Post Wed May 22, 2019 10:48 pm

Dream Computer: Building a better CyTOF Computer

Has anyone ever built their own computer for a CyTOF instrument?

I have been thinking about the computers Fluidigm provides, and I would really like them to re-think the design. Presently they use a RAID, which sounds good on paper but actually has a much higher failure rate than a traditional hard drive. If they are looking for redundancy, they can put in a mirrored backup drive that the computer can back up to on a schedule (we use a 4TB external drive that backs up and compresses the data.) If they are looking for bigger hard drives, high speed (7200 RPM) SATA drives that go up to 12 TB are now available and reasonably priced (~$400).

I would love to have a dream computer with the following specs:
lots of RAM - 64GB or more if possible
1TB SSD for the C:\ drive. Fastest read/write capabilities, which will make the software happy
12TB Seagate 7200 RPM SATA hard drive for the data drive
Intel Core i9-9900K processor (if I'm building a computer for the future - I want the fastest processor I can find....)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 would probably work just fine.

Am I forgetting anything?
I'm pretty sure this computer would cease to have API buffer errors...

Christine
UofCO CC Flow Cytometry