TalkChess.com

[Seb Dragulic]

First, may I introduce myself to this learned and distinguished forum? I am a research engineer with limited brains but still more limited money to spend on my hobby of Chess and Go.

So to my question. For chess research and other, gp uses, I am now ready to spend $8k on a Windows PC, now. I plan (all parts are shipping already):

2 x E5-2687W Intel Sandy Bridge Xeon S2011 CPUs. 8 Real Cores per CPU. Here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2687w-benchmark-review,3149.html is the review. It will run all 16 cores at 3.4GHz in turbo mode, even before overclocking. Today many top engines are not so good above 4 cores, but soon this can change.

64Gb Corsair PC3-12800 (1.6GHz) DDR3 Quad Channel RAM (4 x 16Gb). This gives 4Gb per real core. Ideal?

SuperMicro X9DAi motherboard with SATA III 6Gb/s, PCI-E 3.0. Here http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X9DAi.cfm are the specification.

SSD HDD for fast EGTB access, capacity to be researched but I think 0.3Tb is enough, I can move needed EGTBs from main HDD as needed. Big SSD/array are still too expensive.

Top-end air-cooling. Or?

Rest can be obvious, Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate (8 will be bad, microsoft alternation good-bad-good-bad-), very fine 0.9kW modular PSU, some cr-p graphics card for kids, 3Gb 120Hz Barracuda HDD...

I would like commentaries, critiques and recommendations. E5-2687W looks like the real winner, but you may have more information? AMD quad CPU each 4/6-core? What chess and overclock speeds can I expect? Is there a better mobo for overclocking? Is RAM chosen a bottleneck? Other understanding error by me? Anyone else already got similar system? I can see one kburcham was considering this: http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41204. A Sedat Canbaz benchmark yet? Help!

TU, friends.......