Anyone had any experience with some REAL POWER USER MACHINES ???

By this, I mean something more than your average joe has.... even if your average joe just bought his machine last week.

Some features of such machines might include some of the following (more than 1 or 2 I guess....) :

-Multiple hard drives, perhaps in some software or hardware RAID configuration....

-Large amounts of HDD space (like 1/4 TB or over ???)

-SCSI technology.

-Large amounts of RAM, say over 1GB or over??

-Latest graphics technology like Geforce 4, etc....

-Multiple network interfaces...

-Multiple PSUs for redundancy, or some kind of UPS solution....

-More than 3 removable media drives (i.e a cdrom drive and a dvd rom drive and and cd-rw drive and a DVD-rw drive and a digital tape drive???)

-You get the idea....

Please don't mention servers too much because that's cheating.... I am talking about very powerful high end workstations....


Something I was working with the other day has this, for example:


2 x Athlon MP 1800+ CPU
1 GB DDR-SDRAM PC2100
8x80GB SCSI Ultra hard disk drives in RAID Stripe set config.
Hot swappable removable drive bays
Geforce 3 Ti 200 Graphics card
1xAdaptec (I think) PCI RAID Controller card
2x Onboard Adaptec SCSI controller
2x Onboard 3Com Network interface
2x500W PSU (2nd is for redundancy....)
1xPIONEER DVD-RW Drive SCSI
1xTOSHIBA CD-ROM Drive SCSI
1xPLEXTOR CD-RW Drive SCSI
1xDigital tape Drive SCSI


This, as you can imagine, made a bit of a racket when it was switched on, what with 2 CPU fans, 2 exhaust case fans, 2 PSU fans, 8 hard drives, etc....

But it did totally rock. It installed Windows 2000 Advanced Server in like 3 minutes or something....

Please bare in mind, again, that this is a workstation and NOT a server, being for the purposes of mathetical calculations, computational experiments and so forth....

Present user already asking about upgrades, etc....




So, anybody got any rigs to add??? Pictures would be nice....

This is my PC ...

2 x Pentium 3 850Mhz@1Ghz CPUs
Abit Mobo
1 GB SDRAM PC133
2x30GB IDE hard disk drives in RAID Stripes.
ATi Radeon DDR 64Mb
1x 450Watt PSU
1x DVD IDE Drive
1x CDRW IDE Drive (8x4x32)
2x 10/100Mbps Network Cards
Total of 7 Fans (2xCPU, Gfx, 2 Case, 2 Expansion)

I use it mainly for 3D Graphics Rendering, Tweaking, Development and Playing Games

Looks like you are the only one

Everyone else must have girlie rigs !



Personally, I just upgraded to 768 MB PC2100 DDR-SDRAM....

I guess everyone else must have girlie rigs...

Everyone else has girlie rigs compared to that one you started the thread off with . I got to work with a scanning electron microscope yesterday for about 5 hours [size=1](and will be workign again on it tuesday for 4 more hours, and possibly more later on if I don't finish)[/size] which in a way is a "computer" which is then connected to a macintosh system which in a way is a "computer".

I've seen a very powerfull one once, not too long ago. I didn't get to touch it or anything.

I went back to a Multimedia firm for which I had worked last year & they had just recieved this machine for the animation department.

Dual AthlonMP 1.2 GHZ
Tyan Tiger MP
4x 256mb PC2100
4x 30 IBM 75GXP ( RAID 0 )
Matrox G450
2x SONY 19" ( don't remember the model )
SBlive
2x AOpen 24/10/40 CD-RW ( I didn't quite understand why two of them, I've never heard people burning two CDs at the same time... )
3com network card

If only they had given me 5 minutes alone with it. SETI would've been up & running in no time.

Yeah Didou that's a bit more like it.

Here is a rig that was purchased by my work just recently. It is a server, so I guess I am breaking my own rules, but what the heck.... its cool anyway!

[SIZE=4]DELL POWEREDGE 8450[/SIZE]



Specs can vary enormously with a piece of equipment like this due to its awesome upgrade capabilities, however ours has:


4 x Intel® Pentium® III Xeon™processors, 700MHz.
32GB ECC SDRAM DIMM memory
5 x 73GB (10,000 rpm) Ultra3 (Ultra160) SCSI hard drives
Symbios™Dual integrated Ultra-2/LVD SCSI controllers
Adaptec Ultra-2/LVD SCSI 2940 card
PERC3/DC Dual Channel Ultra 3 RAID Controller
PERC3/QC Quad Channel Ultra 3 RAID Controller
Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (Optical or Copper)
PowerVault 120T DLT7000 Autoloader (245GB/490GB)
3 x Hot-pluggable 750W redundant, load balancing power supplies
Hot-pluggable redundant cooling fans
Giganet cLAN1000 32/64-bit, 33MHz PCI-based Host Adapter
Your 2 youngest daughters






Hehehehhe kick ***!!!

I does, however, not have a very exciting graphics system. But then it does not really need one.

Its running Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.

I didn't catch how much it costs, but probably about the same as you could easily get a nice car or a crappy flat for.

Its to be a new main Domain Controller. Under NT4 it would have been the Primary Domain Controller but 2000 did away with the concept more or less... but it is the big one among the domain controllers.

There is talk of buying another 2 to create a cluster.

[SIZE=4]Clusters are evil!![/SIZE]

Why do I have the feeling this server has a S3 Virge 2 mb ?

BTW how many memory modules do you need to get 32GB ?

I have a girlie computer and I'm proud of it!

Heheheh LOL!


Well, I haven't opened it, but what I think is very likely the case is that the memory modules are fitted onto a kind of expansion board that fit under the motherboard as opposed to on the motherboard itself.

I imagine that its probably then 32 x 1 GB DIMMs.

come on! more of you need to post or it comes across as just me bragging.... where is LNCpapa when I need him??

Playing Diablo 2 on a killer workstation

I have one of those, but my monitor burned out a loooong time ago, I have to use an RF converter if I want to use it these days.


anyway, back to the topic,
I don't think my rig would be classified as a regular joe, but not a killer super rig either,

AMD Athlon XP 1600 (1.40GHz)
1536MB DDR
2- 60GB Maxtor HDDs 7200rpm(not using RAID)
16x DVD
24/10/40 CDRW
ZIP 250
SB Live! 5.1 Platinum
GeForce2 MX-400 64MB DDR

Nothing too special but it is faster than anyone in my town, especially my best friend, that's all that really matters anyway.

That is a pretty mean machine, at least in terms of its core. I guess we would call it a power user machine, but not a Star Destroyer.

My main machine is just a power user machine as well, and still falls short of Star Destroyer status I believe:



1)Athlon C 1.33 GHz
2)400 W Macron AMD Approved PSU
3)IWILL KA-266R Motherboard
4)768 MB PC2100 DDR-SDRAM
5)4 x IBM Deskstar IDE 46 GB Hard Drive 75GXP 7200 RPM
6)1 x IBM Deskstar IDE 76 GB Hard Drive 75GXP 7200 RPM
7)1 x PIONEER SCSI DVD-DRIVE
8)1 x PLEXTOR SCSI 12/10/32 CD-RW DRIVE
9)1 x PLEXTOR UltraPLEX SCSI 40 MAX CD-ROM DRIVE
10)Geforce 2 ULTRA DDR-SDRAM 64 MB Graphics card
11)Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus Mpeg-2 Decoder Board
12)SoundBlaster Platinum 5.1 sound card
13)SMC Network Card (connects through proxy server to 512 kbps cable modem)
14)Adaptec AHA-2940 SCSI Controller
15)Sound card connected to yamaha AV RX-V396RDS hi-fi amplifier, 5 speakers...
16)IIyama 22' Visionmaster Pro 510 AG201 Monitor
17)Remote keyboard, mouse, etc... Headphones, mic, blah blah...

Installed operating systems:

1)Windows 98 SE
2)Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP2
3)Windows XP Professional
4)Redhat Linux 7.2
5)Mandrake Linux 8.2
6)FreeBSD 4.5

I was just thinking that it wouldn't take much to make my system at least a mini-StarDestroyer, but then again, yours is almost there, maybe even straddling the line

but StormBringer that's not a bad machine you have....


we are borg....


http://grove.ufl.edu/~locutus/Bit/bit.html

Graduation is futile SNGX!!!!

Yea, it is a nice system, but it had much more impact when I built it back in January.
I was just telling Rick yesterday that it was about time to build a new one, this post has inspired me(maybe challenged is a better word) It will be a couple of months before I do it but when I get it built, I'll post it for all to envy...I mean see

Here's my rediculously fast computer. Notice I used a space-aged polymer casing.



I won't tell you the specs, because no one has been able to open it up yet.

Well, okay.. Maybe the above isn't my system.

My computer isn't a Star Destroyer.. It's not a mini-Star Destoyer.. It's not even a "Power user machine" really.

Athlon XP 1.33Ghz w/ SK6 heatsink & 4500rpm fan
MSI K7T266 Pro2
512mb Crucial DDR-SDRAM
Enermax 350 watt (quiet, switching)
[ 40Gb Maxtor 7200RPM
[ 13.6Gb Quantum 7200rpm
[ 10gb Quantum P.O.S
Teac 16/10/40x CDRW
Asus 50x CDROM
Compaq 4x DVD ROM
No floppy drive
ATI Radeon 64 DDR
Soundblaster Live! Value
Creative "Waste of PCB" ModemBlaster 56k
(I wish 56k would just.. disappear)
Linksys 10/100tx network adapater

Just your average computer nowadays.

Sorry - been busy trying to find a perfect WindForce or a perfect Grandfather - Oh! There goes someone selling one for 8 SoJs! I'll be back!

LNCPapa