Hi everyone,
I'm a PhD student working in GIS and remote sensing and want to build a new entry level home workstation. This will be my first build and would appreciate some advice. So here we go:
Approximate Purchase Date: hopefully before christmas, but there is no rush.
Budget Range: 1000-1200$ CAD
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Satellite image processing, GIS, physics simulation, raw image processing (from DSLR camera), office work/word processing (publish or die!), maybe some gaming.
Are you buying a monitor: No (I already have two)
Parts to Upgrade: Everything except peripherals (my current build is 6+ years old...). I also have a 1TB external eSATA HDD that I will keep for backups and extra storage.
Do you need to buy OS: No, I will be using Linux exclusively
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: NCIX.ca or Newegg.ca (I'm open to suggestions)
Location: Quebec, Canada
Parts Preferences: I'm looking at a build based on the AMD FX-8350 for two reasons: price and the ability to use ECC ram. I'm looking for speed, stability and reliability, but my budget is a bit limited.
Overclocking: No
SLI or Crossfire: No
Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080 and 1280x1024
Additional Comments: I will be doing heavy multitasking, simultaneaously running a GIS software, a remote sensing software, an office suite and and a web browser. Some of the software used are multithreaded, but not all of them, at least one satellite image processing software uses OpenCL and I want to experiment with OpenCL programming myself for simulations.
And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: My current home station is an old Athlon 64 based system with 1Gb of Ram and an old Radeon X700 video card. The case is 10 years old and makes some anoying vibration noises. It's still quite usable for some basic tasks, Archlinux with XFCE kept it alive and surpisingly snappy, but it's clearly showing its age. The lab at my university has some workstations available, but the time sharing can get complicated and I need a new home machine anyways.
So here is what I had in mind for the build:
CPU: AMD FX-8350 8 Core Processor
Motherboard: ASUS M5A99FX Pro R2.0
RAM: Kingston KVR16E11K4/16 16GB ECC unbuffered
SSD: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD
Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7770 OC 1020MHZ 1GB
PSU: Seasonic G Series 550W ATX 80PLUS Gold Modular
Case: Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced ATX Mid Tower
Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24X SATA DVD Writer
Card reader: Nmedia C98 5.25IN Internal Media Bay With Flash Card Reader
Wireless Card: ASUS PCE-N15 300Mbps 802.11B/G/N Wireless PCI-E Network Adapter
Admittedly the wireless card, flash card reader and optical drives are a bit of a coin toss, but I put a lot of thought (maybe too much) in the other components.
Maybe the ECC RAM is a bit overkill, but for the price difference I believe it's worth it, especially if I wan't to have reliable results for my PhD work. It's one source of uncertainty that I won't have to care about. The Asus motherboard I chose supports Unbuffered ECC, but if anyone knows of other MB that supports ECC and has similar features I'm open to suggestions.
I chose the AMD video card over Nvidia because they seem to have better performances for GPGPU. From what I read, the Nvidia gaming drivers are a bit crippled in this area.
Finally, I'm a bit hesitant with the new Samsung 840 SSD, seeing that they introduced their new homemade controller with this drive. Does anybody have any experience with it? I saw a few interesting benchmarks, and the 830 seemed to be really reliable, but I'm a bit unsure about the long term reliability of this one (and I guess only time will tell).
So, any comment/advice/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
I'm a PhD student working in GIS and remote sensing and want to build a new entry level home workstation. This will be my first build and would appreciate some advice. So here we go:
Approximate Purchase Date: hopefully before christmas, but there is no rush.
Budget Range: 1000-1200$ CAD
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Satellite image processing, GIS, physics simulation, raw image processing (from DSLR camera), office work/word processing (publish or die!), maybe some gaming.
Are you buying a monitor: No (I already have two)
Parts to Upgrade: Everything except peripherals (my current build is 6+ years old...). I also have a 1TB external eSATA HDD that I will keep for backups and extra storage.
Do you need to buy OS: No, I will be using Linux exclusively
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: NCIX.ca or Newegg.ca (I'm open to suggestions)
Location: Quebec, Canada
Parts Preferences: I'm looking at a build based on the AMD FX-8350 for two reasons: price and the ability to use ECC ram. I'm looking for speed, stability and reliability, but my budget is a bit limited.
Overclocking: No
SLI or Crossfire: No
Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080 and 1280x1024
Additional Comments: I will be doing heavy multitasking, simultaneaously running a GIS software, a remote sensing software, an office suite and and a web browser. Some of the software used are multithreaded, but not all of them, at least one satellite image processing software uses OpenCL and I want to experiment with OpenCL programming myself for simulations.
And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: My current home station is an old Athlon 64 based system with 1Gb of Ram and an old Radeon X700 video card. The case is 10 years old and makes some anoying vibration noises. It's still quite usable for some basic tasks, Archlinux with XFCE kept it alive and surpisingly snappy, but it's clearly showing its age. The lab at my university has some workstations available, but the time sharing can get complicated and I need a new home machine anyways.
So here is what I had in mind for the build:
CPU: AMD FX-8350 8 Core Processor
Motherboard: ASUS M5A99FX Pro R2.0
RAM: Kingston KVR16E11K4/16 16GB ECC unbuffered
SSD: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD
Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7770 OC 1020MHZ 1GB
PSU: Seasonic G Series 550W ATX 80PLUS Gold Modular
Case: Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced ATX Mid Tower
Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24X SATA DVD Writer
Card reader: Nmedia C98 5.25IN Internal Media Bay With Flash Card Reader
Wireless Card: ASUS PCE-N15 300Mbps 802.11B/G/N Wireless PCI-E Network Adapter
Admittedly the wireless card, flash card reader and optical drives are a bit of a coin toss, but I put a lot of thought (maybe too much) in the other components.
Maybe the ECC RAM is a bit overkill, but for the price difference I believe it's worth it, especially if I wan't to have reliable results for my PhD work. It's one source of uncertainty that I won't have to care about. The Asus motherboard I chose supports Unbuffered ECC, but if anyone knows of other MB that supports ECC and has similar features I'm open to suggestions.
I chose the AMD video card over Nvidia because they seem to have better performances for GPGPU. From what I read, the Nvidia gaming drivers are a bit crippled in this area.
Finally, I'm a bit hesitant with the new Samsung 840 SSD, seeing that they introduced their new homemade controller with this drive. Does anybody have any experience with it? I saw a few interesting benchmarks, and the 830 seemed to be really reliable, but I'm a bit unsure about the long term reliability of this one (and I guess only time will tell).
So, any comment/advice/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.