PC

by Joshua Horn

Created on: January 08, 2009   Last Updated: January 13, 2009

As a computational biologist, I believe I have enough experience to effectively compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of various systems as they serve their function in scientific research. On the other hand, my analysis may not be the best for a scientist who uses computers simply for presentation building, word processing, etc, and less as actual research tools.

When it comes to computational biology, getting the most bang for your buck is the most important thing to keep in mind. While Mac parts are high end, a great deal of the money you spend on the hardware goes into software (the operating system). Buying quality PC parts from IBM or Dell and building your own machine is much more cost effective than buying "pre-built" Apple machines. Most scientific research packages are built and run on Linux distributions which are free and provide a huge range of versatility for the user.

A Mac Pro, at the time of this writing, sells for about $2,800. This is for an 8-core, 32. GHz machine with a 360 GB hard-drive and 2 GB of RAM (as well as mid-range graphics card and other parts that are not so necessary for most computational research). Buying comparable parts, you can build a more powerful machine for far less than half the price. (That's two i7 quad cores at $300 a piece, 8 GB of RAM for $150, motherboard for $250 and a TB of hard drive space for $180. Throw in other parts like a case and cables and it runs a bit higher).

With the explosive growth of Linux distributions and freeware in both the general population as well as in scientific circles, its no wonder that cheap PC's are the choice for science labs. Just a few years ago, you had to choose Apple or Windows simply for the bundled software. But now various forms of Linux, including Ubuntu and Fedora, function and self-install much like the larger and more famous packages. From word-processing and presentations with Open Office to biological science packages like Amber, Gromacs, and NAMD, we can see that Linux has evolved into a premier OS (not to mention the community forums that provide nearly instant customer help and service from other Linux users).

Macs are wonderful machines out of the box, but the huge expense is a detriment to the scientist who doesn't need iLife, OSX and all the other goodies that make Macs useful for the average consumer. To build a cluster of computers for computational biology or even astrophysics calculations, high end but cheap computer parts from other manufacturers are supreme.

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