High-end rig for SolidEdge V20

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rudirautenbach

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Hi all,

We are busy drawing up specs and getting quotes for a high-end SolidEdge rig. Our firm uses SolidEdge 3D modelling to model our processing plants, and the size & complexity of the models we produce has now overtaken the processing power of our most powerful rigs.

This is what I had in mind:

HP xw8600 Workstation Base Unit (Case & Motherboard)
HP 1050W 80+ Energy Efficient Chassis
Intel Core2Extreme QX9775 (2 off) + appropriate cooling solution
8Gb RAM (4 x 2Gb) DDR-2 1066 ECC
DVD R/RW+ Optical drive
WD Velociraptor 300 GB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16 MB Cache, 10,000 RPM (3 off)
Nvidia Quadro FX5800 4Gb
HP USB keyboard
HP USB optical mouse
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit
Samsung T240 monitor

Our usual supplier took almost 3 months on a previous occassion to have a similar machine assembled and delivered to us, so I was hoping that there might be someone on the forum that could supply us this machine in MUCH less time.

It has to be HP (case & mobo) but the rest (such as GPU, RAM, cooling if required) can be of any brand.

The supplier would need to check if the Core2Extreme CPU's can fit into the sockets provided with the HP xw8600 workstation mobo.

We will need a 3yr onsite warranty, based in Modderfontein.

Any advice on where I could find a supplier to assemble and supply the machine + warranty? Any takers here?

Also, suggestions on our choices would be appreciated!

Cheers, Rudi
 
Hey Rudi,

My advice is to keep it HP! You will not get a warranty if you mix and match components; so this rules out the Quad extremes and Raptors. No problem, since they can easily be replaced with a Dual Quad Xeon, and SAS disks. Also, not sure why you need three disks, rather go for two, or four, in RAID1/10. RAID5 and three may not be faster than two on RAID1....

What is your budget, I will be happy to supply a quote, but need a ballpark figure: It will be around R100 000?
 
Conrad,

Thanks for the advice mate. We just had one built & delivered with 2 x Intel Xeon 5430 2.66Mhz QuadCore's, HP 500Gb SATA HDD & Quadro FX3700 for about R40K.

We do not want the Quad Cores (SoidEdge only uses 2 cores) and rather prefer the Dual Core Processors, hence the choice of Core2Extreme. I cannot see why HP would not build it with Core2Extremes for us? Or the fastest Core2Duo available at least.

We need the RAID setup for disk access speed, but also for some redundancy. All models are stored on the SoldEdge server so disk capacity is not an issue, but speed & redundancy is.

The R40K machine has a Quadro FX 3700 in, so I agree that the FX 5800 would be more expensive, by how much is the question?

Cheers rudi
 
rudirautenbach said:
Conrad,

Thanks for the advice mate. We just had one built & delivered with 2 x Intel Xeon 5430 2.66Mhz QuadCore's, HP 500Gb SATA HDD & Quadro FX3700 for about R40K.

We do not want the Quad Cores (SoidEdge only uses 2 cores) and rather prefer the Dual Core Processors, hence the choice of Core2Extreme. I cannot see why HP would not build it with Core2Extremes for us? Or the fastest Core2Duo available at least.
Click to expand...



Core2Extremes have more cache, and are equivalent to the Xeons. HP may not install the C2E simply because it is not a supported configuration.

rudirautenbach said:
We need the RAID setup for disk access speed, but also for some redundancy. All models are stored on the SoldEdge server so disk capacity is not an issue, but speed & redundancy is.
Click to expand...

Raid1/10 will probably be faster than RAID5 (95% certainty). RAID5 is useful for data storage because you only lose 1/3 the RAW disk - RAID1/10 you lose 50%.
rudirautenbach said:
The R40K machine has a Quadro FX 3700 in, so I agree that the FX 5800 would be more expensive, by how much is the question?
Click to expand...

FX3700 = R8000
FX5800 = R35000


Of course that is for HP branded hardware, if you put something else in and it breaks, then HP may not cover the warranty....

Cheers rudi[/QUOTE]
 
My father is a civil engineer, and I had to build him a high-spec pc earlier this year:

Intel Extreme Series 'Skull Trail' motherboard
2 X Intel Xeon Quad Core E5420P (2.5 GHz) with Zalman CNPS7000C-Cu CPU Coolers
4 X Transcend 4 GB RegECC DDR2-667 FB-DIMM RAM Modules
2 X Seagate 1.5 TB Barracuda 7200.11 HDD's
Cooler Master RC-832 HAF 932 Tower Chassis
Cooler Master UCP RS-B00-AAAA 1100 W PSU
Leadtek NVIDIA Geforce GTX280
And standard apparel

It cost about R40 000, and gets some ridiculously high 3dmark vantage cpu score. Unfortunately the GTX280 cannot be soft-modded, but the 8800 could be softmodded to some FX5x00, so I think buying the FX 3700 won't give you the best performance for your money.

Go check out the web for relevant benchmark comparisons between an FX and a normal Geforce, soft-modded and not.

I'd highly recommend the Cooler Master High Airflow chassis, which is very silent considering the huge fans it has, it's a solid server chassis. The tiny chipset fan on the Skull Trail actually makes more noise than the entire case.
 
Catal said:
My father is a civil engineer, and I had to build him a high-spec pc earlier this year:

Intel Extreme Series 'Skull Trail' motherboard
2 X Intel Xeon Quad Core E5420P (2.5 GHz) with Zalman CNPS7000C-Cu CPU Coolers
4 X Transcend 4 GB RegECC DDR2-667 FB-DIMM RAM Modules
2 X Seagate 1.5 TB Barracuda 7200.11 HDD's
Cooler Master RC-832 HAF 932 Tower Chassis
Cooler Master UCP RS-B00-AAAA 1100 W PSU
Leadtek NVIDIA Geforce GTX280
And standard apparel

It cost about R40 000, and gets some ridiculously high 3dmark vantage cpu score. Unfortunately the GTX280 cannot be soft-modded, but the 8800 could be softmodded to some FX5x00, so I think buying the FX 3700 won't give you the best performance for your money.

Go check out the web for relevant benchmark comparisons between an FX and a normal Geforce, soft-modded and not.

I'd highly recommend the Cooler Master High Airflow chassis, which is very silent considering the huge fans it has, it's a solid server chassis. The tiny chipset fan on the Skull Trail actually makes more noise than the entire case.
Click to expand...

I like the setup, but why so expensive?
 
rudirautenbach said:
Eish. But now it makes sense.

Would you consider a Geforce card instead? I heard that the Geforce drivers are not considered stable enough for the kind of environment we are talking about?
Click to expand...

No! The GeForce series is not a supported configuration on the HP machine either. I worked at a mine, and the Autocad guy there upgraded his HP machine to a whitebox of a higher spec. Within a month he was asking for his old machine back....

HP, with an HP configuration is a good choice, for peace of mind, performance and reliability (although just about everybody on this forum will disagree :) )

Send me your email address and I will forward the pricelist to you so you can see what is available in the HP range....
 
rudirautenbach said:
I like the setup, but why so expensive?
Click to expand...

Well his current pc at the time cost like R25 000, and it could not handle the size of the designs he did, so he needed a machine with +16 GB of ram.

The Skull Trail was the only option seeing that the i7 could only do 12 GB max at the time, and a true server rig with a server mobo requires the use of non-standard and bulky chassis and PSU's.

He wanted two Quads to actually show one of his colleagues with a +R60 000 HP config that he can get a rig with much higher specs for much less, bragging rights basically.
 
rudirautenbach said:
So, if we decide to build a whitebox i7 system, what would the recommendations be in terms of mobo selection, if we want to use 2x i7's. Would the Skull Trail work?
Click to expand...

You could also look at Tyan motherboards. They make some killer workstation/server stuff.
 
For a workstation (used for commercial use) I would stick with branded equipment, and go for something with ECC memory support, look at something with a Nehalem X55 based CPU and disable two cores and hyperthreading
 
Have a look at this board in a white box dual Core i7 solution
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=gGozRAk0YWQCQtSA&templete=3
Cost should be around R6k.

If you are looking for something single socket
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=W8KQxy9yuW1KK0Vp
cost around R4k.
Then stick a Nehalem based Xeon in it and you will automatically get ECC ram support since the memory controller is on the CPU

the Intel Xeon X5570 2.93Ghz is the fastest I think.

Also, look into using Intel SSD's rather than the raptors. 2x Intel 160GB X-25M SSD's in RAID 1 or 0 will clobber any RAPTOR RAID 0 or RAID 5 array. especially in terms of multiple read-write requests. THe raptors will only beat it if their is only 1 data request running at a time, and that almost never happens in real life.
 
OK this is what we are thinking of settling for, and I would appreciate your views on our potential choice:

Intel Boxed Core i7 950 Processor - 3.06GHz Quad Core
ASUS P6T-Delux OC Palm ; with extra OC palm lcd for over-clocking
LG GH22LS10, 22x, Lightscribe, SATA, black+beige bezel
Samsung T240 , rose black + Touch of Color™ design , 24" Wide , 1
Coolermaster RC-932-KKN1 HAF932 , Windowed side panel , No psu (
Mushkin HP-995677 DDR3-1333 6x2048MB (12GB) CL7
HP FY946AA Quadro Fx1800 - for professional 3D applications
Seagate barracuda 7200.11 st31500341as , 1.5TB/1500gb, s-ata2 , 7
Intel SSDSA2MH160G1 SSD ( Intel X25-M Mainstream MLC series SATA
Microsoft Windows Ultimate 64BIT + Windows 7 Upgrade

The rig would be supplied by Prophecy, and total cost is around R38,293 inclusive of VAT.

We are thinking, if this rig cannot run SolidEdge models smoothly, then little else would :D

Cheers Rudi
 
rudirautenbach said:
OK this is what we are thinking of settling for, and I would appreciate your views on our potential choice:

Intel Boxed Core i7 950 Processor - 3.06GHz Quad Core
ASUS P6T-Delux OC Palm ; with extra OC palm lcd for over-clocking
LG GH22LS10, 22x, Lightscribe, SATA, black+beige bezel
Samsung T240 , rose black + Touch of Color™ design , 24" Wide , 1
Coolermaster RC-932-KKN1 HAF932 , Windowed side panel , No psu (
Mushkin HP-995677 DDR3-1333 6x2048MB (12GB) CL7
HP FY946AA Quadro Fx1800 - for professional 3D applications
Seagate barracuda 7200.11 st31500341as , 1.5TB/1500gb, s-ata2 , 7
Intel SSDSA2MH160G1 SSD ( Intel X25-M Mainstream MLC series SATA
Microsoft Windows Ultimate 64BIT + Windows 7 Upgrade

The rig would be supplied by Prophecy, and total cost is around R38,293 inclusive of VAT.

We are thinking, if this rig cannot run SolidEdge models smoothly, then little else would :D

Cheers Rudi
Click to expand...

I would stay away from the i7 and go for a Xeon in an MP board. It will allow for more memory and you can put another Xeon in to improve performance. ECC memory can also be used with a Xeon....
 
Conrad, I hear you.

We have a brand new rig with 2 x Xeons in an MP boardm with 8Gb ECC RAM. The machine is an absolute DOG with SolidEdge. We spent almost R50K on this machine, and it performs worse than an average quad core (single Intel CPU) with 8Gb DDR2 RAM. The machine is a branded HP unit with a good Quadro FX card in.

If we go for a higher-specced HP machine it would blow the budget :)
 
There's better performance to be had from building your own machine rather than buying a boxed unit. I've seen this too often in the performance of off-the-shelf HP machines.
 
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