What Does A $16,000+ PC Look Like, Anyway?

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I just priced a Apple Mac Pro with dual Quad Core CPUs, 32GB of 800 MHZ memory, 3 - 1TB drivers, 1 - 300GB 10,000 RPM drive, the highest end video card Apple offers, 2 - DVD drives, and a few other things with a 27 inch (I think) display, and it came to $27,500.

The machine above is almost half the price as the Mac Pro, with twice the CPU power. Pretty cheap really, considering.

Omegaman
 
All this talk about using Core i7 Xeons. If they did that, along with the required motherboard for them, this would more than likely be a $50,000 computer instead of just $16,000. All these Intel lovers think money is no object or that Intel prices are comparable to AMD's prices. Intel has to make that extra money so they can continue pay off vendors to not carry competitive products or at least artificially delay their AMD based products a little bit.
 
[citation][nom]Luscious[/nom]I've been building water-cooling rigs for many years. I see 3 problems with this setup:Running 4 cooling blocks in series is going to create a ton of back pressure, and that particular pump on the Koolance, while quiet, is not a very powerful one.90 degree barbs are a big no-no for a watercooling setup, they create even more back pressure making the pump work harder.You never place a reservior at the bottom. It should be at the top of the case where it is the highest component in the water loop so as to minimize the formation of air bubbles in the other components.I don't know how well their setup runs, but I would be very surprised if it goes for a year without something breaking somewhere.[/citation]

I was going to say the same thing about the 4 cpu's in a single loop. That's just begging for trouble. Soon as I saw pic 14 with the tubing being run I had to make this post on it.
 
[citation][nom]Omegaman69[/nom]I just priced a Apple Mac Pro with dual Quad Core CPUs, 32GB of 800 MHZ memory, 3 - 1TB drivers, 1 - 300GB 10,000 RPM drive, the highest end video card Apple offers, 2 - DVD drives, and a few other things with a 27 inch (I think) display, and it came to $27,500.The machine above is almost half the price as the Mac Pro, with twice the CPU power. Pretty cheap really, considering.Omegaman[/citation]

You are forgetting Apple tax and the smug feeling you can get from having a half eaten Apple on the side of your case. That pretty much doubles the price of any decent computer. 😛
 
[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Who knows, maybe the new owner of that rig will stop by and tell us exactly what he's doing with it now![/citation]

I hope he doesn't, now. This rig just got torn apart by the comments in here. I agree that it is a sweet setup, but for $16k there could have been a lot of improvements.
 
I hope he does come on here and reads these comments. Then he could print them all out, take them to Puget, and demand a rebate for screwing him.
 
What I can't believe is apparent lack of attention to detial in the workmanship. For $16K they could have at least run the fan wiring through some sheathing to clean it up. As it is it looks terrible.
 
LOL!!! It seems like a gamer PC with a cr*ppy video card and low speed memory. And WHY THE H*LL would they put 2 GHz cpus in this thing? Seriously I think I'll go buy a farrari and put a ford escort engine in it! LOL! I would have ordered it with 1066 or faster memory (wouldn't have cost too much more) and if you are gonna spend that much why not install 3.2Ghz CPUs?
 
Why only 2.0 ghz quads? Why would I possibly need 32gb memory? Why would I buy an ultimate pc that only has one 8800gts? And why so much enthusiasm for the cooling? This sounds like they made a big computer just to have a reason to put in so much hoses and fans(are 9x120mm fans supposed to sound quiet?)?
 
Oh, I forgot to add, Why would I possibly need so much 1tb drives? It seems like a waste since nobody will ever fill all those up? Too much junk in there to cool down!
 
He's almost certainly going to be doing audio production. That's why it's so important to have that much CPU power, AND super quite. Digital audio workstations make great use of multi threading, and can be quite the memory and processor hogs. For example, I know of a sample libary that comes on it's own hard drive.
 
And why is the reservoir at the bottom? It wont be as quiet as they are saying it is if the reservoir is creatng so much pressure against the gravity flow. It will be forced to work harder than 30% , thus creating a louder machine.
 
to all of you who are questioning the processors and video cards:

This is obviously a workstation for 3d rendering or video encoding. The hardware choices made were fine. A quad opty setup with buttloads of registered ram is as good as it gets in this type of setup. If you don't understand why only 2ghz quads were used, and "slow ram" or just a single 8800gts,...go learn something, and stop posting ignorant comments. The ultimate objective in computing is not to attain maximum Crysis framerates.

The problem with it is the POS cooling system that they're bragging about. Everything is wrong with it. A single loop with 4 cpus, and the most restrictive radiator is just plain stupid. They should be using unrestrictive cpu blocks, and at least 2 separate loops. This all could have been put in a case which would house 2 3x120 rads internally along with some real pumps. A huge premium was obviously paid for this quiet cooling, and the buyer DID NOT get what he paid for. This company obviously has no business selling water cooled components, and should be embarrassed to show off this stupid attempt.
 
This is obviously a workstation for 3d rendering or video encoding
Click to expand...
8800gts is not that good a card for 3d rendering. If it were fo 3d rendering, the company(if they are smart enough) would have chosen a quadro card or ati fire, which specialize in 3d rendering.
 
[citation][nom]dark_lord69[/nom]LOL!!! It seems like a gamer PC with a cr*ppy video card and low speed memory. And WHY THE H*LL would they put 2 GHz cpus in this thing? Seriously I think I'll go buy a farrari and put a ford escort engine in it! LOL! I would have ordered it with 1066 or faster memory (wouldn't have cost too much more) and if you are gonna spend that much why not install 3.2Ghz CPUs?[/citation]

Who said its a gamer PC? Like theres any game that can take advantage of all these cores. You're ignorant to say the least. Good luck finding 1066 ECC registered ramsticks and 3.2 SERVER cpus. The guy running this is definitely NOT planning on any gaming.

Definitely not a web server, he'd have used SSD for superior IO. Definitely not CAD/CAM/3D rendering, he'd have used a FireGL/Quadro instead of a mainstream GPU.
 
For the guys who think "3D rendering = leet vid card" you have no clue what we're talking about. True 3D rendering is doing a frame by frame render using ray tracing of complex environments with multihit light sources. Current video cards CAN NOT do ray tracing, the amount of physics calculations for a single ray is rather overwhelming, now multiply that by a few hundred and it will choke any system in existance.

Like what has been said, this guy is obviously wanting real-time or near-real-time rendering of this product, probably heavy into 3D effects and video processing. For that you need insane amounts of parallel computational power and large amounts of memory. And why the slower memory? Because ECC Registered memory is a wee bit different then regular memory. For one you can fit alot more of it on the same memory channels then regular memory, also the memory will report and correct if there is an error. Notice the multiple memory banks spread across the boards, that requires registered memory to do, your run of the mill cheap consumer RAM won't be capable of that.

The hardware in the system is perfectly fine for what its doing, if anything the face that he's going to be using a 32 bit Windows Server OS (I hope to god he's actually installing a 64bit version of linux on it) will cripple his hardware. The cooling needs some serious reworking, either dual resevours, or a single double-bay type. TWO high end pumps running two seperate loops over the CPUs is a must. And the 90 degree fittings gotta go, unless its absolutley necessary. Its looking like this guy is needing this system in a regular office environment, which is understandable if its for a business that does GFX work.
 
A few of the liquid cooling guys are forgetting one thing that makes this setup work, gravity. With the way the radiator is mounted the only work the pump has to do is to keep the system flowing up through the CPU blocks. The pump, a siphon effect, and the weight of the coolant in the radiator will keep the coolant flowing to the top through the CPU coolers. The bottom of the system is the best place for the pump. Sadly this places the reserve there, which should go near the top of the system. I do agree that a 2 manifold setup to split into 4 lines for parallel cooling may have been a better option, but ruins the siphon. I’m not sure if this is what the builders intended with this setup or not, but it may explain why they made some of the choices they made.
 
No question this is overpriced, but I'd imagine that before some of you say "I can do better for half the price, etc" remember the client probably has very specific reasons for all the customizations as they are. As was mentioned, it's doubtful anyone puts down that money not knowing what they are getting. From the components it's obviously not an enthusiast looking for bragging rights, and for a corporation the $16,000 is another cost of doing business - you'd pay that price for a good server too, and I'm sure all of us could construct a similar server-like machine for much less, but that's not the point. It's the same reason Quadro's and FireGL's are so much more than Geforces and Radeons for similar rendering performance (outside of their special niche, of course, which is precisely my point).

I'm a little at a loss to explain the seemingly non-forward-looking liquid setup too, but if I had to guess, the no-no's mentioned apply mostly to a majority of liquid setups focusing on higher flow rates to maximize heat transfer on overclocked CPU's - I just can't imagine the guys doing the mod work NOT knowing this.

Here the cpu's are at or near stock clocks and need only ADEQUATE cooling for the job. They are minimizing the noise with a single, low-flow pump running apparently at 30% duty. Right-angle connectors are a poor choice in general but for slow enough flow it's probably ok and keeps the exterior cleaner looking. Massive parallel airflow with super-slow fans over the radiator do the real heat removing anyway. One line on four CPU's should be ok as well - after several minutes the equilibrium temperature of the water is probably not THAT much different from the front to the back to make a difference on that last CPU. They quote 45 degrees under load so it does what it needs to and aside from the (very legitimate) possibility of pump failure what's to worry about?

Why they'd put the reservoir on the bottom, though, that's a mystery to me too. Even if the bubbling issue were considered a minimal factor there seems no real design purpose to NOT put it on the top as has been suggested by Luscious.

Regarding parts and labor, personally, I'd imagine some redundancy in pumps and PSU should be imperative on such a system, as well as a longer warranty - but labor is lifetime and while one year on the parts seems stingy a lot changes in one year for PC parts anyway. This isn't the 80's after all.

Also remember Puget is not a fly-by-night operation and has to maintain a good reputation in front of other boutique builders, so if they hose it (no pun intended) on their low-volume/high-margin (and higher-profile) products like this they're not going to be around for long. Time will tell if their judgment should be trusted on this one.
 
1st: This has got to be the worst spent 16K ever in the history
of money spending.. First it's already far behind current technology,
he could have gotten a skulltrail board or even waited for a skulltrail
version of an i7 board to come along and it would smoke this thing for days.

2nd: Those 4 processors dont run hot enough at 2.0ghz to warrant an expensive water cooling setup to be custom made for this application. He could have used 4 single heatsinks of good quality such as the one of the Zalman 9700 series or other variants, and been virtually silent and still remained cool.

3rd: WTF?? 32gb of ddr2 ecc. Slow slow and slower!! plus the processors running at only 2.0ghz..he couldve had two intel core 2 quad extremes in there running flat out at 4.0ghz, each..that wouldv'e been some processing power and that would've warranted the cooling solution.

4th🙁9) 120mm fans is not quiet, he could saved a ton of money just leaving the case side off and custom fitting a box fan to the side of his case, saving thousands and thousands of dollars and only running it on low speed which = low noise, hell I've got a Lasko 12" fan spinning right now on its highest level under my desk and its barely audible!!

5th: Actually the biggest thing I find strange is that the buyer spent most of his money on customization and of course Pugets Gigantic build cost, over top of the parts cost. He probably has 5,000-6,000 in parts there, the rest is just profit for Puget. Not that I have a problem with someone making a profit on quality goods, but in my opinion they couldve done much better for much less. Lets not forget the dangers of water cooling a rig of this cost and importance. One loose hose, and that thing will be 16,000 dollars of charred silicon, and plastic..

PROPs>>>>> Good choice in case selection.
 
Why would you go to the trouble of water-cooling all that - then air cool the noisiest component in the system - the video card
 
So what was the result? We didn't even get to see a pic of a db meter pressed against the case or at a distance of 6" for example. Still, if you run a dvd drive it's gonna hum and I don't care HOW good the case mod was. Someone needs to go to a rock concert, and seriously do a touch of damage to their ears if computer component noise is that big of an annoyance so they can desensitize themselves.

Well, since I was a little annoyed at the well overpriced SSD drives, here's something else to annoy me in this booming economy. Rich people with too much money on their hands.
 
[citation][nom]dragoncyber[/nom]1st: This has got to be the worst spent 16K ever in the history of money spending..[/citation]

etc...

Strong statement, considering that casinos and cocaine exist.


Lots of businesses spend lots of money on lots of things that could likely be nearly duplicated with some resourcefulness and ingenuity - at least to an outsider. Until we know exactly what this is for this amounts to speculation through the eyes of a home enthusiast. Ten years ago this argument was made about the worth of SCSI drives, fiber-channel interfaces, heck, Sun servers which cost 20X what a PC would, etc, but enterprises bought them for special reasons.

"Those 4 processors dont run hot enough at 2.0ghz to warrant an expensive water cooling setup to be custom made for this application."

Good point - but while maybe not individually, and possibly not together, but I'm sure a fanless heat sink design may have been considered too. Who knows? There must have been a REASON they went with liquid-based CPU cooling.

"WTF?? 32gb of ddr2 ecc. Slow slow and slower!! plus the processors running at only 2.0ghz..he couldve had two intel core 2 quad extremes in there running flat out at 4.0ghz, each..that wouldv'e been some processing power and that would've warranted the cooling solution"

Again, specific design may have called for 16 cores with less emphasis on clock speed. Memory capacity and reliability was probably more important than bandwidth as well, and 32GB of ECC REGISTERED ram is hard to come by in all clock speeds (667 being more common). Remember, with 32GB, you WILL get a memory error on average of ONCE A DAY.

The cooling solution had to be quieted down as well, as the article said - as a whole it only performs adequately for the CPU's (45 under load), it doesn't do a magnificent job. C2Quads would require beefier pumps and better flow and have been much more audible.

"(9) 120mm fans is not quiet, he could saved a ton of money just leaving the case side off and custom fitting a box fan to the side of his case, saving thousands and thousands of dollars and only running it on low speed which = low noise, hell I've got a Lasko 12" fan spinning right now on its highest level under my desk and its barely audible!!"

Reading the article thoroughly would help you not make such a contradictory, uninformed remark. It is specified that they are using a voltage regulator to move the fans at the slowest possible speed before they stop spinning altogether. I've done this very same thing with 16 glued-together 120mm fans on a rack with AV equipment long ago. Before that I used a window fan on very low setting - the 16 fans were incomparably quieter - sure, my fan may have been louder than yours, but very slow, brushless DC fans really don't make noise.

Also, FYI focus on 'quiet' usually means audio editing is involved. AC desk fans, no matter how quiet, generate a large, detectable 60Hz signal on analog sound equipment. Don't believe me? Put it next to an old CRT at, say, 85Hz if you have one and watch how much the screen flickers. Think the internals in the case won't see that? DC fans don't do that. A Very large DC fan COULD do what you said, but again, we don't work for this company, so without the facts, speculation is just smoke-blowing.

"Lets not forget the dangers of water cooling a rig of this cost and importance. One loose hose, and that thing will be 16,000 dollars of charred silicon, and plastic.."

Absolutely. Let's not forget the dangers to personnel in a foundry if a smelting pool breaks and dumps slag all over the refinery. I'd imagine there are safeguards to something this insignificant as a hose coming loose (Puget wouldn't want to HAVE to honor that warranty). People make far more precise pieces of machinery costing millions of dollars with far more precariously crafted components with fail-safe measures in place. I'm sure someone has thought of a way to solidly seal a 1/2" fluid hose for indefinite use.

Sure, I agree with you this is overpriced and Puget is making a mint off the system regardless of its specific application, but hospitals charge like $5 an aspirin to insurance companies too. The scale of income to corporate entities doesn't apply to individuals, and without all the facts we don't know why this money was thrown at Puget. Someone should find that out first before questioning their decisions.
 
[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]For the guys who think "3D rendering = leet vid card" you have no clue what we're talking about. True 3D rendering is doing a frame by frame render using ray tracing of complex environments with multihit light sources. Current video cards CAN NOT do ray tracing,[/citation]A bit wrong here. They can, and faster than CPUs.
You are right considering that there is not commercial software available.[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]... And why the slower memory? Because ECC Registered memory is a wee bit different then regular memory. For one you can fit alot more of it on the same memory channels then regular memory, also the memory will report and correct if there is an error.[/citation]That is a mith. Servers and workstation buyers are heavy milked by HP by believing that mith. One dual socket with two i7 with 24 Gb of DDR3 1600 triple channel, would outperform that memory by a largue distance (I concede that probably there is no a motherboard available yet for multisocket i7, but you can put 4 Core Quad with DDR3 on some servers).

That problem with ECC/against DDR3 memory can be solved with a good bios. you loose some performance, but still outperforms any ECC by far distance, and if you get some bits wrong, in ray tracing you will never see the difference, given a good checking algorithm that you need anyway.[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom] Notice the multiple memory banks spread across the boards, that requires registered memory to do, your run of the mill cheap consumer RAM won't be capable of that.[/citation]Count the memory slots on I7.
 
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