Nope, but the price for Home is the same as the price for Small Business, so it doesn't matter anyway.

I've been saving money and what not and still looking around. I went for a 250$ quad-core over a .9k six core processor.

Now, if I buy a "server motherboard" that supports multiple CPU's would that be alright?

I'd still like to get six or eight cores without hyper threading.
If this machine really is as fast and hard-crunching as I expect it to be, I'll be purchasing software for it. Such as Dreamweaver.

Right now I'm using a notepad equivalent on OS X for web development and relying on trial software to connect to FTP servers - I lucked out with one as it counts down days when the main process/application is running. So I can mount the FTP drive, quit the application and as long as I never restart it'll stay mounted past the trial. And, when I start the trial a month later, it'll say I have four days left. Close it for another month, says I have three days left. So, that's been beneficial.

I also hear Windows Explorer has Read/Write FTP support, which Finder in OS X lacks, it just reads. So, that's money I can save there.


Also, I never did post the details to my "recent" build:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=20114088

No.



And what will you be buying that you expect to benefit from six or eight cores?

Trust me, an i7 with HyperThreading will absolutely fly, and easily handle whatever you throw at it.



Uh... there are hundreds of free FTP clients, some of them are really good too. I happen to like Filezilla, which has a Windows, Linux, and OS X version.

Paying for an FTP client is just silly.



Looks good. You probably don't need the bluetooth dongle since I would assume the bluetooth mouse+keyboard combo is going to come with a dongle as well.

I don't like opening a program to get to my FTP servers. I find viewing them as a drive under "My Computer" or on the Sidebar of Finder a lot more intuitive on my part so, any program that can mount a server as a removable drive wins my heart whether it's free or paid.




Why wouldn't a server motherboard be alright? Aside from a different BIOS, wouldn't it handle things the same? Regarding more cores, if I happen to get into video editing after the purchase of my new cameras, it'd be nice to have extra cores room for video rendering. Sure, I could get by one four cores: Photo/Graphics 2, OS 1, Games 1. I'd prefer to use hyper-threading as a last resort; there's just something with me about virtualization on computers.

Lastly, good point about the USB Dongle.

No, it doesn't. The details are complicated and unnecessary for you. Multi CPU systems also fall under different licensing agreements, as well.

So no server boards for you.



Uh, what? Cores don't get allocated like that... Hyper-threading also has nothing to do with virtualization and vice-versa.

If you get into video rendering and you need more speed (still think you are underestimating just how fast an i7 is - you are too used to a slow as balls mobile Core 2 Duo), depending on what you are using there are other options like CUDA and such. Which means you might consider swapping the 5850 out for a GTX 470. The 470 will be hotter and louder, but it does have CUDA.

Nikontard.

Also, you should just go buy some pre-built computer from dell. Because it's pretty clear you have no idea what you're talking about.

Yeah, I've got a Core Two Duo. I was figuring I could select cores because in one of my programs allows me to select the level of multithreading. Which I assumed was the same as multiple cores, but upon reading I found that it wasn't.

So it seems I'll be staying at four cores then

Perhaps not. But it's pretty clear you haven't read the topic.

Well actually you can specify that a program can only use X number of cores (and which cores), but why would you want to? That will only drastically slow things down, because you will artificially be making your computer run at half speed.

It sounded to me like the program allowed him to essentially specify a number of threads to launch for a specific part of the computation, either assuming that the computer would be smart about scheduling the threads one per core, or explicitly specifying core affinity.

Yes, but look at the rest of it where he had 1 game 1 os. It sounds like he wanted to lock a specific core to a specific task, which makes no sense.

If his program let's him pick how many threads, he should always pick however many threads the hardware supports INCLUDING hyperthreading - so 8 for an i7.

Agreed, unless he was simultaneously running, say, a mission-critical realtime (hence latency-sensitive) service on the same machine. Obviously that would be quite high on the dumb idea scale, so I don't see the point either.

I've been looking at some pre-built computers. Save myself the hassel and get on my feet faster.

I set up this list, on B&H. I'm still trying to decide what tower to buy. It'll probably be one of the first two because I don't like how the third tower is constructed, but I'm not ruling it out, it is significantly cheaper.

Three monitors on the list are place holders, but will buy one then the other two later (with the mount). I'm not sure I want _that_ mount because I can't tell if it'll hold that 23" U2311H Monitor.

I'd say all three of those computers are pretty comparable. You'll probably want to bump either of the latter two to 8GB of RAM, and I'm sure you'll want to add some sort of disk redundancy, but other than that, I have no major objections. I assume that Kllrnohj will be a different matter.

Yes. I'll add RAID. These are just bare bones to get me up and started until I can add RAID. Right now, I'm thinking I'll be fine. I've had no real clients, and I'm just future proofing. Maybe when swivel finishes Lemur I'll start advertising for clients, and thus, will add RAID.

I was getting caught up in the moment, those months ago.

I really don't like the 900$ Tower because the USB & Ports are on top, so if I cram the tower into a whole, I won't be able to fit anything at the top, so forward facing ports are more preferable. But worth an extra 300-500$ out of those three, I'm not positive.

So, it'll take some thought (and will continue to search around) but I have the time

Personally for some vague branding reason I prefer Intel chips, but the tablet PC that I'm typing on right now is running a two-year-old AMD Turion64 x2 chip that I've been quite happy with, so I'm not sure what exactly my complaint is.

Edit: I'm happy to see that 16 cores is no longer quite as important to you.

With the heat these suckers will be pumping out, putting them in a closed area is a big no no. Most of them have fans on the side, they should be well ventilated (especially if you want to overclock).



Honestly, it shouldn't take you more than an evening to put together a computer, and I still very much recommend that you do instead. Prebuilt computers have several major drawbacks:

1) 99% of the time you have to reformat and re-install anyway to get rid of all the crap that's preloaded

2) They use the cheapest motherboard they can find

3) They use a barely sufficient PSU that's also as cheap as they can find

Ultimately, you end up with a computer that isn't very good quality wise just to save a bit of time. Warranty also tends to not be as good (when you buy your own parts, 3 year warranties with excellent customer service isn't unusual).

Regardless, I wouldn't go with any of those 3 because I think they look ugly, lol. The Core i7 is probably the fastest, but it's the 800 series which means no triple channel memory, no dual x16 PCI-express slots, no excellent x58 chipset motherboard, etc... It runs on the "budget" socket like the i3 and i5 do.



You have 3 NEC monitors there, are you planning on getting the (better) U2311H instead though?

Yup, that's the plan. I added the NEC as price-point. Since the two are the same price and size, I can accurately estimate the cost.

Also, I'm taking another look at the computer build (on Newegg) and what is the difference between Crossfire and SLI? Is one superior? Is this like the HD-DVD and BluRay war?

Everything I've read so far is that SLI needs the same GPU series and Crossfire will run at the lowest card. Are there any other benefits to one over the other.

Sli is nvidia, crossfire is amd. Sli is a bit better, but all the x58 boards worth buying support both anyway. It doesn't matter, you don't want either.

I've widdled down the price of the computer components to 1,018.90. Down about 500$ After I took out the case (was 1.7k with case). However, I've choosen a more expensive case, 699$ for mostly aesthetic reasons. You have permssion to put shame on me.

I'm having troubles figuring out what would fit in the motherboard slot. So this may be a situation of buying the case and going from there. However, it doesn't have USB3.0 - and it will never - so I lowered my motherboard from USB3.0 to USB2.0 and saved 100$ in the process, I lowered my CPU from an i7 to an i5, still quad core.

The price of the monitor and case, bring the the cost from Amazon to 1,018.99. Ouch. I might go with the Plastic version of the Level 10, which is ~279$ but I don't want a cheap feeling case and Aluminum would be a good feel/look, despite the weight.

I'm still likely going to buy my nettop before my desktop so it's quite likely these prices will drop even more as technology advances and the old tech lowers in price. Knowing my history, I'll likely update to keep current so my overal component price will stay about the same. I won't be buying my nettop until about Summer or later, though.

Other Links:
Component List
Monitor

I have to say I like that monitor, $314 for a DP monitor with an IPS panel is a pretty good deal from what I've seen, but I'm no expert on monitors so I'll let kllrnohj weigh in on your setup, but from the sounds of it its a pretty good setup for the price.