Help me build a gaming rig.. for science.

[slate]

For something a bit different...

Background: I'm a researcher who runs psychophysical experiments (i.e. experiments that measure basic human reactions to stimulation).

Constraint 1: These experiments can be obnoxiously cpu, graphics, disk read, and memory intensive. We can't afford any slowdowns during our experiments.
Implication: I need a tricked out machine... for.. science.

Constraint 2: The experiments we run typically run over a span of 3 years. Once the rig is built, we will not change *any* of the components for about 5 years.
Implication: We need a system that is: (1) rock-stable, (2) made of components that we expect to stand the test of time, (3) comprised of parts that we hope we should still be able to find and replace if necessary for the next half decade.

Constraint 3: We will need to dual boot both Windows 7 and Linux because of the multitude of software packages we use to run our experiments.
Implication: We need components that have good driver support for Linux and which are stable under Linux.

Constraint 4: Some of our participants are children, and some of them will have problems with attention. We need these kids to pay attention to the screen and stimuli we are showing them, and not the whirling cacophony of fans or the strobe of flashing lights. We expect the stimulus machine to be about 6 feet away from the participants, hidden behind a desk, but the room will be dark so non-constant light sources will still be detectable.
Implication: The computer needs to be quiet, even under load. Lighting that can't be covered by a roll of electrical tape or disconnected from the power supply may be a problem for us.

Constraint 5: Since this is research, we don't have an unlimited budget, but we do have around $2K USD to spend. I don't think going over a little will be a problem.

Constraint 6: The last time I built a rig, it was 1997.
Implication 6a: I kind of know how to hook things together, but I am effectively a newbie in terms of knowledge at this point.
Implication 6b: How did I get to be this old?

Additional specifications: we will need to run two monitors at the minimum and also have wireless internet capacity.

Any help you guys can give us will be appreciated. Your efforts will help us help kids. Or, more accurately, help us to try to help kids. Even more accurately: your help will help us to try to get more funding from the government so we can continue helping kids. In the interest of full disclosure, there is a chance that in the end we will end up not helping anyone, because science. However, in the process we will make this shiny new rig. Do it for the science.


Here is my current cart from Newegg:

• CASE............ Corsair Obsidian Series 550D Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $139.99
• POWER SUPPLY.... CORSAIR Professional Series HX750 (CMPSU-750HX) 750W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS SILVER Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply $144.99
• MOTHERBOARD..... ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $239.99
• CPU............. Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I73770K $339.99
• COOLING......... Thermaltake WATER2.0 Pro Closed-Loop All In One Liquid CPU Cooler Dual 120mm PWM Fans 120x49mm Radiator CLW0216 $87.99
• MEMORY.......... G.SKILL Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GAR $179.98 ($89.99 each)
• VIDEO CARD...... EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card $409.99
• BOOT DRIVE...... OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $174.99
• DATA DRIVE...... Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0001 1TB 7200 RPM SAS 6Gb/s 3.5" Internal Enterprise Hard Drive -Bare Drive $149.99
• WIRELESS........ TP-LINK TL-WN722N USB 2.0 High Gain Wireless Adapter $19.99

Subtotal: $1,887.89

[matts-uk]

Implication: We need a system that is: (1) rock-stable, (2) made of components that we expect to stand the test of time, (3) comprised of parts that we hope we should still be able to find and replace if necessary for the next half decade.

Implication: The computer needs to be quiet, even under load. Lighting that can't be covered by a roll of electrical tape or disconnected from the power supply may be a problem for us.

These would seem to be your conflicting requirements. Is the room temperature controlled?

Strangely I have been through this loop recently for different purposes. I haven't bought anything yet so this is based on published specs, reviews and prior experience in general.

Looking at your suggested spec.
1. You might want to take a look at the Fractal Design Arc series of chassis.
2. The Sabretooth motherboard is actively cooled, by a small high speed fan with a bearing that is going to get noisy eventually. I am guessing the fan is somewhat proprietary and not so straightforward to replace. You might want to side-grade to the passively cooled P8-Z77-V-Pro or similar and spend the money you save on adding a 140mm fan (slow and quiet) to the chassis. The P8-77-V-Pro has a Wi-Fi adapter integrated, so you can knock the TPLink off the budget too.
3. The BeQuiet Dark Power PSUs appear to be the some of the quietest and most reliable available.
4. The Asus GTX670 CU II is, according to the specs, amazingly quiet.

I am not entirely convinced about the bang/buck benefits of water cooling the CPU.

[kalniel]

You're going down the wrong approach looking at home user components. If you can't afford slowdowns or reliability problems then you need to look at workstation components. That means looking at Xeon processors and quadro or firepro graphics cards, and possibly ECC ram.

What API do you use for your experiments? Do you really need the latest DX11 wizardry and so on? I think a GTX 670 class card would be completely overkill, you're more likely to need something cooler, more power efficient, better at openGL/CL and more reliable - so again the Quadro/FirePro cards are a much better option.

Air coolers have fewer bits to go wrong than water coolers - and if the machine is built for efficiency they can be completely inaudible. By going for more efficient components you can also reduce the need for a ventilating case, so can get a noise insulated one.

[slate]

Thanks Matts-UK. These are really good considerations. I like the idea of going with components with greater simplicity.. I just added in the liquid cooling because some of the higher-end gaming systems seemed to include them.. But, as I mentioned, I don't really have an idea if it's worth it or not-- it definitely wasn't an option back in 1997.

Do you have a sense if the Fractal Design Arc is a quiet case? I included the Obsidian 550D because it was specifically listed as "quiet". I agree with your analysis about "quiet" and "powerful" being in opposition.

These would seem to be your conflicting requirements. Is the room temperature controlled?

Strangely I have been through this loop recently for different purposes. I haven't bought anything yet so this is based on published specs, reviews and prior experience in general.

Looking at your suggested spec.
1. You might want to take a look at the Fractal Design Arc series of chassis.
2. The Sabretooth motherboard is actively cooled, by a small high speed fan with a bearing that is going to get noisy eventually. I am guessing the fan is somewhat proprietary and not so straightforward to replace. You might want to side-grade to the passively cooled P8-Z77-V-Pro or similar and spend the money you save on adding a 140mm fan (slow and quiet) to the chassis. The P8-77-V-Pro has a Wi-Fi adapter integrated, so you can knock the TPLink off the budget too.
3. The BeQuiet Dark Power PSUs appear to be the some of the quietest and most reliable available.
4. The Asus GTX670 CU II is, according to the specs, amazingly quiet.

I am not entirely convinced about the bang/buck benefits of water cooling the CPU.

[slate]

Thanks Kalniel.. I hadn't even considered this option. But now that you mention it, it really does make sense. I agree that openGL/CL is important for us. At the same time, I was hoping to get a card that would be flexible across multiple domains, e.g. I don't know if at some point we'll be interested in looking at responses to current video games.

The programs we use are: Psychtoolbox, Neurobehavioral Systems Presentation, EPrime, and custom-coded software (typically written in C++ or Python/PsychoPy).

Could you recommend specific components? Is Xeon really that much more reliable than e.g. i7 3770k? Are there off the shelf systems (e.g. Dell?) that would be a good fit in the $2K range?

[kalniel]

Thanks Kalniel.. I hadn't even considered this option. But now that you mention it, it really does make sense. I agree that openGL/CL is important for us. At the same time, I was hoping to get a card that would be flexible across multiple domains, e.g. I don't know if at some point we'll be interested in looking at responses to current video games.

My first thought would be to suggest then that 'at some point' you get the current home gaming card of choice - no point buying it beforehand as it might be out of date for the particular game you are wanting to test - given they are much cheaper than workstation cards as well it's something you can swap to if you have a need for it later.

The programs we use are: Psychtoolbox, Neurobehavioral Systems Presentation, EPrime, and custom-coded software (typically written in C++ or Python/PsychoPy).

Could you recommend specific components? Is Xeon really that much more reliable than e.g. i7 3770k? Are there off the shelf systems (e.g. Dell?) that would be a good fit in the $2K range?

I don't know those programs, so I would recommend getting in touch with them about the exact methods they use (I just had a quick look at the Neurobehavioral Systems website and they were recommending home systems like a gtx580, so maybe they are using directX and/or game oriented drivers - in which case stick with the 670 recommendation )

Xeons are the same chips, just tested more rigorously and run further within the safety limits of the chip (or are higher quality for the same speed) compared to desktop variants. They don't necessarily cost a lot more either.

Yes, the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo etc. all offer pre-built packages of workstation level components.

[Pob255]

There's not such thing as a quiet case in and of itself, a case is just a metal and plastic box, there's nothing to make noise.
It's about sound suppression and containment.

The corsair 550d is good for this, with both a door and removable vent covers you can contain and black out a lot of the noise from fans.
some reasonable thick rubber grommets on the hard drive trays to minimise vibration and some thick rubber grommets on all the fan mounting holes.

You could look at the fractal design R4 (the ARC is a better option for water cooling)

The EVGA cards are not always the quietest, however they've still got their very good lifetime/10year warranty (although check the model first only some models come with this warranty)
A workstation card might be a good idea, they generally have very good support and warranties connected to them.
However if the software your using is based around a game engine (you need to check with the software developer really) then performance could be a major issue and a gaming card might be better.

I would agree with kalniel on workstation/enterprise level hardware, it's generally designed/selected for a long, high load life cycle and is generally backed up but far better warranty/driver/after market service support.
There is often extra costs involved of course, so you'll not get as much computational power for your money but you're trading that off against nextday upto within 3hours levels of support.
eg corsair HX750 is a great psu but if it dies you could be up to a month getting a replacement, where as most good service contracts on enterprise/workstation hardware means that you'll have an engineer round within 24hours to replace a failed psu and if it's been bought as a whole pc not in parts, then if the psu took anything with it that'll get replaced too.

[slate]

Thanks for your comments kalniel and Pob255. This is the system that our Uni wants us to buy, with a price tag of about $2,300 USD.

Dell Precision T7600, 1300W edit
Six Core XEON (E5-2630, 2.2GHz, 15M, 7.2 GT/s,Turbo) edit
Genuine Windows® 7 Professional,SP1, No Media, 64-bit, English edit
1300W Power Supply, 85% Efficiency edit
8GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1333MHz, ECC (4 x 2GB DIMMs) edit
1.0GB NVIDIA® Quadro® 600, Dual MON, 1 DP & 1 DVI edit
500GB, 7200 RPM 3.5" SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive edit
8X DVD+/-RW SATA edit
PERC H310 SATA/SAS Controller for Dell Precision edit
4 Year ProSupport with 4 Year NBD Limited Onsite Service After Remote Diagnosis edit

I probably would have to spend another $500 on new hard drives and more memory (so $2800USD total). To me this looks like a pretty poor deal, but I'm not familiar enough with workstation setups to know the difference.
EDIT: I just did some comparison shopping and this looks like a pretty reasonable price after all.. On the other hand, I think it puts me way over $2K, which probably won't work out. How much of a greater risk will I be taking? I should clarify our issues. If we lose 1 out of a 100 kids during a 15 minute experiment because the system crashes, that's acceptable. We will probably run at most 2 participants a day, or 60 per month (i.e. max 15 hours a month; 180 hours a year * 5 = 900 hours a year). A rough estimate using upper bounds reported by perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/10/07/YouReallyDONeedECCMemory.aspx suggests we should expect .003 memory errors over a span of 5 years.
EDIT 2: I just looked at the paper again, and it's per 1 MBit. So assuming we're writing 2 GB per participant, that works out to be about 50 errors. Btw, this math is probably pretty wrong (back of the envelope), but it looks like we could potentially expect to lose up to 1.4% (or .5% to 1.4% using the bounds given) of participants through memory errors. That's quite a bit more than I expected..

[slate]

Okay a newly spec'd out build, for going towards the Xeon route:

Motherboard: ASUS P8B WS
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1245 V2
Memory: Kingston 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 1600 ECC Registered Server Memory
Video Card: EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW
Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 550D
Power Supply: Corsair Professional Series Gold AX750 (CMPSU-750AX)
Boot Drives (2): OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-256G (one for Win7, one for Ubuntu)
Data Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s
DVD/CD: LG DVD Burner Black SATA GH24NS90
Wireless: TP-Link TL-WN722N
Input: Microsoft JWD-00046 Black USB Wired Standard Keyboard + Microsoft Optical Mouse 200 for Business
TOTAL PRICE: $1926.29 USD

matts-uk I tried to look up your recommended PSU and Video Card online, but I couldn't find them for sale anywhere except ebay.

Question: does this new build make more sense? It forgoes the E5-2630, but the benchmarks I looked up for the E3-1245 V2 seem pretty good as well. Finding compatible memory for the ASUS P8B WS was a hassle though. I'm worried that parts for this system will be ridiculously expensive 5 years from now, though. Also I'm not totally sure about the selection of hard drives and power supply. Finally, I'm not sure if I need other fans or a CPU cooler, or if I'd do just as well with just stock everything. Is Tuniq or Arctic Silver worth it still?

[kalniel]

Some more thoughts now you've mentioned how vital reliability is:

Really really look at whether you need that 670. It will be by far the least reliable part of the computer - largely because of drivers, but it is relatively new and unproven hardware - there have been a number of returns needed by Hexus members for the 670 - without knowing how many were sold it's impossible to put any kind of statement of reliability on there, except to say that the hardware is not bulletproof either.

With ultra reliability in mind I would also change my choice of hard drives - if you go SSD at all then again consider enterprise level drives, or failing that, something like an Intel 510 (not the 520)

If that's out of budget then go mechanical, again try and get enterprise drives rather than desktop/gamer orientated ones. You should have more than enough RAM that Windows will be caching, so you are unlikely to be limited too much by hard drive speed I expect.

The PSU looks good to me. If you want quietness then yes, I'd consider getting an upgraded CPU air cooler, which should come with its own improved thermal paste.

edit: by the way, apologies for not simply coming up with a list of parts that's ultra reliable and in budget - I don't really have the time to do enough research to be certain, and finding it within budget is going to be tricky so I'd rather you made the compromise decisions than have you get a false confidence in something we recommend - hence why getting a pre-built workstation system is possibly good idea. But you pay for that of course.

[matts-uk]

Hi Slate

Sorry, I can't respond any quicker.

I suspect your IT department's formula (Dell) recommendation has as much to do with the warranty, as suitability for your application.

To explain my thinking on cooling and case choice. A silent design case, like the 550D is a compromise. The features which provide sound insulation also increase heat retention. It's not a huge problem for I/O bound applications, as the fans can catch up during the periods the CPU is waiting on I/O. However, for a processor intensive application, where the CPU is topped out and radiating a lot of heat constantly, I would prefer a well ventilated case, with big, slow, fans, able to constantly shift a lot of heat out of the case, preferably into an air conditioned room. Gaming cases are optimised for CPU intensive applications and as the Arc is understated at the mid price point, that's the one I would choose.

To save a few dollars on the case you might look at the Corsair Carbide R300 as an alternative to the Arc or, if you still want to go with a silent design case, Fractal's Define series (R3 or R4) as was suggested earlier.

Unfortunately it looks like Be Quiet are yet to find a distributer for their PSUs in the US. The Corsair is still an excellent PSU by all accounts though.

The Asus GTX670 graphics card I mentioned is available from Newegg. It's a little dearer than most 670s but you are getting a very good cooler in the deal. Whether a GTX670 is a good choice for the application, I would let the application developers decide.

Given what you have said with regards to your intended application, I am not so certain 'work station' (a marketing term if ever there were one) components will provide you much benefit. There are very few differences between Core 7 and Xeon processors but the differences there are, are aimed towards enterprise server loads - per user thread spawning and memory allocations, with target intervention rates (reboots) measured in instances per year. The same goes for ECC memory, it's self correcting at the bit level, which is great for low intervention servers and production critical maths but the latency is higher, which is not so great for processor intensive.

Check with the application developers but bespoke code, multi-threading and entirely reliable, are rarely found in the same application, in my experience. A Xeon and ECC are unlikely to do you any harm in real world operation but I doubt the price premium is effective use of your budget. I agree with your concerns over spares pricing, should you have to replace parts in the future.

So. Given that you have a single user, low thread count, CPU and graphics intensive application, requiring low latency, where you want long term reliability, minimal noise, value for money and reboots will not cost you a fortune (phew). I would go with the Asus P8-Z77-V-Pro motherboard and a Core i7 Ivybridge CPU, in a mid price 'gaming' case. In fact I would ring the developers and check whether a Core i5 Ivybridge might not work just as well. I would definitely want some sort of aftermarket CPU cooler, as the stock cooler uses a small, high speed fan which is relatively noisy.

High quality additional case fans are not so expensive in the scheme of things, so perhaps throw a couple in and turn them off should you not want to use them. As an alternative to the OCZ drives, you might consider the Samsung 830 series, which can be found slightly cheaper and may be more reliable over the long term. The price/performance gains to be had here are not so great and I personally would not be losing any sleep over them.

[DanceswithUnix]

A question for the OP, I presume you are running this software at the moment, in which case what sort of spec machine are you running it on and how well/badly does that machine run the software?

Making sure a machine doesn't stutter in the middle of a test probably means just making sure it has plenty of ram and so doesn't start swapping like crazy to disk at the wrong moment. Might also mean avoiding Java so it doesn't garbage collect which again never happens at a good time

[slate]

Thanks for the responses everyone. Your support and help have been amazing!

DanceswithUnix: we have other types of experiments running, they are running on a 5 year old Dimension 5150 I believe. The system took a really long time to make stable, and we've had to swap out the video card 3 times. Each time we did it, the price of the video card was $150 more. So Kalniel, your concerns about the video card are completely warranted. But really we're planning ahead to the next set of experiments we want to run, and these are going to be much more intensive. I also had to spend probably weeks of work time getting around the limitations of the hardware being to slow (sometimes having to sacrifice some parts of the experiment), so upgrading really makes sense. Since we typically run these experimental setups for 5 years straight, we really need it to be a good machine because towards the end of the cycle the machines are just barely cutting it.

Matts-UK: your help is also really appreciated. I see that you and Kalniel are coming from this from different points of view, which is great-- it gives me a lot to think about. I really am quite unsure about the advantages of ECC and Xeons for our application as well. But in the end, it seems like there actually isn't too much of a performance difference (I could be totally wrong). The i7-3770 costs about as much as the E3-1245 V2, and the performance difference seems to be less than 5% (though I'm getting this from cpubenchmark). On the other hand, it's clear that about 100x more people are getting to i7-3770, so in terms of long-term replacements the i7-3770 seems like it might be a better bet. The question really comes down to I guess what we believe the true errors due to memory will be.. I don't think it's really going to impact us too much, but the more I think about it the scarier it is (catchy phrases like "non-ECC memory have no place in anything business-related" from the forums have really scared me). I think for this reason, we're going to go with a Xeon + ECC setup, while taking into account your suggestions about the Fractal Define and the Samsung 830s (which are actually $50 USD more expensive each, but have much better reviews and ratings on Newegg).

Kalniel: I'm going to take your suggestions about the Xeon, and also your points about the enterprise Non-SSD disk.. I'd love to go enterprise all the way, but enterprise SSDs with adequate space for our needs are too expensive. One of the tasks of the enterprise disk will be to serve as a daily backup of everything transpiring on the SSD disks, so I think we probably (fingers crossed) will be okay. After you mentioned it I took a closer look at the 670 GTX.. you're right, reviews have pegged it as an unreliable board across multiple vendors and distributors. On the other hand, the 680 GTX looks really good, though there may be some selection bias at play in who chooses the 680 vs the 670. Still, I think the 680 GTX might be good to take a risk on. One thing that I probably didn't make clear is that once we get the video card in, we don't touch it. Everything we do is highly sensitive to timing issues, and by swapping out a card we may alter our timings enough to cause a blip in our experiments. So we are planning for the games "eventually", but we have to do it way in advance, because once we put everything in, we will only be swapping for the same (or nearly the same) components. If in a few years the 680GTX gets to be really cheap, I may just go out and buy 3 or 4 of them as backups. Video cards seem to be the daisies of the desktop lawn: every time you walk by them they disintegrate.

A few other changes. I was annoyed enough by the P8B not having out-of-the-box Ivy Bridge support that I decided to go with the P8C. It's clear Asus doesn't really give a damn about this line, because you can't find any memory you can actually buy that has ECC that is supported officially by the P8C. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that memory that's compatible for the P8B is compatible with the P8C. Figuring out what type of memory and CPUs should work with a mothercard shouldn't be this hard.

All that said, this is my current spec:

Motherboard: ASUS P8C WS
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1245 V2
Memory: Kingston 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 1600 ECC Registered Server Memory
Video Card: EVGA 02G-P4-2680-KR GeForce GTX 680
Case: Fractal Design Define XL Titanium Grey w/ USB 3.0 ATX Full Tower Silent PC Computer Case
Power Supply: Corsair Professional Series Gold AX750 (CMPSU-750AX)
Boot Drives (2): SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC256B/WW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (one for Win7, one for Ubuntu)
Data Drive: Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0011 1TB 7200 RPM SATA
DVD/CD: LG DVD Burner Black SATA GH24NS90
Wireless: TP-Link TL-WN722N
Input: Microsoft JWD-00046 Black USB Wired Standard Keyboard + Microsoft Optical Mouse 200 for Business

I guess the only remaining questions are:
1) what cpu cooler or extra fans should I get?
2) what does everyone think? did I miss anything?

Thanks to everyone for all your help.. You guys are incredible.

[Pob255]

The main thing about enterprise level hardware is far longer product life cycles, most consumer level products have fairly short manufacturing runs, eg AFAIK sandybridge cpu's are no longer under production, yes you can still get them because there's large stocks of them, you can still get new core2 cpu's and they have been EOL for a while now.
However enterprise level kit can have production runs of up to 5years

[slate]

Thanks for the information Pob255. It makes a lot of sense.

Just as a quick note to everyone, we decided to go with the E3-1240 V2 instead of the E3-1245 V2 because of the reduced power usage of the E3-1240 V2 that some people have noted. Also we had to go with 16GB (4GB x 4) because too many people have reported problems with 32GB on the P8C and Asus's documentation on compatible memory is completely unusable.

I have a feeling, as Kalniel noted, that the least stable component will be our video card..

Can anyone recommend some good 140mm case fans that are quiet and good? What's the gold standard here?