New PC: biggest bang for the buck?

[viktorbravo]

Since my earlier posts, I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about building a computer and I am getting pretty excited about it.  I'm starting to make a list of components.

This could be overkill for our applications.  I sold a couple nice little refractors to finance the project.  I'm trying to justify dual processors. Maybe all I really need is a single 6 core i7 3930?  Maybe its a point of diminishing returns and not worth spending 3X the CPU money for maybe a 30% return in speed at best with the applications we are running? Anyway, this is what I am thinking:

Cooler Master HAF X
1200W power supply
Asus Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard
2 X Intel Xeon E5 2620 6 core processors, 2 ghz base, 2.5 ghz turbo. 
Not sure about what brand CPU coolers yet, I think Gelid Tranquillo will work.
64 Gb DDR-1333 RAM
240 Gb SSD
2 X 1.5 TB HDD's for storage, I think I should I do this in a RAID-1 configuration for redundancy, hardware or software?

Not sure what I am going to do about a video card at this point, but its time to start trimming the budget somewhere.

Any thoughts/advice on the components?  What would you change/do differently?  Is this overkill?  So far I think everything is compatible, but obviously I will make sure before I order.

I'm coming from an old 2 core machine that takes damned near a hour to register a bunch of 16803 images, and can barely handle editing HD video, so I'm thinking this thing is going to absolutely scream for image processing if the applications can make use of all the CPU power. 

[vicent_peris]

Hi,

Take into account that some processes are not parallelized. In these processes, one of your Xeon cores won't very very fast because they run at 2 GHz... One option could be to put two quad-core Xeon processors with higher clocks.


Regards,
Vicent.

[ruediger]

MacBook Pro 15" (late 2011 model)
2,4 GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, OS X 10.7.3

PixInsight 1.7.6

Benchmark_M74_parallel.psm: 7.8s

Rüdiger

[georg.viehoever]

Another experiment in the cloud, this time on profitbricks.com. Prices appear to be lower than with Amazon EC2. In a support mail they said they charge by the hour (on the website they always cite the costs per month).  They give you a two week free test drive when you register.

Creating such a virtual server was much easier than with Amazon's EC2, and including installation of PI it was done in just 15 minutes. They have a very nice GUI for configuring a system (see screenshot). Connection to the Windows2008 server was via Remote Desktop, which gives almost the impression of a local system, and even allows Copy/Paste between local and remote system, and  access your local drives and printers.

You specify the performance of the required system by "cores", with one core supposed to be the equivalent of a 1 GHZ Opteron of 2007. I configured a Windows2008 system with 8 GB RAM and 50 GB disk. Changing the number of cores is done in seconds, it just reboots the system. Running Benchmark_M74_parallel.psm on 1 core required 63 seconds, on 8 cores 19 seconds.

Georg

[viktorbravo]

2012 Macbook Pro Retina
2.7 GHz i7 Quad Core
16 GB RAM
768 GB SSD
OSX 10.8.2
PixInsight 1.7.6

Benchmark:  6.892 sec

Parallel:  6.199 sec

Not sure why there is not much difference between the two.  Any ideas?  Turbo Boost maybe?


Another for comparison:

2008 Macbook Pro
2.8 GHz Intel Core Duo
4 GB RAM
320 GB HDD
OSX 10.7.5
PixInsight 1.7.6

Benchmark: 23.23 sec

Parallel:  14.62 sec

[Jan]

Gentleman, maybe this is the right place for the request for help:

Seeing the necessity to run Pixinsight on the more powerfull machine then I have now, and also to upgrade to 64bit system, I decided to buy a new notebook. Ok ok.. I know the desktop would be better performer for less money. But my job is generally around the world, LOTS of travelling (80% out of the home), so my solution needs to be notebook.

I know the PI recommended hardware specification, but I will highly appreciate any advice regarding this, maybe even Pixinsight authors can have some valuable comments to that.

i7 quadcore processor
Probably SSD hard drive (but not necessary)
Weight bellow 3kg preferably
Screen full HD, but preferably not the bulky 17incher
Upgradable (mean generally RAM slots capacity ideally up to 32GB)
Established manufacturer like Lenovo, HP, DELL or so.
My residence is Europe (some brands may not be present on the market)
Budget- dont want to say "unlimited" but I am ready to pay for performance, I want also cut the HD videos on the machine.
And.. I am not the Apple guy;)

I have some tips, generally among the workstation sector of the range. Anyway please advice!

[vicent_peris]

Hi,

I have been using a Dell Precision M6500 from three years ago and I'm overall happy with it. Some things have broken during this time but Dell customer support is good. The M6700 has some improvements that I find decisive if I were going to choose a new laptop:

- It has an IPS display. Look for reviews as they state that this display is very good.
- My computer has room for two hard drives plus one mSATA port. But in the M6700 you can put a third drive if you detach the optical drive. This means that you can have a system drive, two SSD drives for PixInsight swap (reading at 1 GB/s) and a removable drive with SED Opal protection for your sensitive data.

Other advantages I found with this computer are:

- 4 RAM modules and a maximum of 32 GB (mine has 16).
- The video card works very well, although is power hungry... I recommend to put the cheaper one.
- The aluminum casing.
- Works great with Linux.

You have the M6700 with an I7 quad core, 16GB RAM, 2x750 GB HDD and IPS panel for ~3000€ + VAT.


Best regards,
Vicent.

[Jan]

Hi Vincent, thank you! I have had a look at it and the performance and quality looks awsome! I have tried the configurator though, and the pricing policy of DELL in my country is such that for 3000e without VAT, I can hardly get the 4700 model with the configuration you mention. But I will have deeper look into in and will try to configurate some basic version (eg no extra hard drive) with upgrades later on.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

[vicent_peris]

Hi Vincent, thank you! I have had a look at it and the performance and quality looks awsome! I have tried the configurator though, and the pricing policy of DELL in my country is such that for 3000e without VAT, I can hardly get the 4700 model with the configuration you mention. But I will have deeper look into in and will try to configurate some basic version (eg no extra hard drive) with upgrades later on.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Just go for the quad processor, 16 GB de RAM (2x( GB), the IPS panel and the minimum HDDs. You can easily upgrade the hard drives at lower prices if you buy them separately.

Good luck,
V.

[vicent_peris]

You have other computers at lower prices, but this computer is the only in which you have all thse features:

- High RAM capacity
- More than one HDD
- IPS panel.

For me the IPS panel is crucial. I haven't it on the M6500 and, at the end, you always need an external monitor to adjust the image.


Regards,
V.

[Jan]

Vincent thank you very much for valuable advice! Can you specify which of the currently offered processors would be the best choice?   

And second question is, if the version 4700 could be also the reasonable choice in your opinion (for me the reason is the mobility, I really do spend a lot of time travelling).

Here is the offer of the processors for 6700 in my country (in brackets ai the addition to the price of the basic configuration, divided by 25 is the EUR price:-)):

3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7-3540M Processor (3.00GHz Turbo, 4MB, Upgradable to Intel vPro technology) [p?idat 4 930,00 K?]
3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7-3520M Processor (2.90GHz Turbo, 4MB) [p?idat 4 930,00 K?]
3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7-3740QM Processor (2.70GHz Turbo, 6MB) [p?idat 6 249,00 K?]
3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7-3840QM Processor (2.80GHz Turbo, 8MB) [p?idat 12 624,00 K?]
3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7-3940XM Processor (3.00GHz Turbo, 8MB) [p?idat 28 037,00 K?]

[vicent_peris]

Hi,

I would choose the i7-3740QM, it is the lower quad-core processor. You have a quick benchmark here:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

You'll find all these processors in the list. See that there is a tiny difference between 3740 and 3840, but price increase is huge. The Extreme processor will give you a 25% performance increase, but a really high cost.

The M4700 is also a very good option IMO:

- IPS panel option.
- Up to three drives (I would buy an external Blu-ray unit for 80€ and put a third drive in the laptop).
- Four RAM sockets.

Last, I would choose the cheaper nVidia card, specially if you're planning to use Linux. Anyway, it doesn't matter for PixInsight if you use a better graphics card, as we haven't GPU processing for the moment.


Best regards,
Vicent.

[vicent_peris]

One more consideration... These laptops are power hungry. Mine won't last more than 90 min on battery, and less than one hour if processing (although battery is now near 3 years old). If you need long battery life you're better looking for another solution.


V.

[Jan]

Actually the battery life is not critical for me, I am travelling a lot, but generally I am working BY travelling kind of  So I do not need the notebook as in-flight entertainment device, just want to have a portable desktop replacement, which will be mostly on the table in my homebase, or with me for the overnights around Europe.

I have been having a look also to the HP Elitebook line, but they are quite heavy and do not have the configuration flexibility of DELL, do not offer SSD etc. 

THANK YOU VINCENT!

[Jan]

UPDATE

After choosing the parts, fancy IPS screen, two hard drives, 16gb RAM etc... and getting very good price quote (cca 30 percent less than the DELL configurator), I was about to pay the deposit today, and I was happy I will get great tool for my astro and photo/video work.

BUT- my DELL distributor informed me few minutes ago, that "Precision m4700 is now out of production, there is no equvalent product from DELL and therefore they have to cancel your order."

So I am at the same point as I was two weeks ago asking for the advice.


AUPDATE again:
My distributor informed me that they made mistake when they informed me about the non-availability of the product, and that they have the Dell Precision ready for me!

Now I have the notebook at home, and it is awsome - great display, and the whole system as I have custom-ordered is unbeliveably fast (I have ended up with 2,7, 256SSD+750GBHDD, Nvidia Quadro 2000 and 32GB RAM, the price was at the level of HP with 2,3GH, 8GB RAM, 750HDD).

THANK YOU FOR GREAT ADVICE!