Scanning Workstation
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- Full Name: Michael Payne
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Scanning Workstation
Good afternoon,
We are in the market for a new workstation for our laser scanning & MLS department.
Wondering if you guys would have any recommendations as to spec? I’m no IT expert. Will obviously need a large amount of storage, ram and a decent CPU for point cloud processing, but I’m unsure of things like graphics cards or other items which may be critical. I guess I need to know where to spend money and where not to.
Anything advice/things to be aware of will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
We are in the market for a new workstation for our laser scanning & MLS department.
Wondering if you guys would have any recommendations as to spec? I’m no IT expert. Will obviously need a large amount of storage, ram and a decent CPU for point cloud processing, but I’m unsure of things like graphics cards or other items which may be critical. I guess I need to know where to spend money and where not to.
Anything advice/things to be aware of will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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Re: Scanning Workstation
Hi Michael
Ha a look at this thread:
https://laserscanningforum.com/forum/vi ... orkstation
Sincerely Michael
Ha a look at this thread:
https://laserscanningforum.com/forum/vi ... orkstation
Sincerely Michael
- smacl
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Re: Scanning Workstation
Also worth noting that many high-end PC parts, particularly good GPUs, are scarce and overpriced at the moment so you really have to shop around. I picked up a decent and well priced Lenovo i9 10900k with 64gb on Amazon last week to replace an older workstation I use for testing but will be putting a GPU I already have in it. It is worth finding out if the software you are using is CPU, GPU and/or disk intensive as this will greatly affect what you can get for your budget. If you let us know what software you're using people might be able advise a bit better.
- steves01x
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Re: Scanning Workstation
You can get a lot of work station for the £4 to £5k including vat from Scan - https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs
Unless you need something mega for huge data sets from photogrammetry / mobile mapping you will probably get best value on something with 128gb ram, up to 12gb graphics card, decent processor and some SSD.
But we ordered a laptop and there is a big delay with the their cases/shells for custom builds.... stuck on a ship somewhere!
Unless you need something mega for huge data sets from photogrammetry / mobile mapping you will probably get best value on something with 128gb ram, up to 12gb graphics card, decent processor and some SSD.
But we ordered a laptop and there is a big delay with the their cases/shells for custom builds.... stuck on a ship somewhere!
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Re: Scanning Workstation
With respect, I think they're chancing their arms on the pricing on the high end stuff. I had a quick look at their 3XS Threadripper 3960X workstation which they have listed for £7,098.06. Putting the same component list into PC part picker gives £5113.91 including shipping. Even at that, the build uses a £2,111 Quatro RTX 5000 GPU that may not be a great way of spending money for many applications.steves01x wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 1:07 pmYou can get a lot of work station for the £4 to £5k including vat from Scan - https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs
Their lower end Intel based stuff stacks up better against a self build prices, but again you need to look at the parts you're getting and why you do or don't need them, particularly the GPU. I'd suggest the OP asks there software manufacturers what benefits a high end GPU will bring and similarly lots of threads and memory.
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Re: Scanning Workstation
smacl wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 4:17 pmWith respect, I think they're chancing their arms on the pricing on the high end stuff. I had a quick look at their 3XS Threadripper 3960X workstation which they have listed for £7,098.06. Putting the same component list into PC part picker gives £5113.91 including shipping. Even at that, the build uses a £2,111 Quatro RTX 5000 GPU that may not be a great way of spending money for many applications.steves01x wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 1:07 pmYou can get a lot of work station for the £4 to £5k including vat from Scan - https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs
Their lower end Intel based stuff stacks up better against a self build prices, but again you need to look at the parts you're getting and why you do or don't need them, particularly the GPU. I'd suggest the OP asks there software manufacturers what benefits a high end GPU will bring and similarly lots of threads and memory.
When i got my workstation last year, i was roughly about £300 more to buy it built with a basic warranty than attempting to build it all my self. I think the mining community have snapped up everything before prices went up!
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Re: Scanning Workstation
Yep, the miners have all the decent mid-range GPUs and production has slumped with the pandemic. I think we'll see a flip of this in about 6-18 months so I'm putting off a big upgrade myself until then. Still looking forward to seeing how my cheapo ~£1,200 Lenovo i9 performs as a testing rig. Mad to see the i9 as a budget chip when it was so sought after up until very recently.
I find the benchmarking stuff on here really useful, notably Dennis and Daniel's contributions. Too much time in the surveying industry makes me want to measure everything before trusting the pundits. While hard to get at the moment, I'd be keen to see how the Ryzen 5950x does with point cloud applications. Very well I'd suspect but until you see the measurement data, who knows.... I'd also suspect the RTX cards don't do that much for our industry where ray tracing isn't really any kind of a bottleneck for us, big memory GPUs could be a major plus going forward.
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Re: Scanning Workstation
We will be using Register 360, Cyclone, Pegasus Manager (MLS), Recap, and Autocad.
- smacl
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Re: Scanning Workstation
So far as I know the Leica stuff favours large fast storage (e.g. decent spec 2TB nvme drive), plenty of memory and a decent multi-threaded CPU. I don't think it relies on a good GPU for computation but it will certainly help display speed during editing. To confirm this, I'd check out some of the more experienced Leica folks, Cesar Almeida is a good point of contact for Reg 360 and Cyclone, Antonio Mendes is the expert on all things Pegasus. Not sure about Recap, others here might chip in on whether it is GPU heavy or not. Again, I think it is more bottlenecked around CPU and storage but others here will know this way better. Autocad relies on single threaded speed and makes use of the GPU for display but not for computation.
Also worth knowing is how big are your scan jobs (e.g. number scan stations, total number of points, GB in storage in a specific format, or KMs of road or rail for the Pegasus). Additionally, what type of budget do you have and are you likely to be adding drone based photogrammetry into the mix in the near future? With modern workstations, price / performance gradient can get very steep on some components like high-end GPUs, while you can often get a lot of extra performance for not much extra outlay on things like multiple nvme drives for data, temp files and software.
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Re: Scanning Workstation
I have just ordered a new machine and will be building it next week.
i9 10850k
Noctua DH12 CPU Cooler
64GB DDR4 possible upgrade to 128GB next year when needed
Nvidia Quadro RTX A4000 16GB GDDR6
500GB M.2 NVME for C Drive Samsung 980Pro
3x 1TB M.2 NVME Drives Samsung 980Pro
Asus M.2 PCI-e add in card
1000w 80+ Platinum Power supply (forget the brand name think its corsair)
Corsair Obsidian 750D Case
Also picked up 2 x 32" LG 1440p Monitors because why not.
All in under 4k inc Vat
i9 10850k
Noctua DH12 CPU Cooler
64GB DDR4 possible upgrade to 128GB next year when needed
Nvidia Quadro RTX A4000 16GB GDDR6
500GB M.2 NVME for C Drive Samsung 980Pro
3x 1TB M.2 NVME Drives Samsung 980Pro
Asus M.2 PCI-e add in card
1000w 80+ Platinum Power supply (forget the brand name think its corsair)
Corsair Obsidian 750D Case
Also picked up 2 x 32" LG 1440p Monitors because why not.
All in under 4k inc Vat