Triple monitor workstation

[eaglestrike7339]

ok, well the goal here is to build a triple monitor workstation worthy of a friend's small accounting business, preferably that is rather quiet.

I would buy all the parts from newegg, like always, and i know the following parts (budget around 1000 dollars:

Processor: would the e6750 be enough? i would prefer dual core over quad.
Motherboard: ???
RAM: 2gb Corsair DDR2-667 or DDR2-800
HDD: 320gb Seagate 7200.10
Dvd-Drive: lite-on dual layer burner
Graphics card: 2 x [whatever matches the board and fits the budget]
Case: Cooler Master Centurion 5 or other professional-looking case (lian-li?)
CPU cooling: Zalman CNPS7700-CU (the 120mm black zalman HSF) here (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118115)

any suggestions?
as of now, this is a theoretical build, and this will not be the final build list. There will be next to none stress on the graphics card compared to gaming, but to have 3 monitors i need 2 video cards that are not in SLI mode. what would be a good fit for this card?

[glc]

You would be best off using a single quad head workstation card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133165

Up the budget a bit. A baseline P5K motherboard would be fine. Consider the E6550 to cut the cost a bit. Use the retail heatsink.

A good case would be an Antec Sonata 3 - it comes with a 500 watt Antec PSU.

[eaglestrike7339]

Sonata 3, ok i like that.

i was really hoping there would be a way to go multimonitor without having to buy one of those cards.
Out of curiosty, according to nvidia website, the latest forceware driver works for GeForce FX, 6, 7, and 8 series GPUs
Could I couple, say an EVGA 7600gs with an older EVGA PCI 6200 on that p5k board that you mentioned?
I know that the PCI is (more like was) extremely dated, but since it will not be used for any gaming or graphicly intensive apps whatsoever, would it work?

plus, i wouldn't have to cut down my e6750 :)

[glc]

My recommendation is based on minimum hassles both setting up the multiple display and maintaining it. It is a lot more professional than a Frankenstein like you are proposing.

[eaglestrike7339]

explain what you mean by maintaining it. once it is set up, which, like you stated, may take a bit longer, how would maintaining be more difficult?

agreed, for any sort of medium business your proposal would make sense. But this is a small business with <12 computers, more than half being laptops. This would be upgrading from single monitor, single core pentium Ds, with integrated graphics solutions from dell.

[glc]

For that kind of use you could even use a sub-$100 Pentium-E dual core and it will scream. If they need 3 monitors, do it right. Have you LOOKED at the specs and reviews on the E6550? It's a real sleeper........

[eaglestrike7339]

Actually, I have. For an extra $20, you get an extra .33 gigaherz, from 2.33-2.66, which pushes it up performance wise an extra 3 places on any tomshardware chart there is, placing it directly under the QX6800.

Not a bad improvement, when this guy pays his accountants $40 an hour

He wants an easily noticeable improvement, he is not gonna pay >$1000 a pc when he really could get along with what he has.

Do it right? hmm, maybe i ought to visit a forum that specializes in this thing more. thanks anyway

edit: luckily i'm not the only one who likes frankensteins.

"http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=11580"


It worked for me. I had a board with a 7600gt and a 6200 and it did 4 monitors fine.
Maybe just fiddle around in the bios; I had an Asus board, and I had to play around with "PEG" settings.

looks to be a long as i don't pick one ATI and one Nvidia, i should be fine. [supposedly it is possible, but questionable]

[glc]

Sorry if you don't like my opinion.

[piasabird]

Well one thing to look at is the price of a workstation with 2 PCI-xpress X16 slots in it. The motherboard might just cost more. However, you might be able to do the same thing with 2 $100.00 video cards.

Besides haveing multiple monitors you might want to look for special mounts and the software it takes to make them all work together. A quad workstation might be more impressive. Probably costs around $3500 with all the hardware. One place I saw was selling the workstation with FIREvm Video Card in a new Antec Case for around $2,000. Still have to buy monitors and maybe some mounts for the monitors. They had a demo where you can drag your mouse over all 4 monitors. Pretty Slick. You could probably make all 4 monitors work as one big monitor.

On second thought you could just get a big plazma and use that maybe. I wonder if you can split a big plazma into 4 rectangles or 3 screens. I have heard of splitting it in half.

[The Village Idiot]

I'm sorry to hear you come onto a computer forum, proposing an idea, we give feedback on the issue. And you don't like the feedback given to an extent, you basically say glc, who lets face it, knows a fair amount from my brief experience on the forum, you know nothing about computers, so i'm just going to go scour the web for a computer forum that tells me what I want to hear.

If I was building myself a computer specifically designed for what your friend has in need I would look at what people have to say. You want something that can perform calculations quickly, that doesn't mean shoving in the biggest processor you can find, its about balance, and the graphics cards shown are designed for that purpose.

[Alaron]

As a "Frankenstein" multiple monitor user, I feel I should weigh in here. I have to disagree that an expensive quad-head workstation card is *necessary*. Granted, for highly professional, day-trader setups, it would be the best way to go.

But if you're just looking to add some desktop space, as it sounds like you're doing eaglestrike, pop in a PCI card alongside your main card and you're all set. I agree with the assesment on that other forum that it can be trying process. Interestingly, I had to use a PCI Nvidia Geforce2 card with my PCI-E Radeon X800XL to setup my monitors. A PCI Radeon 9250 was not compatible.

I highly recommend checking out UltraMon or similar software. It adds a lot of options for the extra monitors such as taskbar control and wallpaper options. This is for Windows XP, perhaps Vista has more options.

Just my $.02.

[glc]

Not exactly the point, VI, but thank you. That kind of work doesn't even need a video card - onboard video will display the results of number crunching as well as any video card. My recommendation was simply my opinion based on experience on how to best set up more than 2 monitors with the best results and least hassles. I have never had good results using multiple video cards but I *HAVE* built machines with quad head cards and they work very well.

[The Village Idiot]

I reckon you should demote Alaron for his traitorous comments right there :p

[glc]

Nah - he's welcome to do what he wants and say what he thinks too. I'd probably do a Frankenstein myself if it was for ME simply because I'm a cheap bastard, but NOT for someone else if there's even a remote chance I would have to support it.