Computer Specification - Need some computer specification advices for bioinformatics... (Apr/07/2010 )

Dear All,

My intel core 2 duo is quite slow in my routine work, and I would like to buy a system which is good for my work. What are your suggestions?

Generally my works involves:
1 Primer Design
2 Molecular Modelling, docking and protein structure predictions
3 Multiple sequences alignment
4 Databases
5 Statistical calculation
6 Data mining
7 Photo editing
8 Run in both Linux and Windows

And of course: write papers...

I guess my work is more or less like what you guys do. I would like to know based on your opinion, what sort of computer specifications will you recommend for a molecular biologist/bioinformatics.

I'm in a tight budget of course.

Please include processor, motherboard, graphics cards and RAM in your suggestions.
You can also recommend about your current workstation specifications if you are happy with.

I hope this can as well serves as a guideline for all who intend to buy a PC for research work.

Wait to hear from you.
Adrian

You describe your computer as an "intel core 2 duo", and say that it's slow, implying that the bottleneck is the CPU. Do you know that this is the case? Which Intel CPU do you have? How much RAM do you have? What size and kind of hard drive do you have? What OS?

Pardon me. Mine is a laptop (thus not upgradable).
2GB DDR2, intel core 2 duo T5600 1.8ghz, OS: winXP and openSUSE 11.2, intel onboard graphic card, 100gb sata hdd with 40% free space and 2gb paging file. Defragment frequently, virus-check updated...done weekly.
(operating system is on separate hdd, everytime have to dissemble and reassemble to change OS.)

The startup is very slow when I use openSUSE, when i try to use autodock (in fact i'm still learning....). The machine lagging like snails...

In windows, multi-tab browsing using firefox concurrent with virusscan or Geneious will greatly slow down the system. ClustalX is still ok.

And of course, most of the games were not supported by my system, and doesn't allows me for procrastination.

I was thinking to buy a desktop in a coming PC fair near my place. Thats the reason I was thinking if I were to get a new PC which can sustain long enough for me to graduate (might be years....), what sort of spec I should get.