workstation,2933-12.html[/url]

I used to run a basement full of boxen and would rather not follow on that path (although it was lots of fun) in the future. One or two machines should suffice, for my business needs and prime95. Power is not a concern as I will be generating it.

I have server 2003 Enterprise sp2.

The SCSI card is Adaptec 39320. SCSI will remain the fundamental component of any build.

The direction of this project appears to be a 32 core implementation. Let us work out the details of this - boart, cpu's, memory.

I'll drop the GPU idea for the current time. What is more interesting is a mirror; any comments on what card to buy?

Why do you want SCSI to be the 'fundamental component of any build'?

The drives are getting quite hard to come by nowadays as the expensive-server markets move to SAS, and SSDs with standard SATA connection offer much higher performance for many use cases.

32 cores is an awful lot - you'd need to use a quad-Opteron 61xx motherboard, and these are really quite hard to get hold of in workstation cases. I have a quad-Opteron 6168 system in my dining room, it makes a very loud noise and would really not be usable as a workstation.

What do you mean by a mirror?