Need advice on hardware? Ask questions and share your opinions here.
#23560 by Ernie Bayles
Fri May 04, 2007 2:49 pm
I find myself in need of a new workstation in sort of a hurry. Anyone out there bought anything recently that they actually had time to research?

I'm going with Neil's recommended basics:

Duo core Intel or the comparable Athlon

2 gig ram

256 meg video with 2 dvi outputs

no bells, no whistles, can be noisy.

TIA

Ernie
#23595 by Neil Blanchard
Mon May 07, 2007 7:27 am
Greetings Ernie,

I would add that you could easily get a 512MB video card, or get a motherboard with dual PCIe video slots, and use two 256MB video cards. The latter might actually save you some money.

To address the noise issue, you need to use a case with the best possible air flow, with low restriction fan grills. Just about the best case at this moment, is the Antec Solo. It also has dampened side panels, excellent wire management, and a unique hard drive suspension option. The stock fan is reasonably quiet on it lowest speed, or, you can replace it for an even quieter machine. If you want to better safeguard your hard drives, by keeping their temperature down, you can use one (or two) very quiet 92mm fans in front for this.

The power supply is a source of noise: if you get a SeaSonic S12 model, or a Fortron Source "Green" power supply, you will get a very efficient and quiet power supply. 300-400 watts all you need -- more than double what a computer is likely to use.

The CPU heatsink/fan is a critical source of noise: the stock units are typically quite noisy. Good heatsinks have a lot more surface area, and work better with less air flow, and they use larger fans (typically 92-120mm) that can shift plenty of air while running slowly enough to be be barely audible.

The motherboard northbridge heatsink, and the video card are two other sources of noise: if the motherboard is not already using a passive heatsink, you can usually swap it out with an inexpensive unit, very easily. Video cards can be had with stock passive cooling, and this is the way I would go.

dual DVI passive video cards

The last source of noise is the hard drive: Samsung and Western Digital are the quietest, at the moment, and the Solo can help deal with any vibration that some units may have, with it's suspension.

In answer to a similar question on the DBUG Forum, I gave this answer, and since it may be of help, I'll post it here, too:

I have a dual core 64bit machine with both 32bit and 64bit Windows XP Pro. The only reason to get 64bit would be to make use of 4GB (or more) of RAM, and it has the downside of a dearth of compatible software firewalls, and "funky" plotter drivers. It works fine for most things, but most of the time, I boot to 32bit.

I have 2GB of RAM, which is a good amount to have -- if you need to upgrade to Vista later, you will want to be able to upgrade to even more, since Vista takes at least 2X as much RAM to run.

As for the Intel vs AMD question, the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU's are the best performing. The AMD's have slightly lower power consumption at idle, and they can cost less -- and they are certainly very fast, as well. But if you are doing any heavy duty rendering, video editing, etc., then the Core 2 Duo will be faster.

They make two basic versions of the Core 2 Duo: one with 2MB of L2 cache/core, and one with 4MB of L2 cache/core. The clockspeed is the other variable, and they all can be overclocked to a very high degree, if you are so inclined. Faster RAM is only marginal in benefit, unless you overclock.

Here's the thread on the DataCAD Forum where I am trying to keep things up to date:

http://forum.datacad.com/viewtopic.php?t=400
#23602 by Ernie Bayles
Mon May 07, 2007 8:22 am
Thanks Neil

I spent some time over the weekend getting back up to speed on this stuff and decided to buy a system from "IBUYPOWER"--a company that doesn't inspire confidence when you visit their website, but I bought a box from them several years ago when they were just starting out and was very happy with their service--I had a defective MB which their tech support basically allowed me to swap out (having little experience inside the case) over the phone so that I didn't have to ship it back to CA. I'm still using that computer today.

The new box will be an AMD 5600+ in a NZXT "Tank" case with the Gigabyte M55sli-s4 which has two PCIe slots. I opted for the 512 mb EVGA Nvidia 7300 gt (maybe not the best choice, but I couldn't see much difference in cards in that price range). With 2 gig ram, 160 g hard drive, a floppy, Sony DVD rw, a 40 gig USB external hard drive (my latest approach to backing up), Windows XP, and a Viewsonic 22" VX2235wm monitor. All for the total price of $1416 including shipping. If the promised rebates also come through I should save another $100 or so. Looking at the cost of building up this from New Egg parts, I didn't really see that I was going to save anything by building it up myself (which is sort of fun, but does take a lot of time).

I'll let y'all know how this turns out.

Ernie
#23722 by Ted B
Tue May 08, 2007 2:06 pm
If you're a one-man shop like I am, with limited (and possibly dangerous) computer skills, is it better to buy a PC through one of the "name brand" sources versus the propably-cheaper though less well-known off-brands you see advertised in the various CAD magazines? From the looks of things, Datacad-12 is going to be very demanding on my current PC; and I suspect I'll need to get a newer model before shifting-over to version-12.

In the absense of advice to the contrary, I'll probably buy another Gateway...or a Dell, or off-the-shelf at Staples or Circuit City.
#23724 by Neil Blanchard
Tue May 08, 2007 2:24 pm
Hello Ted,

In general, I prefer the smaller OEM builders -- if they use a "retail" motherboard, rather than using a motherboard that was made for them, it will have a full-featured BIOS. Also, they won't have hidden partitions on the hard drive, and you'll hopefully be able to order it with WinXP; with the upgrade to Vista as an option you can do in the future. Some big OEM's (HP/Compaq I think) have this as an option, too.

I think that avoiding Vista (for the moment, anyway) is the biggest issue with buying a new machine right now.

Another thing that I like to avoid is having a bucket-load of software preloaded (much of it trial-ware, anyway); clogging up the HD. If it has just Windows, and maybe a full version of a good antivirus, and a full version of a good firewall -- that's ideal.

The main issue you'll face, after you install all of your critical programs -- is transferring your data files. If your old machine is running, you can use a network connection (either a hub/switch, or a crossover cable); or if it is not running, you'll want to have the old hard drive installed in the new machine. If the old hard drive is functioning, then you can just copy them over; but if it is not fully functional (running but not "seen" by Windows), then all is not lost -- you can use a program like GetDataBack to read and recover your data files, and copy them to the new hard drive.

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