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Hi, I'll just follow-up based on helpful comments that people sent privately... It was pointed out that the Intel i7-860 probably the best value for strong desktop performance these days. It has a 95W TDP (vs. 130W?) and higher base clock freq and has turbo mode that can go up two steps vs. one. It lacks ECC support. It uses a less expensive mainboard that has two memory channels vs. three. Usually these boards have 4 DIMM slots vs. 6 on the T3500. So this effects memory capacity (easy to get 12GB on the T3500 using 2GB DIMMs). Somebody added that he gets floppy drives to facilitate firmware updates. Someone else pointed out that floppies are old school ;-) For anyone wondering what a floppy is, here is a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk :-) Looking at the firmware update process reminded me that an advantage of sticking to computers that Dell supports Linux on is that they distribute firmware for them in packages that can run from Linux. This is what we do on our compute cluster; having the same process on the workstations is a benefit to me. The T3500 chassis is handy as it can hold 3 hard drives easily. This is a benefit over some of the least expensive systems for our use. It is nice that the price of a pretty high-performance, major brand, workstation with 3yr warranty is $1000-$1500 dollars. Especially with the Dell / MSU contract pricing it reduces the need to go to a whitebox builder or similar route to save money --- there just isn't that much to save. (Though on this point, if you are willing to deal with over-clocking, right now the Intel CPUs in this price range are capable of about 50% over-clocking with not much trouble, that means there are significant gains in price/performance if you go that route.) Thanks, Tom On 1/14/10 1:00 PM, Tom Rockwell wrote: > Spec'ing a workstation for use by grad students for local analysis work. > Any comments? > > We'll add drives 2 and 3 in RAID1 purchased from third party (extra > drives a pricey from Dell). > > Thanks, > Tom > > > Dell Precision T3500n, CMT, Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS v5.3 for EM64T > 64bit system w/ 1 YR RHN, w/ Media > Unit Price $1,501.50 > > Processor Quad Core Intel® Xeon® W3520 2.66GHz, 8M L3, 4.8GT/s, Turbo > Memory 6GB, 1066MHz, DDR3 SDRAM, ECC (3 DIMMS) > > Graphics 256MB ATI FireMV® 2260, 2MON, 2 DP w/ 2 DP to DVI Adapter > > Boot Hard Drive 320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ and 16MB DataBurst Cache™ > > Options No Floppy Drive and No Media Card Reader > > Mouse Dell® USB 6-Button Laser Mouse > > Chassis Configuration and 1394 Mini-Tower Chassis Configuration > > Optical Devices 16X DVD+/-RW, Data Only > > Speakers Dell AX510PA Sound Bar for all Entry Flat Panel Displays > > Power Supplies Precision T3500, CMT, 85 Percent Efficient Power Supply > > Hardware Support Services 3 Year Basic Limited Warranty and 3 Year NBD > > Multi Select Monitors Dell G Series G2410 24in Wide Monitor, VGA/ DVI