Comments on: Top-shelf http://dactyl.whitman.edu/wordpress/archives/2009/06/13/top-shelf/ The non-official physics and astronomy blog at Dartmouth. (With some help from Whitman now too.) Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:16:28 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Nathaniel http://dactyl.whitman.edu/wordpress/archives/2009/06/13/top-shelf/comment-page-1/#comment-71247 Nathaniel Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:27:53 +0000 http://dactyl.dartmouth.edu/wordpress/?p=3393#comment-71247 More processors is good and lots of ram is good. I really don't think the upgraded processors are worth it though... 10% more performance for 50% more money? Get at least a gig of memory per processor, two is even better and it looks like 16 GB total doesn't even cost that much from Apple. I have a snazzy plan for drives that isn't too expensive either. Get a WD Velociraptor for your boot drive. They're not huge, but 300 GB should be enough for most stuff and they're screamingly fast. Then, populate the other three drive bays with WD Caviar Green 1 TB drives. Their lack of heat will somewhat compensate for the Velociraptor and they're plenty fast enough for pretty much anything. That'll give you ~3.3 TB of disk space to arrange however you want with plenty of speed. Ahh, the 24" LED display too. I think that a single 24" monitor is good enough, you don't need multiples. Although, if you want to add a second one, you could get a smaller pivoting display from HP or somewhere and keep it in portrait orientation for writing code and such while you use the Apple display for all your visualization stuff. Yup, that's just what I'd do. More processors is good and lots of ram is good. I really don’t think the upgraded processors are worth it though… 10% more performance for 50% more money? Get at least a gig of memory per processor, two is even better and it looks like 16 GB total doesn’t even cost that much from Apple.

I have a snazzy plan for drives that isn’t too expensive either. Get a WD Velociraptor for your boot drive. They’re not huge, but 300 GB should be enough for most stuff and they’re screamingly fast. Then, populate the other three drive bays with WD Caviar Green 1 TB drives. Their lack of heat will somewhat compensate for the Velociraptor and they’re plenty fast enough for pretty much anything. That’ll give you ~3.3 TB of disk space to arrange however you want with plenty of speed.

Ahh, the 24″ LED display too. I think that a single 24″ monitor is good enough, you don’t need multiples. Although, if you want to add a second one, you could get a smaller pivoting display from HP or somewhere and keep it in portrait orientation for writing code and such while you use the Apple display for all your visualization stuff.

Yup, that’s just what I’d do.

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