$7500~$8000 Server Building Challenge

[Kursah]

redundant PSUs, you'd hate to lose all thise live data in case of power failure

On separate UPSes as well.

 

[xkm1948]

He already has a UPS. Plus his lab has backup generators if the grid fails. He simply couldn't risk having his -80C freezer full of bacteria/virus to thaw out.

 

[Solaris17]

I really REALLY dont mean to be a negative nancy. But it almost seems like you are trying to burn $8k for your buddy. a xeon and registered RAM with consumer PSUs in consumer cases with workstation boards that have OC options and GPUs that are meant to run 3 instances of crysis does not scream certified scientific peer review material to me.

 

[xkm1948]

I really REALLY dont mean to be a negative nancy. But it almost seems like you are trying to burn $8k for your buddy. a xeon and registered RAM with consumer PSUs in consumer cases with workstation boards that have OC options and GPUs that are meant to run 3 instances of crysis does not scream certified scientific peer review material to me.

Which is why I am posting here for help. Going with all server grade stuff will easily burn through the budget. He can get a Tesla K60 but that along would cost way more than TitanXp. See early discussions of this thread. Without the need of FP64 a consumer grade top of the line GPU is the best for protein modeling/docking analysis.

Registered RAM is the ONLY way for this setup to get 256GB.

Nope, no way in hell we are going to overclock this thing. Raw performance and stability is all we want.

As for PSU and chassis I am open to all recommendations.


Oh and btw this is a PC/WS hybrid. As I said earlier, he was not too happy with the quoted price for a not so good workstation from his institute's computer provider.

 

[toastem2004]

I'm sure I will take some heat for this suggestion, but if your friend is in need of hardware now, have y'all consider going with current AMD Opteron's? You could get a 2P board & (2) 2.3GHz 16-core CPU's. (approx $2200 for these parts) The workloads your talking about are where bulldozer/piledriver do very well at. More cores, more better!

Considering the workload and such, I can't fathom trying to run these workloads on consumer level hardware. I do agree that you could get by with the GPU computing processing on consumer hardware; you should really reconsider and look at proper server/workstation level motherboards and power supplies.

Lastly, It might be wise to wait till AMD launches their server ZEN parts. Then you could possibly pick up current intel or amd hardware cheaper?

Just my 2 cents.

 

[xkm1948]

I'm sure I will take some heat for this suggestion, but if your friend is in need of hardware now, have y'all consider going with current AMD Opteron's? You could get a 2P board & (2) 2.3GHz 16-core CPU's. (approx $2200 for these parts) The workloads your talking about are where bulldozer/piledriver do very well at. More cores, more better!

Considering the workload and such, I can't fathom trying to run these workloads on consumer level hardware. I do agree that you could get by with the GPU computing processing on consumer hardware; you should really reconsider and look at proper server/workstation level motherboards and power supplies.

Lastly, It might be wise to wait till AMD launches their server ZEN parts. Then you could possibly pick up current intel or amd hardware cheaper?

Just my 2 cents.

1. Nope. Some other lab did compariosn of genome assembly with different CPUs. The IPC of AMD's older gen CPU just suck ass. Even Sandybridge era Intel CPU beats AMD Opteron to death.

2. Any recommendations? This will be a PC/WS hybrid project. Using top of the line consumer grade stuff is because most server grade stuff are SO DAMN EXPENSIVE.

3. Exactly what I am planning. Using X99 is set since it is a mature system. Will be waiting for price to drop on X99 related parts for sure.


To recap:

1. This is more a top of the line PC built with a server CPU.
2. Abosulutely no overclocking
3. Vast amount of RAM
4. 24*7*365 online NOT REQUIRED

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

You could probably reduce the price a fair bit and get the same or more cores with a dual socket Xeon. This eases the burden on your dimm prices substantially by giving you twice as many dimm slots, and can even get you more GPU space.

Also, that WS board has a max single socket ram capacity of 128GB.

 

[xkm1948]

You could probably reduce the price a fair bit and get the same or more cores with a dual socket Xeon. This eases the burden on your dimm prices substantially by giving you twice as many dimm slots, and can even get you more GPU space.

Also, that WS board has a max single socket ram capacity of 128GB.

Good idea. I will look into some of the dual socket ones.

Also, the max RAM capacity should be determined from the CPU, not MoBo. ASUS said my Sabertooth X99 can only take 64GB. I have 128GB installed and running at DDR4-3000 with no problem at all.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

Good idea. I will look into some of the dual socket ones.

Also, the max RAM capacity should be determined from the CPU, not MoBo. ASUS said my Sabertooth X99 can only take 64GB. I have 128GB installed and running at DDR4-3000 with no problem at all.

And what happens when you stuff 256gb in and it doesn't work?

When it comes to registered and the variants of registered DIMMS, there is motherboard circuitry and BIOS support necessary.

 

[xkm1948]

Welp most dual socket X99 does not have NvME M2 SSD support. Also no USB3.1 support. So no go.

And what happens when you stuff 256gb in and it doesn't work?

Return 128GB. Keep 128GB. He can get by with 128GB, for now.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

Welp most dual socket X99 does not have NvME M2 SSD support. Also no USB3.1 support. So no go.



Return 128GB. Keep 128GB. He can get by with 128GB, for now.

M.2 ssd is a waste of time in this use case. You want a SAS solution most likely. Why is 3.1 necessary? If you need 3.1 speeds, you should be considering thunderbolt.

This feels far more like a "i have $10k and want to spend it" than "i need to actually get work done" build.

 

[toastem2004]

I agree with Dippyskoodlez on both points. Going with a 2P system will help both now and in future by allowing even more ram to be added.

Also if USB 3.1 is an absolute must, an add-in card would easily remedy that.

Edit: What were the system specs of the quote from the vendor? What are some of the actual applications that will be used?

 

[EarthDog]

Alright here is a preliminary list I just put up:

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2699V4, Broadwell-E 22core 44 threads
Cooling: Noctua D15
MoBo: ASUS X99E-WS/10G
RAM: Samsung 256GB Registered DRAM(32GB Load Reduced DDR4 * 8)
SSD: Intel 600P 1TB
Storage: WD Gold 8TB *2 in RAID1
GPU: Nvidia TitanXp
Monitor: ASUS PA328Q Open for suggestions
PSU: Corsair HX1000i Open for suggestions
Case: Fractal Design Define XL R2 Open for suggestions
Keyboard+Mouse: Good mechanical NON RGB back-lit keyboard. Good mouse
VR: HTC Vive



My reason of going Broadwell-EP. This is a pretty mature system already. It would be hard to tell how long it will take before Napless iron out most of little bugs.

Why a 1KW PSU?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

650W would be plenty.. get a EVGA Supernova G3 650W.

Id also separate the OS SSD (either a smaller M.2 or 2.5" SSD), then get your fast storage. But with that many HDDs, you need to watch how the board splits up the PCIe lanes for the SATA and your PCIe NVME based Intel 600B.................. If that R1 array you have there is, more or less, cold storage, I like the idea of a NAS (depending on how large his datasets are and how quickly/frequently he needs to move data from it to the fast SSD.