Buyer's Guide: High-End Systems - June 2001
by Mike Andrawes on June 11, 2001 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Ethernet - onboard dual 3COM on motherboard - “free”
Tyan's gone the full nine yards with the Thunder K7, which includes onboard
Ethernet. However, this isn't your typical onboard Ethernet. Rather, Tyan has
gone with dual 3COM 10/100 controllers, which is perfect for the high-end server
market they are targetting. Of course, it will serve our purposes just fine
as well.
Hard Drive - 4 x Seagate Cheetah X15 - 4 x $350 = $1400
Hard
drive performance has always been one of the biggest bottlenecks in the speed
of a computer. After all, the only component whose speed is measured in milliseconds
is the hard drive - everything else is nanoseconds or microseconds. Even with
the fastest drive on earth right now running at 15,000 RPM, the Seagate Cheetah
X15 still has an access time of "only" 3.9 ms. Now 3.9 ms is phenomenal
for a hard drive, but still an eon compared to SDRAM.
Because the X15 is a new model, the drive is only available in 18GB capacities for now. We're sure Seagate will bump up the capacity soon enough however. The Ultra 160 interface provides a maximum throughput of 160MB/s to keep things moving along smoothly. We'll go with four of them to keep that RAID card purring along happily in RAID 0+1 mode for the best combination of performance and data integrity.
SCSI
RAID Controller - Adaptec 3400S - $1100
When it comes to SCSI controllers, the first name that comes to mind is
Adaptec, of course. Since the last guide, they've released their 3400S Ultra
160 RAID controller, which is surprisingly similar to our previous pick, the
DPT Smart RAID IV PM2865U3. The 3400S is a 4 channel controller with an 80 MIPS
i960 processor onboard to handle the calculations required for RAID 5. This
particular model includes a 32MB SDRAM cache that can be upgraded to 128MB.
It's actually a 64-bit 33MHz PCI card, which is exactly what kind of slots we
have on the Thunder K7.
CD/DVD-ROM - Pioneer DVD-305S or Plextor UltraPlex Wide - $125
This one is a matter of personal preference, but the top two options are
the Pioneer 10X SCSI DVD-ROM, which is also capable of reading CD's at 40X max,
and the Plextor Ultra Plex 40X max UW SCSI CD-ROM. Plextor drives are well known
for their reliability and excellent performance, although Pioneer is certainly
no slouch. If you want DVD support, go with the Pioneer. Otherwise, stick
with the Plextor.
CD-RW - Yamaha CRW2100SZ 16x10x40 - $350
While we've gone with Plextor burners in the past thanks to their excellent
reputation and features like Burn Proof, they've fallen behind more recently,
allowing Yamaha to take the performance lead with their CRW2100SZ 16x10x40 CD-RW. Plextor
does have an IDE version that is that fast, but nothing SCSI-based, and we'd
like to keep this system all SCSI. Note that we passed on the 16X DVD from Pioneer
for the same reason, although that is an option if raw DVD performance is critical
to you. The same goes for Plextor's PlexWriter 16/10/40A burner, which is also
IDE.
Operating
System - Windows 2000 Professional - $200
This is another matter of preference, and is obviously affected by your
particular application requirements. However, since we've gone with an SMP
system, we at least need an SMP capable OS, and that means Windows NT/2000,
Linux, or BeOS. In the past, we went with a quadruple boot setup, but that's
a relatively difficult task to accomplish, so we've decided to just keep things
simple this time and stick to Windows 2000. If you feel like putting in the
effort, you can boot multiple OSes if you need to, or even just for fun.
Bottom Line: $8,000 (without software or shipping)
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