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From: me on 26 Feb 2010 19:17
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?
From: me on 26 Feb 2010 22:21
Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:

>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?
From: Paul on 27 Feb 2010 00:35
me(a)privacy.net wrote:
> Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:
>
>> 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?

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%20iQuadro

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
From: me on 27 Feb 2010 14:29
Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:

>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?
From: Paul on 27 Feb 2010 17:26
me(a)privacy.net wrote:
> Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:
>
>> 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?

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
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