[BioC] desktop workstation configuration

[Steve Lianoglou]

Hi,

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Shi, Tao <shidaxia at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> We're planning to get a new Linux desktop workstation.  I'm wondering what kind
> of configuration (especially processor, memory, and OS) people are using (no
> cluster please).  I know it's all about how much money you're willing to spend,
> but I just want to get a feel on what settings people are happy with for their
> daily bioinformatics jobs (including NGS data).

I'm not sure what type of answers you think will be helpful. Whatever
you purchase will likely have some of the latest processors w/ several
cores, and however you shake that out, it'll probably be OK (each core
is probably around ~3 GHz of something (i5, i7, something else?) and I
guess you'll get something between 8 and 12 cores).

I think the most useful suggestion I could make is to get more RAM
than you think you need.

When I got my desktop (2008(?)), I thought the 8GB of RAM it had was a
lot, but I also wasn't working with much NGS data back then.

Now I am, and I'd like to have at least 16GB -- especially if you
think you want to do much read-preprocessing within Bioconductor
tools.

Also .. fast hard drives.

-steve

-- 
Steve Lianoglou
Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology
 | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
 | Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact