Research Computing Hardware
Contents
Current Hardware
The component lists for our two current research computing servers are provided below. These parts work nicely together, which can be a challenge. Both machines use lots of common components - the same Supermicro boards, the same RAM, the same drives (more or less), etc. The boards were chosen because they support dual chip Intel Scalable CPUs on socket 3647, DDR4 at 2666MHz, have NVMe connections for the solid state drives (provided you remember to buy the oculink cables!), and have room for multiple GPUs using 16 channels of PCI-E 3.0. The chips all have fast enough clock speeds to match the RAM, and sufficient channels for the drives and GPUs. Each machine has a RAID 10 array made up initially of 4 6TB NAS drives, which are in a hot-swappable bay.
See Research Computing Configuration for how we set them up.
RDP Hardware Components
The RDP has dual 12-core CPUs. We compromised on clock speed to save on price, but this is a good "all-purpose" configuration. The OS lives on the 400Gb NVMe SSD. Parallel compute is through the GPU. Currently this box has 512Gb of DDR4 2.666Ghz, but it is expandable to 1Tb. The board supports 2Tb but you need 16Gb sticks, which are currently prohibitively expensive.
| Quantity | Part |
|---|---|
| 1 | Supermicro Motherboard MBD-X11DAI-N-O Xeon Dual Socket S3647 C621 Max.2TB PCI Express EATX (MBD-X11DAI-N-O) |
| 2 | Intel CD8067303405900 Xeon Gold 6126, 12 Cores, 2.6 GHz, 19.25 MB Cache, DDR4 up to 2666 MHz, 125W TDP - OEM |
| 1 | 512GB (8x64GB) DDR4-2666MHz PC4-21300 4Rx4 288-Pin 1.2V ECC Load Reduced LRDIMM Memory by NEMIX RAM |
| 1 | Intel 750 Series 2.5" 400GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPE2MW400G4X1 |
| 2 | Noctua NH-D9 DX-3647 4U Premium CPU Cooler for Intel Xeon LGA3647 |
| 1 | NVIDIA TITAN RTX DirectX 12 900-1G150-2500-000 SB 24GB 384-Bit GDDR6 HDCP Ready Video Card |
| 1 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 T2 220-T2-1600-X1 80+ TITANIUM 1600W Fully Modular EVGA ECO Mode Includes FREE Power On Self Tester Power Supply |
| 4 | WD Red 6TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD60EFRX |
| 1 | Rosewill RSV-L4000 - 4U Rackmount Server Case / Chassis - 8 Internal Bays, 7 Cooling Fans Included |
| 1 | Rosewill RSV-SATA-Cage-34 - Hard Disk Drives - Black, 3 x 5.25" to 4 x 3.5" Hot-Swap - SATA III / SAS - Cage |
| 1 | ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS - OEM |
| 1 | Rosewill RDRD-11003 2.5" SSD / HDD Mounting Kit for 3.5" Drive Bay with 60mm Fan |
| 1 | Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G |
| 1 | AmazonBasics Wired Keyboard and Wired Mouse Bundle Pack |
Dbase Server Components
The database server has a single 4-core 3.6Ghz Skylake chip, as clock speed matters much more than cores in this set-up. The OS lives on a 400Gb NVMe SSD and the postgresql installation lives on the 1.2Tb NVMe SSD. The 12 TB RAID 10 array is for deep bulk storage. Because we only have a single CPU on the board, we are maxed out at 512Gb with the 8Gb sticks of DDR4 2.66Ghz.
| Quantity | Part |
|---|---|
| 1 | Supermicro Motherboard MBD-X11DAI-N-O Xeon Dual Socket S3647 C621 Max.2TB PCI Express EATX (MBD-X11DAI-N-O) |
| 1 | Intel Xeon Scalable Gold 5122 SkyLake 4-Core 3.6 GHz (3.7 GHz Turbo) LGA 3647 105W BX806735122 Server Processor |
| 1 | 512GB (8x64GB) DDR4-2666MHz PC4-21300 4Rx4 288-Pin 1.2V ECC Load Reduced LRDIMM Memory by NEMIX RAM |
| 1 | Intel 750 Series 2.5" 400GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPE2MW400G4X1 |
| 1 | Intel 750 Series 2.5" 1.2TB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPE2MW012T4X1 |
| 1 | Noctua NH-D9 DX-3647 4U Premium CPU Cooler for Intel Xeon LGA3647 |
| 1 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 T2 220-T2-1600-X1 80+ TITANIUM 1600W Fully Modular EVGA ECO Mode Includes FREE Power On Self Tester Power Supply |
| 4 | WD Red 6TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD60EFRX |
| 1 | Rosewill RSV-L4000 - 4U Rackmount Server Case / Chassis - 8 Internal Bays, 7 Cooling Fans Included |
| 1 | Rosewill RSV-SATA-Cage-34 - Hard Disk Drives - Black, 3 x 5.25" to 4 x 3.5" Hot-Swap - SATA III / SAS - Cage |
| 1 | ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS - OEM |
| 1 | Rosewill RDRD-11003 2.5" SSD / HDD Mounting Kit for 3.5" Drive Bay with 60mm Fan |
| 1 | Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G |
| 1 | AmazonBasics Wired Keyboard and Wired Mouse Bundle Pack |
McNair Center Hardware
The old Computer Build notes provide details of the hardware. For the configuration of the individual boxes see the old Center IT page or the pages below:
- Database Server Documentation
- RDP Documentation
- Test Web Server Documentation
- Web Server Documentation
UC Berkeley Hardware
At UC Berkeley, Ed designed and built three machines - two postgresql database servers and a wiki server. The documentation is here:
- Haas PhD Server Configuration
- Posgres Server Configuration -- documents the build of postgres2
