Re: [ccp4bb] Crystallographic computing platform recommendations?

[David Roberts]

A few years back I built 6 machines for $8000 total, and it should be as cheap if not cheaper now.  I bought my video cards on ebay (there are lots of people who part out old leased machines and so it is very cheap really, and I haven't had a card fail yet, knock on wood).  I'll try to itemize below: I used an AMD dual core (though quad is the way to go now).  My specs are 6600, though I'm not sure what that number means (it was high end at the time).  It's plenty fast enough (amazingly fast to be honest) Nice case/power supply/fans.  I believe I bought a gaming case for this (high air flow). When I did this, I purchased a bare bones computer from a company in Indiana (3Btech.net I believe).  I added memory, hard drive, video card, and peripherals.  I have 2 hard drives (standard IDE actually).  One is for the OS and the other is for data.  Easier to troubleshoot and backup in my mind if you keep them separate, but to each his own. 4 Gig of DDR-3 memory (though this could be upped using todays standards with no worries). If you don't want stereo, you can put in whatever monitor you want.  I have old 21" CRT that work great and give a nice crisp display.  To these I have emitters and stereo, no worries (very nice, no headaches). Fedora core is my preference.  I have core 7 on there now, but am planning on going to core 9 soon just for fun (why not).  It's all pretty standard and simple really. I used this for a class of 12 undergrad students (with no computer expertise), and it went well, though I did use Paul a lot at the beginning to get over my own personal cootisms.  It's very stable now, fast and reliable.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  All sorts of programs are running just fine (most of the xtal suite, though probably not all, just what I needed for MIR stuff at nominal resolutions, say 2.1 A).  Good luck Dave Artem Evdokimov wrote: Dear Anna,   Here’s my personal list of preferences for a fast and pretty inexpensive Linux workstation for crystallography. I can provide exact specs if desired. This assumes that you or someone in your group has basic computer hardware skills to put the workstation together*.   Dual or quad core Pentium, depending on the budget. No need to go for the ‘extreme’ editions J Motherboard with a fast bus e.g. one of the recent Intels (but not the absolute latest version – give Linux developers time to catch up with drivers etc. – this makes a huge difference!) Make sure that your MoBo has multiple PCI-Express and a couple of older PCI slots, just in case. 4GB of dual DDR-3 memory Some sort of a fatty hard drive or two (depending on whether you have RAID for data storage and backup or not). Don’t be seduced by the ‘insanely cheap’ 1TB single drives – it is often safer to get a couple of really cheap high-quality 250GB drives. Linux can use as many drives as you want in a single logical volume anyway (or set up RAID). NVIDIA Quattro – in my opinion a mid-range Quattro (i.e. one of the slightly older series) is more than enough for our use Dual 21-inch monitors. (seriously, it’s very nice to have one monitor with say Coot main window and the other one with all the buttons etc.) Fedora core linux (at work we use Enterprise RedHat but that costs money) or whatever recent Linux flavor that you are familiar with Metal case and a souped-up CPU fan ( 4-core CPUs under full load tend to run a little hot with stock Intel fans)   All of this should cost at ~$2000 if you buy components online and are aware of sites like pricewatch.com and suchlike.   Good luck, Arte,   * Additional bonus – if you build the system yourself you can choose to install various tricked-out (modded) components for added wow factor. From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Anna S Gardberg Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 4:01 PM To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: [ccp4bb] Crystallographic computing platform recommendations?   Dear list, I haven't seen the "crystallographic computing platform" thread come up for a while, and I've got a chance to upgrade my desktop to a workstation, so I thought I'd ask the CCP4BB for advice on: 1. Mac vs. Linux (which flavor?) vs. Windows 2. Graphics cards 3. Displays 4. Processors - multiple processors, multiple cores? Speed? About half of what I do involves ~1.0 A X-ray structures - data processing, rebuilding in Coot, refinement, and so forth - so my current desktop (Optiplex GX745, Radeon X1300) machine drags on graphics sometimes. I don't seem to need stereo these days, for what it's worth. Anybody have suggestions or specs they'd like to share? Thanks in anticipation of your advice. Regards, Anna Gardberg