Building an office PC with some punch
He guys,
disclaimer: I'm largely a computer-noob in terms of hardware. I tried to make sense of various internet sites and faqs and put together a list of components. For comparison I added my previous "build" which was an updated office PC provided by my prof.
I read the sidebar and hope this post fits the scope of this subreddit.
What is your intended use for this build? The more details the better.
- Work on Linux Mint with standard office applications (libre office, gimp, Latex, Thunderbird, Firefox, etc.)
- Run standard crystallography programs (only problematic in very, very large cases)
- Run several virtual machines (Windows 7, Windows 10, other Linux distributions), if possible parallel. Those are used to run programs which are not available for Linux (several crystallographic programs, Adobe-suite)
- Do quantum mechanical calculations with WIEN2k, [http://susi.theochem.tuwien.ac.at/hard+soft/index.html](here are the recommended specs but they are quite outdated).
A few words on WIEN2k: I don't need to perform large calculations, just some basic to intermediate stuff. In most cases the bottleneck for this program is the available RAM. If the symmetry gets lower, successively more RAM is needed. Acentric structures need double RAM in comparison to centrosymmetric ones. The program uses k-point parallelization which scales linearly. E.g. if you calculate 4 k-points on 4 cores each core calculates 1 (e.g. 1h). If you calc. 40 k-points on 4 cores that is 10h. If you calculate 40 k-points on 6 cores, that would be 6 cores with 6 points and additionally 4 cores for the remaining k-points (total of 7h). I guess what I want to say more cores = less time needed. While the calculations with WIEN will not be my main focus, and I'll go to a cluster for large problems anyway, this should not be my main focus.
If gaming, what kind of performance are you looking for? (Screen resolution, framerate, game settings)
No gaming.
What is your budget (ballpark is okay)?
- Keep the cost around 750€ / £660 / $840. The less expensive the better (duh).
In what country are you purchasing your parts?
England
Post a draft of your potential build here (specific parts please). Consider formatting your parts list. Don't ask to be spoonfed a build (read the rules!).
With the aid of faqs and PcPartPicker I assembled those components:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel - Core i5-7500 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor | £172.50 @ Aria PC |
| Motherboard | Asus - STRIX Z270-E GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard | £178.80 @ Novatech |
| Memory | G.Skill - Aegis 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory | - |
| Storage | Seagate - BarraCuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | £37.99 @ Aria PC |
| Case | Rosewill - REDBONE ATX Mid Tower Case | - |
| Power Supply | Corsair - CXM 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply | £48.39 @ Ebuyer |
| Wired Network Adapter | TP-Link - TG-3468 PCI-Express x1 10/100/1000 Mbps Network Adapter | £6.94 @ Aria PC |
| External Storage | Seagate - Backup Plus 2TB External Hard Drive | £101.59 @ Amazon UK |
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts | ||
| Total | £546.21 | |
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-06-26 19:24 BST+0100 |
A few comments:
CPU: Quad core seems good for calculations as I have used one before. I picked this particular one because it got a good rating on PCPP. As this one comes with a cooler, I didn't pick an additional one.
MoBo: Honestly, I just selected ATX and again went for good ratings. Ideas?
RAM: As in my previous PC I wouldn't want to go smaller than 32 GB, this seems to be a good size for WIEN2k. Also all the VMs worked just fine even if much RAM was allocated.
Storage: 1TB seems plenty. An SSD would be nice but I have to budget at some point :/ would this one be a bottleneck?
Wired Network Adapter: Do I need this? Or does the MoBo have Ethernet integrated?
External storage: Selected for backups.
Graphics card: I guess the question is: Do I need one? The only thing I would need it for maybe would be some graphics program for visualisation of crystal structures. Nothing fancy. No video editing, no rendering, no gaming.
Provide any additional details you wish below.
Well, those are my thoughts so far. Do you think this build would be a sensible choice? It is too over/underpowered for my needs? Are there better options that give more bang-for-the-buck?
Any input is appreciated, if you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask :)
Thanks for reading and have a nice day!
Posted Jun 26, 2017, 8:33 PM UTC