On Sat, Jan 05, 2013 at 09:22:10AM +1100, Andrew Voumard wrote:
Can anyone offer any suggestions regarding the following requirement for a new motherboard/system. It is only being used for business, and mainly for compiling/running multiple back end Java, C+++ etc applications:
1. Gaming/overclocking not a priority at all. A $20 graphic card or onboard graphics should do fine.
2. Stability & performance are most important.
3. MUST be *certain* that it is possible to disable UEFI secure boot on the mobo, to hence run any Linux distro without any secure boot hassles.
4. Want to be able to install at least 64G of RAM on the mobo, to be able to run a big ramdisk for very fast I/O when repeatedly & concurrently building (fast rebuild times) & testing database intensive applications - all on ramdisk.
AFAIK, if you want 64GB then you need an X79 motherboard (all Z77 motherboards I've found only have 4 DIMM sockets, and support a maximum of 32GB). e.g. Asus P9X79 LE ($217) or P9X79 PRO ($319) or Sabertooth-X79 ($348) they all have 8 DIMM sockets and one serial port. amazingly, they all also have a ps/2 port. http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/P9X79_LE/#specifications http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/P9X79_PRO/#specifications http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/SABERTOOTH_X79/#specifica... i quite like the Sabertooth series boards - i've got a couple of AMD CPU Sabertooth 990FX boards here, high quality boards aimed at professionals rather than gamers (as their Rampage boards are)
5. 4 core CPU would be ideal (singlethreaded performance is important, so don't want to spread CPU grunt across too many cores, but a degree of application concurrency is important too for concurrent building/running applications in the background).
yeah, don't underestimate the usefulness of 'make -j' - multicore compile is really worthwhile. and multi-core CPUs won't sacrifice the speed of single cores (Speeds start from around 3.2Ghz these days and both amd and intel have similar-but-differently-trademarked features which will boost the speed of one core if the others are idle).
6. Want Intel (not AMD) based, probably i7 & proably Ivy Bridge.
X79 is for the LGA2011 socket, so your CPU choices would be Core i7-3820 ($295), i7-3930K ($579), or i7-3930X ($1076). the i7-3820 seems to best match your criteria, 4 cores at 3.6GHz (and TurboBoost to 3.8GHz) The 3930K is 6-core @ 3.2GHz (Turbo-Boost to 3.8GHz)
7. Either a PS/2 mouse port or 9 Serial port is essential (for the special mouse I use) - either onboard or via a PCI/e expansion board are ok.
8. Boot drive will be an SSD (probably 256G Crucial m4 or Samsung 840 Pro),
The OCZ Vector is getting excellent reviews too. $289 for 256GB.
backup drive probably a 1TB non raided WD RE4.
I would recommend two drives in RAID-1 (or btrfs for snapshot capability) for your backup/bulk-storage drive.
Cost is not the main criteria .. but I don't want to waste it either. A budget of 1500 would be good if it could get me what I want but can spend more if need be.
some rough figures for you to play around with: Sabertooth X79 $348 i7-3820 $295 SSD $300-ish 2 x WD RE4 $248 case, psu $200-ish or more, a good PSU is essential 4 x 16GB kits @ $80 = $320 2x8G sticks each, DDR3-1600 (faster would be more expensive) GT210 video card $26 ----- $1737 ----- It'd be hard to shave off much from that...a cheaper SSD maybe, and the extra WD RE4 adds $124. if you prefer Radeon GPUs (better GPL drivers than nvidia but worse proprietary drivers), a Radeon 5450 is $1 more. (i tend to put stuff like this in a spreadsheet with various options for m/b and cpu and play with it until i get the best bang for the buck...and then have a shopping list for MSY or whoever) if you can live with 32GB RAM then you could do it for under $1600 with the same CPU & M/B as above with only 32GB (but room to add another 32GB later) or with a Z77 motherboard and LGA1155 CPU for around $1500. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #404: Sysadmin accidentally destroyed pager with a large hammer.