New system. Need recommendations to complete. Ordering Soon.

[ForesterGIS]

^+1. Micro has it on sale for $200


@OP: You really should have a VERY GOOD backup plan. RAID WILL NOT protect you in case of virus damage,etc. With your budget, you could easily get a NAS like solution for back up. Any ways, +1 for SSDs.

Hey shadow. thanks again for your input. Any thoughts on my Motherboard choice. I thought the SAS would be a good option, but I may need to skip them and add an SSD at the end of the year. Are there any other ASUS or equivalent boards that have 6 or more SATA connectors and the other specs that the P6T7 with the exception of the 7 PCIe slots ( I don't really have a need for that number of slots). From what I have read SLI is as many Vid Cards as I will need.

THanks again.

 

[Pauliedc]

Forester, I just purchased this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188039

Arrives tomorrow. Just like other brands, there are folks who praise this board, and others who have issues with it, but compare for yourself to be sure. One thing I like is that most of the time EVGA has great customer service. I'm also guessing (as a noob to this) that I *should* have less problems using an EVGA board with two EVGA video cards. That may have nothing to do with it, we'll see!

BTW, there's a Newegg coupon that expires tonight that got me an additional $15 off the board, total was $264.99 delivered. Code is EMCLVLN55.

Speaking of deals, I just got (today) the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 video card from Dell Small Business of all places, for $113.99 delivered (plus $9.36 tax for me). That's the lowest price I've ever seen on that card. The Egg has it for $154.99 right now after rebates. Here's the link which has the Dell link to use (just don't type Dell into your browser) plus the two stackable codes you'll need:

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=0&t=1437893

I think I saw July 9th on there for expiration too. I know it's last minute, but to be honest, these deals have repeated themselves a couple of times since I starting buying parts in early March, so once you have a plan, more deals should surface.

 

[ForesterGIS]

Wow Thanks for the information, coupons, and links. I will check it out.

 

[Shadow703793]

From what I have read SLI is as many Vid Cards as I will need.

Can you explain more? You can SLI only up to 3 cards and CrossFire up to 2. The Dual GPU CrossFire is QuadFire.

As for your motherboard question, this board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128375
has 8 SATA ports. It's good board and I have used it on a few builds.

Also, again, with such a large budget, you could easily get a very good (true hardware) PCIe RAID card for the HDDs. It's ~$500 for a top of the line RAID card.


Also have you considered a 2P build? A good Core i7 P2 can be built for under $2k.

 

[ForesterGIS]

From what I have read SLI is as many Vid Cards as I will need.

Can you explain more? You can SLI only up to 3 cards and CrossFire up to 2. The Dual GPU CrossFire is QuadFire.


In other words, I will start out with a two card SLI Invidia setup and if the need arrises add a third card for tri-sli OR use a crossfire equivalent. I previous system had an Nvidia workstation card with Nview, but it became outdated after 4 years and I replaced it with an ATI Radeon HD 3800 series card. I don't like Catalyst as much as I liked Nview (software for managing display settings).





As for your motherboard question, this board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128375
has 8 SATA ports. It's good board and I have used it on a few builds.





Yeah, I need to look into to just adding another raid card. All of the research that I have done says that the P6T7 is a great, stable board. It just has some PCI-e features that I might not use.




Also, again, with such a large budget, you could easily get a very good (true hardware) PCIe RAID card for the HDDs. It's ~$500 for a top of the line RAID card.


Also have you considered a 2P build? A good Core i7 P2 can be built for under $2k.

I need somethings cleared up. My software (GIS) utilizes single core only and relies heavily on processor speed. I have looked at the Xeon i7, but for the money the processors are slower. Is there a formula for calculating processor speed or is it based on CPU value?

Plus you have to buy two processors. What do I keep missing.

Thanks for your time and input.

 

[Shadow703793]

^Ahh...any chance that you can get a better software with multi-threading for the GIS?

 

[ForesterGIS]

^Ahh...any chance that you can get a better software with multi-threading for the GIS?

Nope. Too much invested in software and education on using software. My hopes is that the software company will add in this functionality. It is a strong possibility.