Workstation providers

Hi everyone,
has anybody bought from https://bizon-tech.com? If yes, how was your experience with them?
Cheers

1 Like

Hi @Proteino,

I’ve not heard any reviews about Bizon, although we looked at them when purchasing a workstation. We have heard good things about SingleParticle (https://www.singleparticle.com/), and I would advise that you avoid workstations from Exxact.

Best,
Justas

Hi Justas, thanks for your feedback.
We built our first workstation thanks to a colleague computer scientist, this machine works fine. We recently bought a second workstation but this time from Exxact and we have only problems with it. GPU 3090 not functioning properly, motherboard died, they changed it and shipped the machine not assembled properly …
A colleague also both from them, one gpu died, they replaced it and his workstation works fine now.

Have you had a bad experience with them as well?

Hi @Proteino,

We got a very similar workstation it sounds like (intel 10980XE, x299 board, 2 3090’s, etc) and have had a number of mysterious issues that can’t be traced really well, and Exxact has been pretty unhelpful. @olibclarke and @priiteek have also had similar issues, as have others at our institution. At this point, we have been advising any folks to avoid Exxact for cryo-em workstations. It seems like everything is tied to their GPU quality, so maybe it is time for us to have them replace some parts.

Best,
Justas

1 Like

Hi @jr10 @priiteek We got our workstation from Exxact last Dec (4x RTX8000) and everything has been working fine so far. Your comments do make me a little nervous however. How long after purchase did you begin to face issues? Just trying to stay ready… Thank you

Right from the beginning. I think yours is fine if you haven’t encountered any such problems this far.

1 Like

I am also interested in hearing reviews of Bizon-tech. I have heard bad reviews of Exxact and singleparticle, leaving few options for a system. When I spoke to Bizon support on the phone, they were pretty reassuring about getting problems fixed when needed (usually by providing instructions or shipping in as last resort) and they offer a 5 year labor + 3 year part replacement warranty. Curious if anyone has experience with them.

  1. sharing my experience. BIZON is extremely terrible.
    Once you know more than them and find some components with an unreasonable price, they will become unhappy and directly tell you not to continue and stop.
    Even they promised to assemble the specific components with a specific brand, finally, they stealthily changed to other types.
    They even don’t follow the contract to install components.
    They will pretend to know everything and tell you with poor knowledge to confuse or ‘cheat’ you.

  2. Linux Vixion seems professional from a detailed quote. Since they honestly tell me they cannot provide certain components, I didn’t order the workstation from them.

1 Like

Hi @wufe and thanks for your take on the matter. That certainly is a shady business practice!

LinuxVixion did look good, but they forwarded my email to exxact and the quote is from exxact. Do you know if they are the same? They also configure with centos and I heard that can be a pain with cryosparc. If it’s the only option for a well-build system and cryosparc can be coaxed into working, it may be the way to go…

My two cents.

We’ve purchased 6 Exxact machines till now and other than a single RAM stick going back, pretty much everyone of them have worked quite well. Its been almost 2 years since we bought the first one. We have also assembled 4 workstations in the lab with similar specs and they have worked quite well too. The only difference is the assembled workstations were half the price as the Exxact ones. IF you are able to find video cards, I’d highly recommend assembling your own workstations. They are cheaper and require very little maintenance after your initial setup (if done properly). Of course YMMV :slight_smile:

All the best,

V

Hi @vamsee and thanks for the input! I am seeing Exxact offer Ubuntu 20.04. Do you mind if I ask what OS they installed and how well cryosparc works on the machine?

We got CentOS 7 installed on them and cryosparc worked right out of the box. We have been upgrading ever since and the upgrades have been pretty seamless too.
Even for the homebuilt ones, we’ve had CentOS7 on all except one. On one machine, we had Linuxmint 20 installed and had cryosparc run on that. That also ran without any issues.

CentOS 7 support runs till 2024 (maintenance updates only). It is quite stable and the default that exxact installs is good enough for everything cryo. CentOS 8 is however EOL by 2021. So, please consider these issues too when you pick.

1 Like

Hi @user123, sorry to see your question.
I don’t have further talking with LinuxVixion and exxact.
But I recommend you assemble the workstation in the lab.
You can easily control the quality and price and leave space to upgrade.

1 Like

For anyone that may find this useful, I posted here about CryoSPARC’s CentOS 7 compatibility here:

As @vamsee mentioned if you have to use CentOS, definitely use CentOS 7 instead of 8 due to its longer support timeline.

1 Like