There are many different kinds of computers
that you might use, and in this video,
we'll look at a number of these custom computer systems.
A user that is working on a graphics workstation
is often working with software that
allows computer-aided design, or CAD,
and computer-aided manufacturing, or CAM.
These are sometimes referred to as a CAD/CAM system.
Because of the large amount of information
that's being used on this computer,
it's very common to have SSD for high speed storage.
This is often combined with high end video
because these are complex graphics
with very intricate detail.
And because these applications are so detailed,
it's very common to maximize the amount of RAM
available in these workstations to be able to support
these high end applications.
Another use of a computing system
that requires significant performance
from the hardware and the software
is an audio video editing workstation.
These are usually systems with the highest quality audio
and they usually have enhanced graphics capabilities
so that you can edit the highest resolution video.
These types of systems are constantly
reading and writing information from storage,
so it's very common to have an SSD
so that you have the fastest possible reading
and writing of information.
And it's not unusual to have dual monitors
with this, as well, so you can edit your video on one screen
and view the results of that edited video
on the second screen.
On a workstation that's doing operating system
virtualization, you effectively have multiple operating systems
running at the same time on one piece of hardware.
Because of that, you're certainly
going to need the maximum amount of memory
that you can spare for that system.
It's also important to have enough CPU cycles
to be able to support these multiple operating systems.
So it's not uncommon to use multicore CPUs use in a system
that provides virtualization.
Gaming PCs would certainly be considered another high end
system.
So you want to have storage systems that
have SSDs for fast start and fast load times.
It is also very common to have graphics processing systems
on these devices that are able to support these high end
graphics required by these games.
In many of these games, the audio
is just as important as the video,
so you want to be sure to have a high quality sound card,
as well.
And don't forget about the cooling system
inside of this computer.
These games are usually running for hours at a time,
maximizing the capabilities of the hardware.
So you want to be sure that your system stays
as cool as possible.
If you need centralized storage on your network,
you might want to consider a network-attached storage
device or a NAS.
This is a device you connect to a network connection
and you're able to access from any
of the devices on your network.
It's very common, for example, to put
all of your video content on this NAS
and you're able to stream this video to any of your viewing
devices on the network.
It's also very common to centralize your file storage
on a NAS.
That way, everyone has access in this central place.
Because of all of this network communication,
you want to be sure you have the fastest possible throughput.
So it's very common to see a gigabit speed network interface
card to provide the fastest throughput possible.
Because all of your important data is in this central place,
you don't want a single drive failure
to cause all of your data to be unavailable.
For that reason, it's very common
to setup a redundant array of inexpensive disks,
or a RAID array.
This provides redundancy across all of these drives.
So if any single drive fails, you still
have access to your data.
A traditional desktop computer is often
referred to as a thick client.
You run applications on this thick client,
and all of those applications are
loaded from some local storage and execute in the local CPU
of that system.
This means that the hardware requirements
for this that client must meet the minimums
for the applications that you're using.
If you're using high end software,
you need to make sure the CPU, the total RAM,
and the disk space are all able to support that application.
With a thin client, the applications are not actually
executing on this local device.
This local device is more of a remote server
that allows you a screen view into the actual application.
You may see this referred to as VDI,
or virtual desktop infrastructure, where
your local device provides the screen, the keyboard,
and the mouse, but the application itself
is executing on another computer.
This means that the device on the client's desk
only needs to be able to provide that remote access
to the application.
The actual hardware in this device
is the minimum amount of video RAM and storage required
to provide that remote desktop functionality.
This means that everything, then,
is going to happen across the network.
So you want to make sure that you have a very solid network
infrastructure and the best possible throughput
for these thin clients.
Here's a summary of these custom computer systems.
A graphics workstation running CAD/CAM software
needs SSD storage and the maximum amount of RAM.
A device that is providing audio and video editing
also needs fast and a large amount of storage,
and dual monitors.
A virtualization workstation will
require a maximum amount of CPU cores and plenty of memory.
Gaming devices require fast SSD storage and high end
cooling to support the high end audio
and video on those systems.
Our thick clients will have the hardware
necessary to run the operating system and the applications
that run on those operating systems, which is exactly
the opposite of the thin client, which
only needs to support that basic remote desktop functionality.
And our NAS device is going to have plenty of high capacity
hard drives to provide that centralized storage
on the network.