Me thinks something is fishy. I still don't appreciate the justification for such large amounts of RAM. I'd be interested to see how you determined or calculated that you needed 32GB of RAM. For example, in my own research I frequently need to perform operations on 1-2GB arrays which sometimes requires replication of the arrays in memory to perform the operation. I concluded that I needed 4-6GB of RAM and this is how much I purchased. I also left slots open (knowing prices will drop) so that I can scale as future need arises, but at a lower total cost.
Also, I don't understand the need for 4x 30" screens. I'm not even sure this is usable and it certainly costs a lot. Given all your other humble considerations why in the world are you thinking about 4x 30" displays? That combined with the consideration of one 60" display (which has crap resolution compared to a single 30") makes me suspicious that this system will ever be purchased.
I'm not trying to be a jerk I just don't understand how the machine you've spec'd satisfies your computing *needs*.
I completely understand your disbelief... this is a nice system, hard to believe. Nonetheless, I reassure you that nothing is fishy. I'm no longer thinking about the 60 inch display, once I realized that the pixel resolution is very low (compared to four 30 inch displays). So the 60 inch possibility was put aside. That's why I wrote to this forum.... to get some good feedback about the purchase.
Just like you, I often work on huge data sets, usually several gigabytes, and I have computations that can take hours, days, or weeks, doing pattern matching and similar things. The 32 GB of RAM could probably be purchased as 16 GB of RAM for now, but then I would be filling my slots with smaller pieces of RAM, only to (perhaps) want to have more RAM down the road. The prices, as I discussed above, are even coming down on the 4 GB sticks, although they are still expensive, as you indicated.
The benefit of having four 30 inch displays is that I can display a lot of data sets at once. I can have a large computation and the relevant output in Maple, I can be typing my LaTeX in emacs and also see the pdf output without having to toggle the screens constantly, and I can some other files I am referencing, all at once.
For comparison, imagine spreading out one's papers and computations and calculators and things like this on a wide desk, so that everything can be viewed at once. This is similar, but on monitors. It is somewhat common at the university. The slow graphics cards are OK, because I don't do anything graphics intensive. I already have two large displays on my desk that I use everyday on my G5, but the display real estate is simply too small. I'm ready for something bigger.
I know it might be hard to believe, but I hope that I'm painting an accurate and helpful picture here. Please try not to be cynical about such a large purchase.... this happens in university research departments all the time.
