Heavy PT user, help with new PC(s?)

[DaleDough]

Looking to buy a new system. Right now I'm thinking about spending ~2,5k excl monitor, but willing to spend more if the extra performance is worth it (and won't be outdated in 6 months!).

I'm a heavy PT user - have a hugeass DB that I want to access FAST. Several questions:

- Two or one? With all that performance I'd get for the postgres server it's tempting to just use that as my main PC. I would run Linux with VMware or Xen for poker, and occasionally boot into Win only for games.

- HD configuration. This is what I currently have in mind:
> Dump drive(s) for bittorrent/storage and database backup. I'd get whatever $300-ish buys me, focus being space.
> 1 faster drive for OS and apps. Which? Is SSD worth the price premium?
> 2 even faster drives for postgres in RAID0. Enough? Is 3+ worth it? I figure I don't need real time redundancy, but just use the dump drive for backup. How much space do I need? Are the cheaper SCSI models bad enough that I should either spend more, or get SATA instead? Any brand/model recommendations?
Also, where do I put the swap file?

- CPU. Considering the Q9450, but I read that there is an equivalent Xeon that offers better stability at the same cost. Any truth to that?

- Memory. What's more important - quantity or DDR3? I really want to avoid the latter. Thinking 4x2 GB DDR2-800. Can I somehow get 16? Worth it? What else should I look for? Assume I know pretty much nothing about memory.

- Motherboard. Other than that I need one I know next to nothing about it. I assume most have RAID and 1GB ethernet. How about SCSI? Do I need anything specific for that?

- GPU. I want more than 2 monitors, so I'd have 2. Am I stretching the power supply too much with all this?

[tarix]

Looking to buy a new system. Right now I'm thinking about spending ~2,5k excl monitor, but willing to spend more if the extra performance is worth it (and won't be outdated in 6 months!).

The system you quoted sounds more like a game machine than a DB server. In order of importance you want:

* a fast hard drive sub-system
* a lot of memory

Really after that nothing else matters. The number crunching that PT3 does on the server side is pretty insignificant at the present time.

RAID 0 will be the fastest, but it will double the likely hood of losing all of your data. RAID0+1 (four drives) will give you both speed and recoverability.

If you get more than four gigs of memory don't forget to run one of the 64-bit OS's.

If you can really afford to splash around ... there are plenty of good caching SCSI raid controllers. While you are going RAID you can also get yourself some 15,000k RPM drives. Zoom zoom!

From watching PT3/postgres on my own system I would stick with a nice cheap dual core processor. As far as graphics ... get the cheapest thing they offer and run your desktop at 800x600.

Finally, if you run anything besides the database on this machine you aren't going to get maximum performance. Other programs increase all of your I/O overhead. They have to be loaded into memory which reduces memory for caching. They will constantly be reading/writing hand history files which also reduces I/O through-put. If you really want speeeeeed then stick with two machines and stick 1GB cable between them.

[DaleDough]

Thanks!
Couple more Q's:

Do I need a server mobo & registered RAM? Worth it to get more than 8?

If I go with SAS drives, can I just buy any old controller, or is that penny wise, etc?

Do I need a 15k drive for the OS (slimmed down/roll your own x64 linux obv) as well? Swap partition goes on the same drive as OS I presume, not the DB?

What kind of PSU? I think I'm sticking to the extra dump drive(s) option, so this thing can double as a file server when I don't play. Also, do I need any extra cooling that doesn't come with the CPU/case if I get four DIMMS and 4+ HDs?