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| As everything moves into the cloud, into a realm of wireless hand-held mobility, I nevertheless find it difficult to abandon the era of big, foot-warming personal computers, having spent much time working beside some very large and very loud workstations. Like a prisoner who eventually grows to identify with their captor, there is more than a hint of remorse saying "goodbye" to the following dual-processing rigs. |
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The Last Ride: Dual Xeon E5-2670 Sandy Bridge-EP Workstation
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Laptop and notepad hardware performance levels continue to rise, so this may be the last personal computer I will ever build. In recognition of the march toward ever smaller mobile platforms, this last ride packs a ton of power in the smallest footprint ever. With 16 physical cores and 64GB of memory, several server configurations are supported for ultimate engineering flexibility. VMWare Workstation is used to create several Linux virtual machines, each safely running various database, web service and application servers. |
Dual Xeon E5-2670 CPUs @ 2.6GHz 
16 Cores, 32 Logical Processors |
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Specifications |
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| Make | Custom Build | ||
| Configuration | Web/Database Server, Digital Content Creation | ||
| Chassis | Cooler Master HAF XB ATX | ||
| Power Supply | KingWin LZP-1000, 80 PLUS Platinum Modular Power Supply | ||
| Motherboard | ASUS Z9PA-D8 Dual LGA 2011 ATX, PIKE 2008 Daughter RAID adapter | ||
| Processors | 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2670 @ 2.6GHz, 8-Core Sandy Bridge-EP Processor, 3.0GHz Turbo Boost, 20MB L3 Cache | ||
| Memory | 8 x Samsung 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz, 64GB ECC Registered Memory | ||
| Graphics Accelerator | nVidia Quadro K5000 Graphics Card, 1536 CUDA Cores, 4GB GDDR5 Memory | ||
| System/Boot Storage | 2 x Samsung 840 Series 250GB Solid State Drive (SSD) in RAID-0 (500GB) | ||
| RAID Storage | 4 x Seagate Momentus XT 1GB SATA 6.0Gbs Solid State Hybrid, 2TB, RAID-10 | ||
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2005 Alienware MJ-12 7750 Digital Content Creation Workstation
9.82s Vasefield Render Time, NVIDIA Gelato 1.2 Beta 3 
Dual Xeon EMT64 CPUs 
Two Cores, Four Logical Processors |
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Specifications |
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| Make | Alienware | ||
| Model | MJ-12 7750 | ||
| Configuration | Digital Content Creation | ||
| Chassis | Chenbro SR105 Professional Workstation Chassis | ||
| Power Supply | Enermax EG851AX-VH 660W with Opti-UPS ES1500C 1400VA 980W | ||
| Motherboard | X2 Dual Xeon SLI Tumwater Motherboard | ||
| Processors | Dual Intel Xeon 3.6GHz Hyperthreading EM64T 64-bit 800 MHz FSB 1MB | ||
| Memory | 3GB Dual Channel DDR2 Registered ECC SDRAM at 400MHz | ||
| Graphics Accelerator | NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400 PCI Express 512MB GDDR3 Dual-DVI S-Video | ||
| System Drives |
WinXP: 148GB SATA RAID-0 74GBx2 Western Digital Raptor 10K 16MB
Linux: 72GB SATA RAID-0 36GBx2 Western Digital Raptor 10K 16MB |
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| A/V Drives |
WinXP: 800GB SATA RAID-0 400GBx2 Hitachi Deskstar 7K400 7K 16MB
Linux: 500GB SATA RAID-0 250GBx2 Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 7K 16MB |
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| Hard Drive Bay | Hot-Swap Cage with 80mm Fan | ||
| Primary Optical Drive | NEC ND-3520 16x Dual Layer DVD+-R/W Recorder | ||
| 2nd Optical Drive | Plextor PlexWriter Premium 52x32x52x CD-R/W Recorder | ||
| Removable Storage | 10-in-1 Digital Media R/W | ||
| Network Connection | Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet | ||
| I/O Controllers | SIIG USB 2.0 5-Port PCI and SIIG Firewire 800 3-Port PCI | ||
| Display | Apple 30" Cinema HD Display at 2560 x 1600 | ||
| Primary Digital Audio | Creative Audigy 2 ZS High Definition 7.1 Surround PCI | ||
| 2nd Digital Audio | Creative Extigy High Definition 5.1 Surround USB 2.0 | ||
| Theatre Sound | Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 | ||
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2000 Dell Precision 420 Workstation
Avid/Maya Rendering Victim! 
Double Slot-1 Motherboard 
Dual Pentium III CPUs 
Two Cores |
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Specifications |
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| Make | Dell | ||
| Model | Precision 420 | ||
| Configuration | Engineering Workstation | ||
| Chassis | Dell Mini-Tower Chassis | ||
| Power Supply | 425W | ||
| Motherboard | Dell Dual Pentium Slot-1 Motherboard | ||
| Processors | Dual Intel Pentium III 1.0GHz 133 MHz FSB 256KB Cache | ||
| Memory | 2GB Registered ECC RDRAM at 200MHz | ||
| Graphics Accelerator | ATI Radeon 9600 XT 128MB DVI | ||
| System Drive | 36GB Seagate ST3367070SLW SCSI | ||
| A/V Drive | 73GB Seagate ST373207SLW SCSI | ||
| Primary Optical Drive | Pioneer 305 SCSI DVD-ROM Drive | ||
| 2nd Optical Drive | Sony CRX140 CD-R/W Drive | ||
| I/O Controllers |
SIIG USB 2.0 5-Port PCI
SIIG Firewire 800 3-Port PCI |
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| Primary Digital Audio | Creative Extigy High Definition 5.1 Surround USB 2.0 | ||
| Theatre Sound | Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 | ||
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1994 Micron PowerServer
Just booting XP with light surfing was an ordeal! 
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Specifications |
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| Make | Micron | ||
| Model | PowerServer Plus | ||
| Configuration | EISA/PCI Server | ||
| Chassis | Full Tower Chassis | ||
| Processor | Dual Intel Pentium Socket 5 Processors at 133MHz | ||
| Memory | 256MB | ||
| Graphics Accelerator | Diamond Stealth PCI 64MB | ||
| System Drive | 4GB Conner SCSI Hard Disk | ||
| Data Drive | 8GB Seagate SCSI Hard Disk | ||
| Optical Drive | Plextor 6Plex CDR | ||
| Display | Nanao FlexScan T2-17 | ||
| Digital Audio | Creative SoundBlaster AWE32 | ||