Update on my Workstation Purchase
In case anyone was interested I thought I’d give an update on the Dell Precision T3400 I bought at the Dell auction site.
The computer arrived Thursday and I unpacked it that night. The first thing I noticed was that it was set up for a desktop orientation. Of course I need it set up as a tower configuration. Referring to the manual I had downloaded the day before it seems like an easy thing to change…except you need a different drive bezel for the tower. Dell no longer sells this so I’m off to eBay to find a bezel. Actually I found several and one had a ‘make an offer’ button. If you have never used this option before you need to know that if your offer is accepted you have bought the item. I thought I would have an opportunity to decline the purchase. Oh well I got it for a price lower than any of the ‘buy it now’ prices and free shipping.
I also noticed that instead of one 160 GB hard drive there are two 80 GB hard drives. This is a plus as I can set them up as a RAID 0 configuration maximizing their performance. I will then add a larger third drive that will be strictly for data and seldom used applications and to backup the other drive. The way RAID 0 works is that they act as one drive with the data split between them. This allows faster access as data is loaded from 2 drives effectively doubling the throughput. All I will load on these drives is the operating system and the SolidWorks program. It should be a sweet setup.
I started putting the system together on Saturday morning. I had a decommissioned a media center PC that had windows 7 on it that I wanted to move to the new machine. I started the install and everything was going great until I got to the screen where you are to enter the CD key for the Windows 7. It would not work!
I’m thinking, “oh great! I’ll have to spend another $200 for Windows 7”. I did some checking online and found out this neat little trick… If you are installing a Windows 7 upgrade on a blank hard drive you must 1st install and leave the CD key blank. The software will install and be useable for a limited time. Now run the install again and the upgrade disk will see the previous install and works fine with the CD key.
Now that Windows 7 is installed the next hurdle is the activation of Windows. I was fully expecting to be on the phone with Microsoft explaining to them how I had moved the copy of Windows to a new machine. But low and behold the Activation wizard ran without issue. A nice surprise! From my research I’ve found out that there is a time sensitive aspect to this process. In other words if I had recently booted up the original computer with the Windows 7 on it and did any updates then the activation on the ‘new’ computer would have failed. This is only a guess as Microsoft is pretty secretive on the matter.
Jumping ahead a bit I now have the machine set up with SolidWorks 2011 running, so now to benchmark it. I am happy with the performance as it compares favorably to the machine I use at work. I can say this though, in the SolidWorks realm processor speed is more important than the number of cores. My quad core 2.4 Ghz machine was a few ticks slower than the machine than the dual core 3.0 Ghz at work on the CPU section of the benchmark. But the rendering was quite a bit faster on the quad core machine. This is useful information if you are putting together the hardware for a new machine.
In case anyone was interested I thought I’d give an update on the Dell Precision T3400 I bought at the Dell auction site.
The computer arrived Thursday and I unpacked it that night. The first thing I noticed was that it was set up for a desktop orientation. Of course I need it set up as a tower configuration. Referring to the manual I had downloaded the day before it seems like an easy thing to change…except you need a different drive bezel for the tower. Dell no longer sells this so I’m off to eBay to find a bezel. Actually I found several and one had a ‘make an offer’ button. If you have never used this option before you need to know that if your offer is accepted you have bought the item. I thought I would have an opportunity to decline the purchase. Oh well I got it for a price lower than any of the ‘buy it now’ prices and free shipping.
I also noticed that instead of one 160 GB hard drive there are two 80 GB hard drives. This is a plus as I can set them up as a RAID 0 configuration maximizing their performance. I will then add a larger third drive that will be strictly for data and seldom used applications and to backup the other drive. The way RAID 0 works is that they act as one drive with the data split between them. This allows faster access as data is loaded from 2 drives effectively doubling the throughput. All I will load on these drives is the operating system and the SolidWorks program. It should be a sweet setup.
I started putting the system together on Saturday morning. I had a decommissioned a media center PC that had windows 7 on it that I wanted to move to the new machine. I started the install and everything was going great until I got to the screen where you are to enter the CD key for the Windows 7. It would not work!
I’m thinking, “oh great! I’ll have to spend another $200 for Windows 7”. I did some checking online and found out this neat little trick… If you are installing a Windows 7 upgrade on a blank hard drive you must 1st install and leave the CD key blank. The software will install and be useable for a limited time. Now run the install again and the upgrade disk will see the previous install and works fine with the CD key.
Now that Windows 7 is installed the next hurdle is the activation of Windows. I was fully expecting to be on the phone with Microsoft explaining to them how I had moved the copy of Windows to a new machine. But low and behold the Activation wizard ran without issue. A nice surprise! From my research I’ve found out that there is a time sensitive aspect to this process. In other words if I had recently booted up the original computer with the Windows 7 on it and did any updates then the activation on the ‘new’ computer would have failed. This is only a guess as Microsoft is pretty secretive on the matter.
Jumping ahead a bit I now have the machine set up with SolidWorks 2011 running, so now to benchmark it. I am happy with the performance as it compares favorably to the machine I use at work. I can say this though, in the SolidWorks realm processor speed is more important than the number of cores. My quad core 2.4 Ghz machine was a few ticks slower than the machine than the dual core 3.0 Ghz at work on the CPU section of the benchmark. But the rendering was quite a bit faster on the quad core machine. This is useful information if you are putting together the hardware for a new machine.