The CPU (processor)

Probably the single most important element of the computer.  Everything the computer does is touched by the CPU (Central Processing Unit).  Modern processors are made up of millions of transistors networked together to perform instructions set by the operating system and software that runs on your computer.  Each instruction it can execute takes a certain number of clock cycles to run, so for example a 1GHz processor can run a thousand million cycles worth of instructions a second.  That sounds a lot, but when you consider that the average application or game now contains millions upon millions of instructions you can see that the processors have their work cut out to keep up with demands.  A concept known as Moore's Law has accurately described an exponential increase in computing performance and power since the early 1970's.  You can be pretty sure that a computer on the market in 3 years time will be more or less twice as powerful as the the equivalent today.

We work closely with both Intel and AMD on processor technology to careful assess how our own products can best deliver the highest performance computing from the technology roadmap.  The new Yorkfield processors together with our high performance cooling (water cooling block pictured left) have allowed us to raise the bar again in 2008 by exceeding 4GHz clock speeds in a quad core machine (33%+ over performance!).  We are able to do this through our cooling technology and delivery of clean stable power to the processor.  Mainstream PC's typically have a maximum clock speed of 3GHz.

The Memory

Memory can be a crucial bottleneck to potential performance and is rarely paid much attention at all by main stream system builders.  Memory comes in a variety of forms and bandwidths from PC2-3200 to PC3-16000.  Where PC2 or PC3 indicates DDR2 or DDR3 memory respectively, and 3200 or 16000 refers to the bandwidth in MB/s.  Of course it goes without saying that we use the the highest bandwidth memory whether in double bus speed DDR2 or quad bus speed DDR3 forms.  However there are a number of other qualities that hugely impact on memory performance and we also take these into careful consideration:

• Core clock speed - the speed the memory bus runs at (adjusted for DDR2/3)
• Data rate (DDR, DDR2, DDR3) bus speed multiplier
• Latency (access cycle delays) - memory can be made to run at higher clock speeds but also with higher latency delays, making it on occasions actually slower than high quality memory running at lower frequencies with lower latencies.  For example PC2-6400 memory at 800MHz and latencies of 4-4-3-5 will generally perform better than PC2-8500 at 1066MHz and latencies of 5-5-5-15

Most manufacturers currently ship PC's with memory of PC2-5300 (667MHz) specification with average latencies in standard packages.  The minimum specification memory we use is PC2-6400 (800MHz) with low latencies in an enhanced package for better cooling so that it will outperform even most of the faster PC2-8500 memory.  Like the excellent Corsair memory pictured here.  In the highest specification machines we use DDR3 memory that runs so quickly it isn't yet formerly classified, including the OCZ Reaper memory pictured left with its distinctive overhead heatsink and heatpipe, and the OCZ Flex above that has integral water cooling).

The Motherboard (mainboard)

Critical to good performance between the components of a PC is the motherboard on which it is all installed and interconnected.  The motherboard chipset (usually either nVidia or Intel based, known as Northbridge and Southbridge) hosts all the vital interfaces such as the PCI bus (for the graphics and sound cards), the network (USB2, Firewire IEEE1394, WiFi and Ethernet), the storage (IDE, SATA-II, RAID), BIOS configuration, bus clock management, memory controller, hardware management and monitoring, power supply regulation to the CPU and memory.  The motherboard chipset dictates which CPU's it supports, the maximum FSB (front side bus) speed supported, the range of CPU's supported (by socket such as Intel LGA775, or AMD).

A sophisticated BIOS is important to allow fine enough control and monitoring of system components for the high degree of performance tuning required.  The diagram from nVidia on the left illustrates this quite well and how it applies to the 790i chipset.  Due to the compatibility and support dependencies most manufacturers tend to choose fairly mature motherboards and chipsets, perhaps a year or two old.  All of our motherboard choices are the very latest technology supporting the highest FSB speeds, the latest CPU's, high bandwidth storage and PCI bus, highly flexible BIOS and DDR3 high speed memory (with the exception of the entry level Quad which for value we have specified high performance DDR2).

The Power supply (PSU)

One of the side effects of delivering more and more power form your PC is that it requires more ad more electric current to run.  The power supply is not only critical for the delivery of power, but also the smooth, stable and reliable delivery of power at the instant it is required.  The ATX standard 2.3 dictates what the power supply should be able tot deliver.  Its surprising how many big manufacturers commonly used power supplies would fail this basic test.  Many mainstream power supplies are also woefully inadequate at 300-400W.  When you consider the CPU can draw over 100W, each high power graphics card up to 200W, the multitude of fans and disk drives, PCI adapters, attached USB devices and perhaps a water cooling system.  It's to see how you ca soon hit the magic 1KW power requirement (1000W).  It's surprising just how much power a modern PC with powerful graphics, CPU and storage actually requires. 

At Cryo PC all of our power supplies are 500W or more and exceed the ATX standard.  Our entry level machines use power supplies almost double the wattage traditionally used in mainstream manufacturer PC's.  Take a look at Asus's wattage calculator here for an indication of how much power a given configuration of PC needs.  Our high specification PC's deliver over 1000W of power across multi-rails or on a single rail at over 100A of current as appropriate to the build.  Not to compromise on noise we also prefer to use power supplies with large 120 or 140mm fans to increase air flow, and reduce air speed in turn reducing cooling noise.

The Cooling

The standard heatsinks provided with graphics cards, motherboards and processors are usually of low quality alloy and provide inadequate cooling for over performance.  Sometimes even barely enough cooling for standard performance.  The heatsink is important as if it doesn't move enough heat away from the component quickly enough the heat builds up and up, until either shutdown or meltdown!  To move heat away quickly you need a good contact with the processor with high pressure and specialist thermal compounds that conduct heat very well.  To move enough heat away so that it doesn't build up you need a large enough heatsink with enough cooling surface area (usually assisted with a fan).

The qualities we look for in a our high quality heatsinks are:

• a high quality pure metal, copper or aluminium construction with good heat conductive properties
• a perfectly machined flat surface for good contact with the component
• a very large surface area over which heat can be exchanged with the air (or water in the case of a water block)
• a rapid transfer of heat from the component to the cooling surface area usually through the use of specialised heat conduction pipes (or in the case of water a high flow, high head water system and half inch diameter tubing)
• specialised pure silver based thermal compounds that enhance the thermal interface between the component and the heatsink
• specially designed fans with fins that are aerodynamically designed to move a lot of air at low rpm, for the most cooling with the least noise

Typically our air cooling systems are so good now that they outperform many of the competitions water cooling systems.

The Case

A good case is often seen as a nice to have but to us the case is another vitally important component in the holistic design of a high performance system.  In our cases we look ensure:

• there is appropriate circulation of air through the system (usually front to back, bottom to top) and that the volume of air flow is adequate

• there must be the right number of fans in the right places moving the correct volume of air.  Often 'flashy' cases have powerful fans lined up with LED's lit up making them look impressive but actually they are moving very little air, and not over the hot spots in the PC like the graphics card and CPU.

• did you know that as air heats up inside the PC case its volume increase by as much as 3:1, in other words, you need to shift three times as much volume of air out of the case as into it, few designs take account of that

• A case made out of solid aluminium not pressed steel,  and anodised rather than painted will be far more durable to upgrades, maintenance and component changes and inspections.  Solid well built cases make less noise, how many times have you had a PC develop an annoying rattle...

• A well designed case should allow easy access to all components so they can be installed and removed without placing stress or risking damage to the system, or the engineer!

• Few cases are designed to easily accommodate large heatsinks, full length graphics cards, large power supplies, disk arrays, radiators, pumps, reservoirs and the plumbing of water cooling systems, we ensure ours are

Last but not least a case needs to look stylish and professional so that it looks good but unobtrusive in your office or home without looking like a spaceship has landed and left a passenger behind!

The Graphics processor

Graphics processing is now so demanding that it needs a dedicated processor of its own, a GPU (usually resident on an onboard card). The GPU is a real workhorse when the 3D graphics modelling or games are being processed. If the GPU can't cope the system shifts the burden to the CPU which will quickly get bogged down as it is not optimised for graphics work. The main manufacturers of graphics processors are ATI (AMD) and nVidia, both are excellent graphics processors and a any time one or other leads the maximum horsepower race in terms of processing capability.

Modern graphics processors are full length cards, requiring their own power supply (sometimes two) and their own dedicated cooling. They use PCI express slots for maximum speed and can be installed in multiples to work in parallel together usually in pairs (known as either nVidia SLI or ATI Crossfire).  It is now also possible to run triple or quad graphics processing systems (the latter using 2x dual processor cards).

Our own benchmarks and tests have shown that by and large the best value is obtained with single cards or single cards with dual processors. The benefits of multiple cards are marginal against the significant cost increase. Of course multiple cards remain an available upgrade route in the future. However if you want the ultimate in speed and performance then Quad GPU's is certainly the way to achieve it. Most of our systems are selected with single cards which offer the best performance and value, but also have an upgrade path available for multiple cards should you wish to go this route in the future. All our cards are shipped with Cryo performance modifications and enhancements applied which on its own gives a further 20-30% performance boost.  Like CPU's the graphics processor works best if its kept cool. So we also offer water or air cooling upgrades that further enhance their performance significantly. See our card product pages for more information.

The storage (hard disk drives)

When you save your work, run an application or game, stream or encode to disk or in any other way require to access to or from the permanent storage your disk subsystem offers you are constrained by its performance.  The storage system is almost the only mechanical system within the computer (although this is changing now with the advent of Solid State Drives, SSD's).  Data is stored on a hard drive magnetically and arranged in concentric circles around the disk from the centre to the edge.  Therefore if your computer needs access to data at one end of the disk and then the other the drive has to physically move the head backwards and forwards, and wait for the disk to spin around to the right location to begin the read or write process.  The time taken to do this is commonly called latency, and the average time to move the head to any given point and read data is given as Average Seek Time (usually in milliseconds, ms).

Manufacturers provide spin speed and average seek time data with their drives.  In addition all drives have an onboard memory cache that the drive software uses to intelligently store previous read requests so that commonly accessed data can be quickly retrieved without requiring the disk to move the head.  The other significant factor in drive performance is having as big a possible pipe (i.e. bandwidth) between the drive and the CPU as possible to make sure that as soon as the drive has data available it can be transferred.

Therefore our design imperatives for good performance storage are, in roughly this order:

• high bandwidth - achieved with;
  • a large onboard cache of at least 16MB and better 32MB or more,
  • a high drive speed of at least 7500rpm or better still 10000 or more,
  • high data transfer speeds of 3Gb/s,
  • and supporting the latest interface standards of SATA-II or SAS (SCSI)
• best possible Average Seek time (should be under 10ms, under 5ms for extreme random access performance)
• RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) - using arrays of disks working in parallel to achieve higher speeds, higher transfer rates and redundancy for resilience in the unlikely event there is a drive failure

Most manufacturers of mainstream PC's will only quote you disk capacity in GB and this is used as a selling point, they are often unable to give you the data above and are unlikely to have considered it in the design.  As ever there is a balance to be struck between performance and value, but also a delicate balance between bandwidth and seek times.  If the work you do is predominantly sequentially accessing the disk it is probably more important to have high bandwidth than fast seek times (i.e. photography, multimedia).

The rest of the computer is solid state, it has no moving parts and can therefore operate at high speed with no considerations for the physical limitations of movement.  With memory prices getting ever cheaper and cheaper the logical next step is to remove the last mechanical device from the heart of the computer system and replace it with solid state non-volatile memory (NV-RAM).  This is where the current leading edge of drive development is and solid state drives are now available in smaller sizes (up to 128GB on a single drive) but blazingly fast and very resilient.  SSD's have some considerable benefits and a few technical obstacles that make it still imperfect as a hard drive replacement worth consideration:

Pros

• Random access is blazingly fast - as there is no mechanical head to move to drive to spin
• Resilient - very long life without moving parts to wear and deteriorate, or suffer from stress or shock damage (an SSD can typically tolerate a shock load of over 1000G!)
• Lightweight - without motors or magnets, cylinders and disks, or a stiff chassis the SSD is very lightweight
• Lower power consumption - mechanically moving parts use generally more power
• Future roadmap - ultimately we believe mechanical drives will die out and be replaced by the SSD technology, currently it is at its very early stages

Cons

• Its still very expensive - typically an SSD is 50 times more expensive than the equivalent mechanical hard disk
• Write speed is generally lower than a mechanical hard drive - due to the way in which data is retrieved from NV-RAM its transfer speeds currently lag behind mechanical drives
• Capacity is currently limited - the biggest drives are only around 128GB
• Marginal improvement over the best mechanical RAID arrays - for the same investment you could buy and configure a SAS RAID5 array of 15K rpm drives that would outperform current SSD technology

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Last modified: 21-Dec-2008  © 1998-2008 Cryo Performance Computing, all rights reserved
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