I need to have a PC built, previously I always bought pre-built PC’s.
Can anyone recommend a good company? I would rather pay a little more and make sure everything works than save a buck. Also, I would like to work with someone experienced that can help me get the right components to support what I’m trying to do.
The PC I need built will seem like a gamer PC but it’s for a simulation program. I’m going to use multiple NVIDIA graphics cards to do the computations (using their CUDA technology). I might want to have 4 cards, not sure yet, need to talk to someone about tradeoffs.
Note: For those that notice the similarity between this thread and one I posted a few weeks ago, here’s my story. I investigated multiple proc systems, clusters of pc’s, clusters of PS3’s, FPGA’s and then stumbled upon NVIDIA and CUDA. For the problems I’m trying to solve, these graphics cards look like they will be 1 or 2 orders of magnitude better than the other options (price/performance).
Fresh from the experience of doing this myself for the first time, I have to agree. A recent issue of either PC World or Computer Shopper had a cover story with everything I needed to know in it. I can’t find the exact story I saw, but here’s a similar one: DIY Desktops for Any Budget
Yeah…I know a guy who does a little of that kinda computer bil’din type stuff. My staff would be more than honored to construct such a machine for you.
That’s funny, I just spent all night googling for companies and comparing prices, trying to figure out who’s good/bad/etc., didn’t think I would see any more responses to this question.
These are the comparison specs I was testing between companies:
Q9450
4GB DDR2x800
2xGeFoce8800GT (when I verify CUDA works for me, will upgrade these to 2x or 3x GTX280’s)
750W PSU
500GB Disk
Air Cooled
Plus some other junk (sound card, speakers, etc.)
Falcon, Wicked Machines and Velocity Micro seemed to have good prices in the low 2,000’s. Dell, Alienware and Puget something were in the high 2,000’s and HP blackbird (with 9800GT instead of 8800GT) was 3,600. I skipped cheap places like CyberPower.
How do you compare in prices and component quality to Falcon?
What is the name of your company?
If I end up with 3 GTX280’s, will the machine survive with air cooling?
We are a small independent shop in central CA, we are not any kinda of big OEM like Dell or Falcon, they would be lucky to notice me even if I rammed my truck through the front door.
Component quality is similar, we all basically use the same stuff, if anything my stuff is probably better because we don’t use any proprietary stuff like Dell likes to do lately and no refurb parts. The real benefit to places like us is the lack of boilerplate and bullshit. You want XP, you get XP, something fails, we fix it, if you are willing to wait for OEM RMA I will even run warranties longer than standard for the biz.
We do custom work for custom needs, we don’t do cookie cutter systems.
Drop me a PM with your email and I will assemble you an estimate. I won’t be able to do it for 24 hours or so due to a retail store setup we are finishing up for opening tomorrow.
You can air cool anything, its just a matter of airflow. You may end up with a machine that sucks enough air to make Pratt & Whitney blush but it can be done.
A thought to consider, though: If this is going to be a fairly specialized system, and you won’t be able to simply switch over to an ordinary desktop if this one has a problem, you’re going to want to be able to fix it fast. The best way to do that is to assemble it yourself - this will force you to become an expert on your box.
In other words - building your PC yourself may take a bit more time now, when you can schedule and plan around it. But it could save time later, when you need to make repairs or replace/upgrade components.
According to a couple websites I’ve been to (Here for instance), the drivers available for the new graphics cards aren’t optimized for SLI quite yet so you might not see an acceptable performance gain in 2 or 3 GTX cards over 1. I’m sure once the drivers are coded correctly, that will change.
I will be using the GC’s for computation (NVIDIA CUDA), which doesn’t currently use SLI. I will use 1 GC for the OS and I will send a custom program to the other 2 GC’s to perform independent calculations and then return the results to the main program.