Opinions on best hardware for Opteron build

I recently acquired an AMD Opteron 2.6 for free. Best system board and heatsink/fan for this processor??? Any opinions greatly appreciated.

Model 252
2.6
OSP252FAA5BL
Socket 940

Check out:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/opteron.html

Their two most recent boards for that line are:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8hm.html
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8hr.html

You might be able to get a board with very similar performance to the Tyan Thunder K8WE (S2895) but at a much lower cost now. (Not to be confused with the Tyan Tiger K8WE (S2877) board)

Still nForce Pro 2200 + 2050 was the first true dual PCIe x16 chipset , out well before all the other nForce 4 ones .... but that doesn't make that much difference, it is the other features that do. (eg: Aggregate memory performance between 2 processors).

A 2nd Opteron 200 series CPU (single core like what you have now) will not cost you very much at all.

No doubt all the chipsets and price ranges will sway you, just fire me a PM (Private Msg) or é-mail me, or MSN me. (My details are in my profile and in contact section of my very dodgy website - see my signature).

CASE: Antec Titan 550

http://www.antec.com/us/productDet [...] odID=91550

- If you check the dimentions you'll notice why, make sure to hook up SATA cables, etc before installing the board, or you'll have trouble connecting the HDDs, etc later.

PSU: Any decent EPS12V of 500+ watts should cover it for awhile. eg: The Antec TruePower II 550 EPS12V that comes with the Titan 550 case.

EPS12V is basically a 'server' varient of ATX12V, and should usually, today, include a 8-pin connector for CPU power (2 x 4 pins). Aswell as a 24 pin EPS12V connector. (1 pin has a different function when compared to ATX12V).

Anandtech did report issues with it, but I've never been able to recreate them myself. They prob just got a dud-PSU or pushed it over the edge using nTune to overclock or something. Either way.... they didn't compare 10 of a given PSU to 10 of another PSU.

Doesn't look bad :-D

Just make sure you get a quality EPS12 PSU (Antec, PC Power & Cooling, etc) and verify that the case can in fact accomodate an SSI EEB board if you in fact get the S2895A2NRF.

Good luck :-D

It doesnt need to be flashy at all. The way my desk is, you only see the DVD drives anyway. I definately need handles on the case or need to install a kit. The full towers are heavy.

Well a 940 board will cost you $220-$450 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 0=&ATTR31=

PSU $90 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817103932

CASE $55 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811125436

VGA $0 for onboard or $40 - $299 for a 6200 PCI-Express thru 7900GT

RAM $278 for XMS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145476

OR

RAM $220 for VS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145310


You can certainly run it with only one CPU until you're ready to upgrade it.

I selected the cheapest case that would ( probably ) do the job. I'm sorry to say even $1000 rackmount cases sometimes do not work that well for some EATX and SSI EEB server boards.

I got burnt before even after doing extensive research.

I would recommend TYAN, Corsair REG ECC and a Zalman copper cooler ( s ).

I have built several Opteron 2xx machines but to be honest I have never OC'ed them.

I like / use all distros and like all forms of Unix.

I normally use FC4 x86_64 ( FC5 was released a few days ago ).

But I almost always install things from source and tweak everything.