As part of some work for a new client, I need to buy a PC (boo!). I know NOTHING about PCs but from what I can see...
Lots of cores and RAM, so an i9 of some sort... 128 - 192GB RAM.
Right, that rules out base Ryzen as they hit a limit at 128gb. At that stage I'd be looking for full ECC support too, as that density of NAND is so tight that DDR5 comes with ECC on the memory die itself because without it
it literally wouldn't work. But that only impacts the data in the die, not in transit between CPU/RAM/Storage -you're almost immediately looking at workstation stuff basically.
You mention later that it's cisco virtual appliances so I'm guessing virtual switches and routers emulating 10/20/40/100gb switching - which means a fuckload of data going between CPU and RAM - so full ECC between RAM, CPU and storage would be relevant.
I don't need massive amounts of storage, so 1/2TB SSD, or 1TB SSD + large spinning disk?
Fuck spinning rust if you don't need more than 2TB of storage. Get 2 x 2TB NVME SSD and get them mirrored.
I'm assuming you can't get these in a nice little aluminium box which is whisper quiet. I was planning on just sticking this into a cupboard somewhere and remote'ing onto it.
Sadly not really - you can get miniPCs but most of them are limited to 2 x SODIMM slots (or mini ITX chassis; a bit bigger but most are limited to 2 x DIMM slots) or they come with fast, soldered RAM - and so few people need that much RAM that they just don't build them in that spec.
So mid to full size chassis would be more sensible. Cupboard might work if you vent it sensibly...
Video card isn't important, but I guess I might use it for gaming if its here...
I mean, sure I guess
Slap an RTX 4070 Super in that motherfucker.
Any ideas about who can do something off the shelf like this?
Dell, Lenovo and HP would be my first ports of call but tend to be pretty restrictive in their options (IE it'll be 128gb or 256gb, not 192 etc), or a specialist like Novatech - but ideally a local specialist who you can go through the requirements with in some detail. I don't think off the shelf will work well for this.
You'd probably also want to speak to a
technically minded VMware and/or Cisco specialist who has used the setup and knows of any weird quirks it has (IE does it baulk when using software RAID under VMWare, meaning you need a hardware HBA), and if (for example) it even really needs that much RAM to do what you're trying to do - you could get away with a Ryzen or i7 system.
In short, based on what I'm reading, as it's for work, and as it's somewhere between very high end desktop and full blown workstation - I'd strongly recommend getting someone
good to consult to you (not something you can complain about, given...you know, you're a consultant who's good at what they do
) and get something custom built.
I'd avoid Intel entirely as i9-12/13th gen are currently getting dragged through the ringer for reliability (thanks to Intel fucking up the guidance they gave motherboard vendors for power limits) / they won't do ECC, and Xeon is massively overpriced for what it is; AMD (Ryzen) Threadripper gives a good balance of lots of cores at high speeds and IPC, supports ECC and is 'consumer' enough to be usable with regular power supplies and fit into regular chassis; Epyc would be overkill.
Threadripper processors are basically Epycs that half a wonky memory controller and dies that aren't
quite in spec efficiency wise for full blown enterprise use where you might order 200 servers and expect them to run within 20w of each other (important for power capacity planning) but are plenty good to be used in a single workstation where individual power use is less of a concern and it doesn't need eight memory channels etc.
Yes, I know, I'm
fucking boring but what you don't want to do is to create a twenty level network setup ready for demonstration to a client who's gonna pay you £150k for implementation, then have the fucking thing crash on you.
