SOD: System Benchmarking Hardware
I’ve been working on and off on the next Seeds of Discontent article. This is a tidbit of an upcoming post but I wanted to push it out now since I need it published for a divergent sidebar article. It stands here bald and raw. That’s life.
This system uses most of the Rampage III resources. The two Radeon cards will completely consume the PCI Express lanes (2 x16). The 24GB DDR3 will fill the six DRAM slots.
There are 7 SATA II and 2 SATA III ports.
The two SATA III ports connect the two SSD drives as a RAID Level 0. All non-user data is served from this drive (e.g., the operating system and benchmark applications).
One SATA II port connects the DVD writer.
Six SATA II ports connect the six HDD as a RAID Level 0. The HDD were selected for their cache (64MB), interface (SATA III, though connected to SATA II), spindle speed (7200 rpm, not as fast as 10,000 or 15,000 rpm but much, much cheaper) and price (cheap).
The two video cards were selected for being current and for being cheap (sort of).
Not shown in the picture are four 1920 x 1080 LCD monitors. These monitors pivot making them nice for a development (4320 x 1920).
Item 1 $ 60 Antec Three Hundred Computer Case Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Item 2 180 CORSAIR AX850 850W Power Supply Item 3 230 ASUS Rampage III LGA 1366 Intel X58 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard N82E16813131658 Item 4 880 Intel Core i7-970 Gulftown 3.2GHz LGA 1366 130W Six-Core Desktop Processor L2 Cache: 6 X 256KB L3 Cache: 12MB BX80613I7970 Item 5 225 Item 6 225 Patriot Gamer Series (3 x 4GB) SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) PGS312G1333ELK Item 7 70 Item 8 70 Item 9 70 Item 10 70 Item 11 70 Item 12 70 Western Digital 3.5" Caviar 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s Cache: 64MB WD6402AAEX Item 13 134 Item 14 134 Crucial RealSSD C300 2.5" SSD 64GB MLC SATA 6.0Gb/s CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 Item 15 10 SilverStone Bay Converter mounting bracket 3.5" to 2 x 2.5" SDP08 Item 16 185 Item 17 185 ASUS Radeon HD 6850 EAH6850 DirectCU/2DIS/1GD5 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 EAH6850 Item 18 11 HIS CrossFire Bridge Interconnect Cable HCFBC4065 Item 19 250 Item 20 250 Item 21 250 Item 22 250 Acer 1920 x 1080 LCD Monitor B243H Item 23 25 LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black iHAS424-98