Here, in Luxembourg, we have recently purchased Dell worstations with RedHat 5.5 preinstalled. You will find a summary bellow (price was lower for the University). The idea was to have multi-purpose workstations, which would be good for graphics as well as for running calculations. Of course, for medium or long-term calculations we can use a cluster, but for shorter term calculations it is often more convenient to run them locally. We are quite happy with the machines as they are far less noisy than similar setups from other providers (they can release quite a lot of heat, though).

To summarise, each computer has 2x six-core Xeon processors, 48 GB of RAM, a Quadro FX 5800 (for 3D display) graphics card, 2x Tesla  C2050 (for GPU computing), 2 fast SATA system disks and one backup disk.

In theory, it is possible to have 4x GPUs with this motherboard, however, in practice, if you have Quadro and/or Tesla, there is room only for 3x. Of course, if you don't need 3 GPUs, you can have less RAM. If you do not need 3D display, you can also buy a cheaper card. Instead of the 2x six-core processors, you can have 1x or 2x dual, quad or six core.

To complete the set up, we also bought a professional Eizo FlexScan SX2462W monitor (for colour accuracy) and a 3D monitor. A 3D navigator may also be useful if you plan to analyse biomolecules in 3D.

Dell Precision T7500n Dual Processor

Price $16,240.00


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  • Dell Precision T7500n Dual Processor

    • Date 9/21/2010 4:54:13 AM Central Standard Time
    Catalog Number 70 Retail rc968571
    Catalog Number / Description  Product Code Qty SKU  Id
    Dell Precision T7500n:
    Dell Precision T7500n    		 T7500N  1 [224-5229]  1
    Power Supplies:
    Precision T7500 Power Supply    		 SPSC 1  [330-8364] 20
    Operating System:
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS v5.3 for EM64T 64bit system w/ 1 YR RHN, w/ Media    		  RH531Y 1  [421-0526] 11
    Processor:
    Dual Six Core Intel® Xeon® Processor X5670, 2.93GHz,12M L3, 6.4GT/s, turbo    		  2XX5670 1  [317-4258] 2
    Memory:
    48GB,1333MHz,DDR3RDIMM,ECC(9DIMMS)    		  48G3E39 1  [317-3488] 3
    Graphics:
    4.0GB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 5800, DUAL MON, 1DP & 2DVI    		 FX5800S  1 [320-7890]  6
    Hard Drive Configuration:
    C3 All SATA drives, Non-RAID, 3 drive total configuration    		 SATA3  1 [341-8815]  9
    Hard Drive Internal Controller Option:
    Integrated LSI 1068e SAS/SATA 3.0Gb/s controller    		 NSASCTL  1 [341-9290]  24
    Boot Hard Drive:
    300GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™    		 300S102  1 [341-8836]  8
    2nd Hard Drive:
    300GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst Cache™    		 300S10A  1 [341-8837]  23
    3rd Hard Drive:
    1.5TB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with 32MB DataBurst Cache™    		 15TBSA  1 [341-9041]  54
    Optical Devices:
    16X DVD+/-RW, Data Only    		 DVRW16 1  [313-7457] 16


    On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 3:15 AM, David McLean <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
    Hi,
    Just looking for any recommendations for computer hardware to use or to stay away from. I'm looking to build a reasonably fast, dual/multi processor system but can't afford to end up with a system that is so cutting edge that it is not supported. Our institution gets good deals through Dell so I'm sure they will purchase a Dell system as opposed to specifying individual components, but I'm still concerned with SATA support and various graphics device support.

    Any suggestions, recommendations, or warnings are welcome!

    Thank you for your time.
    --

    David L. McLean
    Research Automation Engineer

    VIIBRE -Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education

    6805.4 Stevenson Center
    VU Station B 351807
    Nashville, TN 37235-1807

    Ph: 615.343.4124
    Fx: 615.322.4977
    www.vanderbilt.edu/viibre

    [log in to unmask]




    --
    Edelmiro Moman, PhD
    Campus Limpertsberg, BRB 1.11B
    Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB)
    162a avenue de la Faïencerie
    L-1511 Luxembourg

    Phone : +352 46-66-44-6117
    E-mail : Eldemiro.Moman at uni.lu

    http://wwwen.uni.lu/lcsb
    http://www.edelmiromoman.eu/

    --
    Edelmiro Moman, PhD
    ProSciens, Computing & Molecular Sciences
    2-4 rue du Palais de Justice
    L-1841 Luxembourg

    Phone : +352 2728-2588
    E-mail : [log in to unmask]

    http://www.prosciens.com/