Laysan

Laysan is my current desktop computer.

This is by far the fastest (and quietest) computer I have ever used or owned.

I had intended to build a server, then it got turned into my desktop instead. The server ended up being built later.

Components

Motherboard: ASUS P8B-M LGA 1155 Intel C204 Micro ATX Server Motherboard

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 Sandy Bridge 3.2GHz LGA 1155 80W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31230

RAM: 8GB x 2 Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G

Drives:

• Operating system and home directory on a RAID 0 with 2 Vertex 3 120GB SATA III MLC (SSD)
• Data storage on a 2 TB WDC Caviar Black (SATA 2) WD2001FASS-0

DVD burner: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-222BB

Video: PNY VCQ2000D-PB Quadro 2000D 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 Workstation Video Card I wanted a workstation video card, as I want to do some OpenGL programming, and I work with ArcGIS software. This is the only component in this build that I would change; I would get a high end gaming board instead of a low end workstation board.

Monitor: Acer 24" something or other.

Keyboard: IBM PS/2 Model M SpaceSaver (built in 1987)

Audio: This motherboard has no integrated audio so I use a NuForce UDAC 2 and a pair of Acoustic Research powered speakers.

Other: bT878 video capture card, an Osprey 210, that so far I have never used!

Case: Fractal Design Define Mini Black Micro ATX Silent PC Computer Case w/ USB 3.0 support and 2 x 120mm Fractal Design Silent Fans

Power supply: SeaSonic S12II 620 Bronze 620W ATX12V V2.3 / EPS 12V V2.91 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Operating system

Linux Mint 14

Main system space is on a RAID 0 consisting of two OCZ Vertex 4 120GB drives.

On RAM fs are /tmp, /var/tmp, /var/run, /var/lock

/var partition is on a 1TB Caviar Black. /home is in /var

Since the system has 16GB of RAM I am not worried about swap space.

echo vm.swappiness = 0 > /etc/sysctl.d/swappiness.conf

# Make a 4 GB swapfile
dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=4096k
mkswap /var/swapfile1
chmod 0600 /var/swapfile1

cat /etc/fstab

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid	     0  0
UUID=52d03acd-f968-425a-a8e7-4d45ff7ff211 /        ext4  errors=remount-ro,noatime  0   1
# 2GB spinning hard drive, still have one of those here
UUID=1d9ef03d-e39a-44ef-9435-7b099dc2d0ee /var     xfs  defaults,noatime    1	2
/var/swapfile1 none swap sw 0 0
#
# Move things to RAM DISK for speed
tmpfs /tmp     tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0 
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

I am leaving boot on a non-RAID device, this build is for speed not reliability so RAID for boot is irrelevant.

I built the system like this

/dev/sda1 /boot
/dev/sdb1 /         

Then I built RAID 0 on sda2 and sdb2.

mdadm --create --level=0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/md0 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
pvcreate /dev/md0
vgcreate vg_raid /dev/md0
lvcreate --verbose --extents 100%FREE -n lv_raid vg_raid
mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg_raid/lv_raid 
mount /dev/vg_raid/lv_raid /

update-initramfs

Extras

• Calibre
• Eagle 6.4
• Eclipse
• Microchip MplabX
• Oracle Java
• VirtualBox