Is this a decent barebones workstation for poor engineering student?

[me]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816110036

I'm tempted to buy this as I'm engineering student on
strict budget.

Not up on hardware tho

Can you advise?

If I eventually wanted to move all the parts to a good
case....can it be done?

 

[Paul]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816110036

I'm tempted to buy this as I'm engineering student on
strict budget.

Not up on hardware tho

Can you advise?

If I eventually wanted to move all the parts to a good
case....can it be done?

The big danger with stuff like this, is whether
the graphics solution will choke, when you load
a decent sized project.

The graphics in this case, are done by motherboard
(Northbridge) graphics. Traditionally, the graphics
performance of integrated graphics, is about as bad as
it gets. Usually, weaker than the cheapest graphics
card you can buy.

I like the box. I don't have a problem with that $370 box
as an office computer. The DVI connector on that computer
can drive a 30" monitor at 2560x1600 resolution. So the
computer is interesting from that point of view.

But since I cannot find any OpenGL benchmarks for the graphics
portion, I'm going to have to assume nobody was interested
enough to test it. I wouldn't buy any certified OpenGL
solution, unless I could see it compared to the competition.
I've read of the experiences of people who have bought low
end OpenGL solutions, only to find they choke up when a
large project is loaded. The motherboard graphics don't have
private memory, and would be running shared memory from the
system memory. And that drops the memory bandwidth to the GPU.
For example, a graphics card I bought a couple days ago,
for $65, had about 42GB/sec bandwidth. Your box will use
system memory, and get 3-6GB/sec, depending on the memory
used. And I consider the card I bought (4 year old technology)
to be crap (I bought it, as I could get a Win2K driver
for it.)

Oh, another thing. Newegg is offering an E7500 processor
for free, to go with the box. There is a feature of processors,
called VT or Vanterpool Technology. It supports virtualization.
Right now, the main benefit, would be the ability to run
"WinXP mode" while using Windows 7. If the E7500 is missing
that feature, then you would not be able to use WinXP mode.
There are different versions of E7500, listed here.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36503#specs

And more dual cores in the listing here.

http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyID=26547

It is possible they're having trouble selling the E7500's.
So at least ask them, what SLxxx code the processor has,
that they're "giving" you. I'm a bit pissed, as my processor
happens to be missing that feature too. Intel disabled the
feature, purely for product placement (raise the price), but
now that Win7 is out, it makes their processors that don't support
VT, look pretty bad.

Paul

 

[me]

The big danger with stuff like this, is whether
the graphics solution will choke, when you load
a decent sized project.

Wow Paul thanks for detailed reply!

As and engineering student I wont be doing BIG projects
with thousands of parts in assembly.... but more likely
just "training" mode type stuff say in Inventor or
Solidworks

Also, even if the integrated graphics choke does that
prevent me from buying and installing a discrete video
card if wanting to? Anyway to disable onboard
graphics?

I'm not really up on computer hardware, so appreciate
any help here!

Looks like I will also need a decent size hard drive
huh?

 

[Paul]

Wow Paul thanks for detailed reply!

As and engineering student I wont be doing BIG projects
with thousands of parts in assembly.... but more likely
just "training" mode type stuff say in Inventor or
Solidworks

Also, even if the integrated graphics choke does that
prevent me from buying and installing a discrete video
card if wanting to? Anyway to disable onboard
graphics?

I'm not really up on computer hardware, so appreciate
any help here!

Looks like I will also need a decent size hard drive
huh?

Sure, you can fit your own video card in there.
I wouldn't expect a problem with doing that.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_470_us.html

There is a user manual here. It says the single PCI Express x16
slot is fully wired. So it will give full bandwidth, and isn't
a sub-wired slot.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/server/TW100-E5/Manual/e4132_tw100-e5.zip

The download page for that file is here. This is where you'd get
your driver updates.

http://support.asus.com.tw/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=TW100-E5 iQuadro

There is a picture of the power supply here. It is a 390W 80%
efficient supply. It has 12V @ 18A per rail (12V1, 12V2) and
an overall limit of 12V @ 29A. That means you could use a
12V @ 11A processor (12V2) and a 12V @ 18A video card, and stay within
the specs. (Subtract a bit from the 18A, for the hard drive and
CDROM drive, and the cooling fans. They're all loads on 12V1.)
A middle-of-the-road video card might be 12V @ 10A. If you're going
to use the E7500, there is no danger you'll need 11 amps for the
processor. You probably have enough power to run a quad.

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/16-110-036-S11?$S640W$

(12V1 versus 12V2 - ATX supply spec background info. 12V2 is only for the processor.)
http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/ATX12V_PSDG_2_2_public_br2.pdf

I'm not sure how Nvidia and ATI rig the features of
OpenGL, to make it in your best interest to get
their "certified" version. FireGL and Quadro are
supposed to have OpenGL drivers which have been
tested with various pieces of software. Ordinary
video cards, also support OpenGL, but may not work
quite the same.

I managed to locate a user forum, where users compared
some of their experiences with various video cards, and
that is where I got the feedback on the low end cards
choking up. It'll probably take you a bit of searching
to find that info again. Start with the tool names
you plan on using (AutoCad, ProEng etc), and maybe
you can find more feedback on how well OpenGL works
for people.

It would be nice, if there was a used market for certified
OpenGL cards, so maybe you could find a decent card to
fill the slot with that way. But the problem remains,
of getting benchmarks to compare them all, so you
can make an informed purchase.

SpecViewPerf benchmark. On my machine, this rendered pretty ugly.

http://www.spec.org/gwpg/gpc.static/vp10info.html

There isn't much of a spread in performance. The machine
sample size here is too small. So this isn't enough to help
with your shopping.

http://www.spec.org/gwpg/gpc.static/vp10results.html

Paul

 

[me]

There isn't much of a spread in performance. The machine
sample size here is too small. So this isn't enough to help
with your shopping.

Well I went ahead and ordered it. Not sure if right
decision or not but did it.

Got the free E7500 and 4 gig ram. Didn't get hard
drive yet. Can you advise one?

Also, is it possible to take these parts out of case
and put in BETTER case in future?

 

[Paul]

Well I went ahead and ordered it. Not sure if right
decision or not but did it.

Got the free E7500 and 4 gig ram. Didn't get hard
drive yet. Can you advise one?

Also, is it possible to take these parts out of case
and put in BETTER case in future?

Hard drives are easy. Go to Newegg and read the reviews

Why am I cruel like that ? Because that is how I buy hardware.
I vet things via the reviews, to reduce the odds I'll get screwed
on a purchase.

In general terms, I recommend staying away from drives larger
than 1TB. Full performance drives are available at up to 1TB
capacity. Then, check the reviews to see how many of the
drives die in the first week, arrive DOA and so on.

There is a new generation of drives coming out, with 4K sectors
instead of 512 byte sectors, and I'd stay away from those for
the moment. They may say "Advanced Format" on the label, when
the stupid things should say "Hey, we have 4K sectors". To
avoid products like this, you'd be advised to at least go
to the disk drive manufacturer site, and look for those
key words on the datasheet. The purpose of a 4K sector, is
to break the 2TB capacity barrier (which future drives will
be needing). The 4K sector is being introduced now, to give
us pain.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

I buy drives from a local supplier, and for some reason,
haven't had a DOA yet.

The last one I bought, was a Seagate 500GB (ST3500418AS).
The reviews here aren't the best, but the price was right.
If you're unsure about the quality, buy two different brands
with the same capacity, partition one of them, so it can be
completely copied to the other, and do regular backups.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822148395

My current structure is, I use 160GB drives, back them up to
some 250GB drives, and use the 500GB drive when doing
maintenance or moving things around on the 250GB drives.
And that is a result of the capacity improvement per dollar
spent, over time. I can't afford to buy the highest capacity
drive, and sorta aim for the sweet spot. And try to buy something
which isn't "total fail" in the review comments. In the case
of drives that had firmware problems, there were enough hints in
the reviews, to stay away.

When you use a big drive, all maintenance activities take forever.
If you download several terabytes of movies, it takes forever
to do backups, protect your content and so on. A super-large
drive means if it fails, you lose a lot of stuff. Which is why
I mention buying a pair of them, to encourage backups. Even
though you're a student on a budget, it would hurt if one night,
you lost everything because it was stored on only one drive.

Paul

 

[me]

Well I went ahead and ordered it. Not sure if right
decision or not but did it.

Total cost was $428

Again.... 4 gig ram.... E7500.... no hard drives

 

[me]

If you're unsure about the quality, buy two different brands
with the same capacity, partition one of them, so it can be
completely copied to the other, and do regular backups.

Yes..... good idea! Redundancy is good!

Where do you think the "sweet" spot is as far as
size/dollar? 500 gig?

 

[Paul]

Total cost was $428

Again.... 4 gig ram.... E7500.... no hard drives

When doing assembly, don't forget antistatic precautions. For
example, a wrist strap to the chassis is handy. Also, remove
all power before changing any hardware. Since the motherboard
seems to be an Asus, the green LED on the motherboard should
warn you that power is present, and changing hardware is unsafe.
The green LED on an Asus motherboard is connected to +5VSB, and
tells you whether the standby voltage is present. You want
all voltages off, when changing RAM or PCI Express cards etc.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2479151

The wrist strap has a weak electrical connection on purpose. It
has a high resistance value resistor in series with the strap,
and that is to help drain static charge slowly. Static discharges
do more damage, if there is no electrical resistance to limit
peak current flow.

When installing a processor, watch this movie first. It'll
demonstrate a few tricks with the push-pins.

(Intel LGA775 movie)
http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/24/12/241209_241209.wmv

*******

You have a plan to move the hardware out the case. I wouldn't
do that, until you've tested the hardware and it proves out
as working.

1) Memtest86+ from memtest.org . Do two full passes.
If there are errors reported, test the sticks one at
a time, to find the offender. No errors are acceptable.
If there is only one error in a long period of testing,
adjusting Vdimm one notch upwards may help. Read the ratings on
the DIMM packaging, to see if the memory has any special
requirements in terms of settings. DDR runs 2.5V, DDR2 is 1.8V,
DDR3 is 1.5V nominal.

Memtest should be completed before you install an OS, or
before booting an OS for the first time. Memory errors
can cause things like the Windows registry to be corrupted.
Memory errors can also cause the Windows installer to fail.

2) Prime95 from mersenne.org/freesoft . This is a stress tester.
It tests both the memory and the processor. You need an OS
installed for this program to work. Prime95 can be run from
a Linux LiveCD booted system, if you want to avoid running
Windows while doing the test. I use Ubuntu and Knoppix
Linux LiveCDs here, for that kind of testing. A LiveCD
doesn't require software installation, and the CD cannot
be corrupted by bad memory, processor etc.

3) To complete your testing, try a simple benchmark program.
I like 3DMark2001SE, because it is a relatively small
download, and the benchmark results make your video card
look like a hero.

http://majorgeeks.com/download99.html

On my previous video card, the nature scene runs at 100 FPS.
It runs at about twice that speed, on my latest $65 video card.

The first time you run that, you're looking for graphics corruptions.
Some Nvidia chipset GPUs don't seem to receive very good
testing, and there have been some bad 6100/6150s for example.
So the first time, the important factors are whether the
benchmark runs at all, or whether there is graphics
corruption.

I've tried to find a *simple* way to do a stressful Linux
graphics test, but so far, have no easy answer for that.
The 3DMark test is only for Windows.

When you install Windows, you'll need to install the graphics
driver after the basic Windows install is complete. The CD
that comes with your new barebones CD purchase, should have
the chipset and graphics drivers on it. The graphics driver
may even attempt to install DirectX for you. My Windows SP3
installer CD, already has DirectX 9c embedded in it, so
for newly purchased goods, you might already be covered for that.
The graphics driver package may attempt to install its own
version of DirectX, and that should not hurt anything.
Once the graphics driver, chipset drivers, some DirectX
are installed, you should be able to run the computer
monitor at native resolution, and be able to run 3DMark2001SE.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Paul]

Yes..... good idea! Redundancy is good!

Where do you think the "sweet" spot is as far as
size/dollar? 500 gig?

Well, what can you afford ? In my case, that
helps temper the notion of "sweet".

Plot a curve of price versus capacity. Extrapolating
to zero capacity, you find a "chunk of metal" costs X.
And each increment of capacity costs a bit more. Then,
the 1.5TB or 2TB drives might tilt the curve upwards a
bit. If you're short on cash, and if you know your
storage needs are modest, you'll be buying something
only barely bigger than a "chunk of metal". On a
limited budget, there is no point in going overboard.

At the time of my last purchase, I needed a 500GB drive
to finish the project I was working on. Otherwise,
buying something smaller would have saved a few bucks.
I don't normally buy drives that big. In the past, I
used 80GB drives as the norm.

Paul

 

[me]

You have a plan to move the hardware out the case. I wouldn't
do that, until you've tested the hardware and it proves out
as working.

No plans to do that for six months or so!!

BUT....can it even be done?

The reviewers complained abt cheapness of the case

 

[Paul]

No plans to do that for six months or so!!

BUT....can it even be done?

The reviewers complained abt cheapness of the case

Some of the barebones computers that Asus makes, have
proprietary-shaped motherboards in them. That prevents
them from being easily moved to another computer.

Standard motherboard formfactors are 12.0"x9.6" and
9.6"x9.6". I suspect yours is the latter, known as
microATX. You should be able to transplant it to a
microATX case or a standard ATX case, as the holes
on the 9.6" square motherboard are a subset of the
holes in the larger motherboard.

The picture of the motherboard looks square to me,
and the layout looks like microATX.

http://images.nvidia.com/products/quadro_fx_470/quadro_fx_470_3qtr_med.png

When you move the motherboard, you pop out the removable
faceplate for the I/O area, from the old case, and move
it over to the new case.

The cheapness of the case can be important, if you work
inside it a lot. A case wouldn't stay in my house too long
if it cut me My current computer case is 10 years old,
and its main asset is a removable motherboard tray, combined
with plenty of room for long video cards (no disks present,
right across from the video slot). I didn't even know
the motherboard tray removed in it, until last year
I never put the side on it, because I'm inside it so
often. The best part is, I don't even know what brand
it is. There are no brand marks on it anywhere.

As for case selection, I like cases that list "SECC steel"
as part of their construction. I never really liked the
Lian Li aluminum approach. Some of those were on display at
a local computer store, and they seemed rickety. For some
of the more novel case products, it's nice to see some
on display, and get a chance to handle them before you buy.
I mean, I might have been interested in Lian Li, until
I got to actually touch one. And that was an instant
turn off.

Paul

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

Am 27.02.2010 00:17, * (e-mail address removed):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816110036

I'm tempted to buy this as I'm engineering student on
strict budget.

Not up on hardware tho

Can you advise?

This is not really a workstation, it is a desktop PC with on-board
Quadro graphics. The issue is not the quality of the hardware but the
compatibility with your programs.

Look into the list of certified systems from the vendors of the programs
you'll be using, if you want to have trouble-free operation then you
want to use a system which has been certified.

There are lots of cheap 2nd hand workstations available (i.e. HP
xw4300/xw4400, Dell Precision 380/390, etc) which are certified for
professional applications.

Benjamin

 

[me]

This is not really a workstation, it is a desktop PC with on-board
Quadro graphics. The issue is not the quality of the hardware but the
compatibility with your programs.

But isn't a "workstation" basically a desktop with
heavy duty graphics card, beefier power supply, ECC
memory?

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

Am 28.02.2010 23:56, * (e-mail address removed):

But isn't a "workstation" basically a desktop with
heavy duty graphics card, beefier power supply, ECC
memory?

No. One of the probably most important thing on a workstation is that it
is certified for professional applications. You will find that many ISVs
don't give you any support unless you run their software on a certified
machine with certified drivers.

Besides that there are differences in the hardware and the BIOS as well.

With prices for 2nd hand workstations like the mentioned Dell Precisions
being that low, I wouldn't waste any time with toys like this Asus PC.

Benjamin