FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Register Register  Login Login

Want a high end PC for business with 4 monitors

Post Date: 2007-09-01
 Post Reply Post Reply
Author
  Topic Search Topic Search  Topic Options Topic Options
Jenni View Drop Down
Guest
Guest
  Quote Jenni Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: Want a high end PC for business with 4 monitors
    Posted: 01 Sep 2007 at 10:36pm

My old Dell is rapidly failing on me so I am in the market for new PC. I will be running 4 19" LCDs to start and might later replace one or two of them with 24" widescreen LCDs.

At any given time I typically have 20 IE browser windows open, plus 5 Word docs, 5 PDFs, 2 excel sheets, outlook, and calc. I might in the near future to have a small office network with 4 or 5 machines on it total.

I want something that will perform as fast and flawlessly as possible for me, but when I look at higher-end desktops they seem to be customized for gamers/video editing/autocad and other resouce intensive software.

 I just want Word, IE, printer threads, and Windows itself to run VERY fast and quietly no matter how much I have running at once. I hate it when I am typing fast and it takes the CPU a few seconds to catch up with my fingers. I hate how word's autosave causes the software to slow down a few seconds. So...

Is an SLI motherboard and 2 SLI graphics card worthwhile versus getting a cheaper mobo with a basic preinstalled 256M graphics card, and then adding another $50 256M card myself so I have 4 total DVIs?

Core 2 quad v core 2 duo? Dual core 3ghz (Q6600) and quadcore 2.4ghz (e6850) are almost exactly the same price. Which one should I go for?

Am I going benefit much from 1066mhz ram v 800?

Am I going benefit much from 10K v 7.2K RPM hard drive? Are the faster HDs noticibly noisier or more prone to crash?

I hate CPU fan noise, and my inner nerd really wants a liquid cooled CPU even though I think I won't be doing anything to get my CPU hot and sweaty. Should I restrain myself or go ahead get liquid cooling? How about the "round cables?"

Finally, I want to use the harddrive from my 2003 vintage Dell as the second HD in this PC. Would I have any trouble just putting it in there, plugging in the power, and turning on the PC?
 
Here is my initial configuration. What do people think? I would like to spend a bit less, but could go higher too if I had a good reason to.
 
Case: Digital Storm Twister LITE (Silver Aluminum Edition)
Power Supply: 520W Corsair HX (SLI Compatible) (Silent Edition) (High-Quality Unit)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (1066MHz FSB) (8MB Cache)
Motherboard: nVidia 680i LT Core 2 Quad (By: eVGA) (nForce 680i SLI)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 Corsair at 1066MHz Dominator (Dual Channel) (Extreme-Performance)

Hard Drive 1: 250GB (Western Digital / Seagate) (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM) (SATA)
Hard Drive 2: - No Thanks
Raid Option: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x)
Optical Drive 2: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x) (LightScribe Edition)
Network Card: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card: 2x SLI Dual (nVidia GeForce 8600GT 256MB (By: eVGA / Asus) (PCI-Express)
Cooling: Air Cooled Stage 3 (Silent Artic Cooling (TwisterBoost Overclocked)
Case Lighting: Blizzard Internal Lighting (Blue Edition) (Cold Cathode Tubes)
Round Cables: - No Thanks
Back to Top
skyR View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie

Digital Storm Apprentice


Joined: 08 Oct 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2220 		  Quote skyR Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 01 Sep 2007 at 11:02pm
Faster HDD will result in faster windows / application load times and minor noise increase.

Definitely a Core 2 Quad since you will be multi-tasking a lot with your office work.

Since it doesn't look like you will be using any DX10 or graphic intensive applications. I would call them and ask about getting SLI 7900GT. A few hundred dollars cheaper.
The only thing that keeps me wishing on a wishing star.
Back to Top
Jenni View Drop Down
Guest
Guest
  Quote Jenni Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 02 Sep 2007 at 2:46am
Thanks! Another option not in the drop-down box is the NVS Quadro 440,
which is a single card with two GPUs and four DVIs and designed for multimonitor business applications.
 
However for $400 or so it doesn't seem much cheaper than the two that I already have in my config, and I would not be surprised if it were nothing special and had a huge markup compared to other cards since it is targeted towards Wall Street trader types for whom money is no object. There are a bunch of companies out that that really soak people for multi-monitor cards. Matrox cards are outragiously expensive. I have 4 19' monitors running just fine now on two cheap 128MB graphics cards, one of them 4+ years old.
Back to Top
Alex View Drop Down
Admin Group
Admin Group

Digital Storm Supervisor


Joined: 04 Jun 2012
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 16314 		  Quote Alex Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 02 Sep 2007 at 3:21pm
Your config looks great. Go with a Raptor drive, it will speed things up and make load/save times zippy.
 
Stick with the Q6600 that you have selected. The dual 8600 cards are not that much more than the 7 series. They come fairly close (check out how much they are going for).
 
We can special order you the four monitor card, but, it will be pricy since they are targetting a specific area.
 
Originally posted by Jenni

My old Dell is rapidly failing on me so I am in the market for new PC. I will be running 4 19" LCDs to start and might later replace one or two of them with 24" widescreen LCDs.

At any given time I typically have 20 IE browser windows open, plus 5 Word docs, 5 PDFs, 2 excel sheets, outlook, and calc. I might in the near future to have a small office network with 4 or 5 machines on it total.

I want something that will perform as fast and flawlessly as possible for me, but when I look at higher-end desktops they seem to be customized for gamers/video editing/autocad and other resouce intensive software.

 I just want Word, IE, printer threads, and Windows itself to run VERY fast and quietly no matter how much I have running at once. I hate it when I am typing fast and it takes the CPU a few seconds to catch up with my fingers. I hate how word's autosave causes the software to slow down a few seconds. So...

Is an SLI motherboard and 2 SLI graphics card worthwhile versus getting a cheaper mobo with a basic preinstalled 256M graphics card, and then adding another $50 256M card myself so I have 4 total DVIs?

Core 2 quad v core 2 duo? Dual core 3ghz (Q6600) and quadcore 2.4ghz (e6850) are almost exactly the same price. Which one should I go for?

Am I going benefit much from 1066mhz ram v 800?

Am I going benefit much from 10K v 7.2K RPM hard drive? Are the faster HDs noticibly noisier or more prone to crash?

I hate CPU fan noise, and my inner nerd really wants a liquid cooled CPU even though I think I won't be doing anything to get my CPU hot and sweaty. Should I restrain myself or go ahead get liquid cooling? How about the "round cables?"

Finally, I want to use the harddrive from my 2003 vintage Dell as the second HD in this PC. Would I have any trouble just putting it in there, plugging in the power, and turning on the PC?
 
Here is my initial configuration. What do people think? I would like to spend a bit less, but could go higher too if I had a good reason to.
 
Case: Digital Storm Twister LITE (Silver Aluminum Edition)
Power Supply: 520W Corsair HX (SLI Compatible) (Silent Edition) (High-Quality Unit)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (1066MHz FSB) (8MB Cache)
Motherboard: nVidia 680i LT Core 2 Quad (By: eVGA) (nForce 680i SLI)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 Corsair at 1066MHz Dominator (Dual Channel) (Extreme-Performance)

Hard Drive 1: 250GB (Western Digital / Seagate) (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM) (SATA)
Hard Drive 2: - No Thanks
Raid Option: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x)
Optical Drive 2: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x) (LightScribe Edition)
Network Card: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card: 2x SLI Dual (nVidia GeForce 8600GT 256MB (By: eVGA / Asus) (PCI-Express)
Cooling: Air Cooled Stage 3 (Silent Artic Cooling (TwisterBoost Overclocked)
Case Lighting: Blizzard Internal Lighting (Blue Edition) (Cold Cathode Tubes)
Round Cables: - No Thanks
Back to Top
Jenni View Drop Down
Guest
Guest
  Quote Jenni Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 02 Sep 2007 at 7:37pm
Thanks! I did a froogle search and agree, not much price savings by going done a notch to the 7 series cards. So here are my remaining questions:
 
1. Should I get the "round cables?"
 
2. I want to use the harddrive from my 2003 vintage Dell as the second HD in this PC. Would I have any trouble just putting it in there, plugging in the power, and turning on the PC? I don't know what RAID is. Is this something I need in order to add additional hard drives? I know I want to add one 80GB drive immediately. Last time I added an internal hard drive it was just plug and play.
 
3. Am I going benefit much from 1066mhz ram v 800?
 
4. Can you confirm that I can plug in 4 1,280x1,024 19" monitors into this system as I have it set up right out of the box?
Back to Top
Alex View Drop Down
Admin Group
Admin Group

Digital Storm Supervisor


Joined: 04 Jun 2012
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 16314 		  Quote Alex Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 03 Sep 2007 at 4:05pm
1. Round cables are nice for air-flow. Get them, they get rid of the bulky flat ribbon cables.
 
2. The motherboard only comes with one IDE port, they use to come with two. On each IDE port, we can only install two devices. Your optical drives will take up the two spaces, which leaves none for your IDE based Dell drive. However, we have recently started to stock only SATA based optical drives, so it should work out. When placing an order, please specify that you want to make sure we use SATA optical drives for your order.
 
3. For a system that is going to be in heavy use for multi-tasking like you stated, YES, because it opens up a bigger pipeline for bandwidth.
 
4. Yes, go with a dual video card setup, and request for us to turn SLI off. SLI technology is designed to combine the power of the two cards and display the ouput to one output connector only.
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down



This page was generated in 0.046875 seconds.