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Turas

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I have a Dual XEON Setup using an ASUS MB. I love the MB. It is a different model but love the quality. First off your case will not fit that motherbord. The XEON boards are either SSI CEB or EATX (Extended ATX). So you will need to fork out more for a case. I am using the Thermaltake Armor which fits them nicely. I belive the Antec P190 also fits EATX but I hate that it comes with it's own power supply.

The RAM is also not correct, you need FB-DIMMs. Also I think the machine is probably an overkill if you are only loading it with 2GB of ram. FB-DIMM's get hot and I mean real hot. You need to get something to cool them or have good airflow over them at least. Mine with very little airflow are hat 84 and 77 celcius. Here is a link to some FB-DIMMs
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134649

I am using the 5355's so I believe my CPU's would be hotter then yours. With the 5355 passive cooling is not enough. I used the dynatron's active coolde with the fan on the side and it cooled the CPU nicely. It also cooled the memory more and everything was running great. The price to pay was they were loud as hell. I eventually took them out and put on a water loop.

I definately recomend some case fans although the number and speed may vary depending on how you decide to cool the CPU and memory.

I don't see a PSU listed. but these boards require 2- separate 12 v/4pin connectors. My PSU didnot have them but I got a cable that makes them from the standard non sata power connector.
 
Reynod

Reynod

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No ... your better off buying two rigs - one for gaming, and one for crunching.

Though the Skulltrail system with FB-Dimms looks goo the parts are horribly priced and the ram bandwidth is rubbish.

Build a cheap gaming rig (something like a Core2 quad Q6600 or Q9450 with an 8800GT and a couple of gigs of ram.

Build a cheap dual socket quad core (see Dan's advice) Zeon server system ... or possibly an Opteron dual socket Barcelona system. You don't need any graphics for this system or sound but you want a minumum of 4 to 8Gb of RAM and two HDD's in RAID0 to get the most out of it.

Hope this helps a bit.

Someone else can give you plenty more advice.

This way your much less likely to have the server system corrupted by some crappy application crashing the graphics, or a virus etc.

Plus a gaming rig won't run well when it is churning any disk intensive operations in the background.


 
bobwya

bobwya

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May 21, 2005
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Hi

My experience with a server-type rig (dual- Opteron socket 940) is that you are a bit limited by not having overclocking abilities. Even when I rebuild with the Tyan K8WE (currently using the K8SE) you are held back by the server RAM (FB-DIMMs or ECC DDR RAM) and motherboard BIOS... Don't get me wrong the rig games OK. However a Core2 Wolfie @4Ghz with good RAM would blow a Xeon out of the water!!

I would personally avoid Rosewill as a PSU brand. For a server you would need a PC Power & Cooling, Ultra X3 Series, Seasonic, Corsair. A server board will require a more stable PSU then a desktop setup.

Also I have my rig running of 4x stripped U320 SCSI drives (with a 256Mbyte RAID controller). But you are implying you are just going to be doing number crunching which should be OK (not too I/O intensive I presume).

You will need a minimum of 4Gb of RAM for the server machine, perhaps even more. Depends on the memory footprint of that crunching app.!! You will therefore need a 64-bit OS (GNU/Linux, Windows XP x64, Windows 2003 Server, etc.).

You could wait for the octi-core Nahalem CPU (sweet)!!

Bob
 
J

jitpublisher

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May 16, 2006
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This is good advice. Your reasoning for having an 8 cores system is flawed.
8 cores is not 8 times faster, or mean 8 times more work is being done. It doesn't work that way.
You will need a huge amount RAM, and more than even the 2 drives in RAID reynod said, and even then look back to my first statements again. If you need a system crunching numbers in the background all the time, that can use up to 6 cores, you need a dedicated system for that application which can be built very inexpensively. Build another for gaming and everyday use.


 
bobwya

bobwya

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You don't need a "huge amount" of RAM. The amount of RAM depends on the target application... It could be anything from 8Gb (not so huge) to 32Gb depending on the "type of crunching" being done. You won't get a linear speed up with the Xeons as the FSB is a big limitation... This is the reason why I suggested waiting for the Nehalem CPU+chipset.

You have to think of the whole memory hierachy when designing/ laying out a system. Your system will be very RAM/CPU heavy with a huge I/O bottleneck back to much slower HD storage...
I would say the system would benefit from a 3.5" 15K SAS drive and/ or an SSD drive/array!! Get that wallet out... etc, etc. Seriously putting your data set on a small, fast 32Gb ("working storage") SSD drive would be just the ticket to avoid an I/O bottleneck. Booting your OS of a 15K SAS drive/array would also help. Additionally Host Controllers for U320 SCSI are much cheaper now than they used to be and U320 SCSI drives can be had on E-bay/on-line for the "right price" i.e. matching WD Raptor pricing but at 15K rpm speeds.

Bob
 
radnor

radnor

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Like they say in the Army. Cluster f*ck.

Or just cluster. Have a friend that can fiddle with Linux. Mounting a cluster can be quite simple.
Check if the crunching App you run is Ghz limited, or it just likes loads of core.

If not, but 4 E2180 machines with 512 Ram Each. Ive seen them go about 250€ each !!
Or less if you mounted it your self , and use Used HDDs.

I have mounted clusters for specific Structural Calculations using old PCs. Some still work. They were just trash because the TIC was renewing the hardware (every 2 years). Why trash 32 perfectly good machines ? Those AMD 2200+ Barton Core still pack a nice punch. Of Course we are talking about 32 of them. The problem might be the watts under full load. A SETi Farm is not what i advice to have in your room, but hey.

There are several ways to make a omelet, it need eggs, but hey the rest we can be creative.
 
bobwya

bobwya

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I think a couple of quad systems would be the sweet spot. Sure E2160's are v. cheap but you need all the other clobber to run 'em and electricity isn't free...

So I would say 2x Q6600 (EE) @3.0Ghz+Kingston HyperX 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-9200C5+motherboard (Gigabyte/ASUS?) with on-board GPU+Samsung F1 500Gb+Corsair HX520 systems (or whatever floats your boat). The Q6600 will rush you the same as the Xeon but run at 3.0Ghz (OC) instead of 2.0Ghz. No overclock on a server board!!

But of course this is not within the original (unrealistic) budget... So build one system as a trial run... The equipment is old tech and therefore should be more stable/ well supported. You can run an (easier to manage) 32-bit OS on these systems.

Unless you get free electricity the overheads of running multiple systems will add up... I don't think 4x dual core systems is such a good idea in this day and age!!

Bob

P.S. Don't worry about the whole CPU/FSB issue if your processes are going to be CPU bound and perform little I/O.
I am sure the 4Mb / (dual-core) wafer in the Q6600 will help iron out any problems in this respect!!

 
bobwya

bobwya

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Uhhhmmm, I for one won't be posting on this thread any more... Since you are asking for advice and then not listening to it...

IMHO you aren't ready to built a server rig and should stick to the multiple desktop systems idea...

If you really want to go down the server route then get a suitably stable PSU. Just having lots of watts is not enough...
A Rosewill will let you down "maybe not today bu some day soon"...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16817182072

Please refer to:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108088
Some powersupplies are placed wrongly on this (Enermax slightly too high etc.) but overall it will point you in the right direction for efficiency, stability and longterm reliability... Please note that Rosewill is at the bottom of the pile (tier 5). This link is only a guide to quality/stability but I personally stick to PSUs from Tiers 1 & 2.

Bob
 
radnor

radnor

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Right on the mark, about the PSU and the multiple systems. Bang/Buck ratio, in your case, screams that.
So you say its single threaded. Very well. Im having a really slow day at work (again) so.....lets start with a little caroling.

"I sold my soul to the devil and the devil came back for more
He was in need of some cash, but i couldn't have it any more"

Alright. lets spend....500 bucks on your crunching system. Or on several of them.

CPU

AMD 64 1600 2.2Ghz 34$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103199

- Cheap, can be overclocked nicely to 2.6Ghz and its power consumptions are freaking low. Check Toms Charts to verify my claims. Its a 64 Bit CPU, so if you app gets an update or already works on 64 bits, well, it is a nice bump. WINE can be a wonderful thing. or a cedega plataform. Cheaper than a Celeron, and faster aswell.

Motherboard
BIOSTAR NF61S Micro AM2 SE AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 49$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138052

- Nvidia Chipset, everything on board. Biostar isn't a Tier 1 Brand but hey its cheap. It should work flawless for crunching numbers. You should find cheaper if you want, or a little better if you want as well. This you can tinker a bit. This mobo is just a good suggestion. NVIDIA drivers usually work pretty nice with Linux if you go that way. If your going Linux, stick with Nvidia and Intel. Ati, Via, SIS and other chipsets are problematic.

RAM
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 44.99$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098

- Again im just checking newegg and seeing whats in stock. You will probably find cheaper. I remind you this is just a suggestion and i remind you can break this in 2 (its 2x1GB). So its 22,50$ per machine in ram. We now just need PSU.

PSU
Sunbeam PSU-BKS-480-US 480W ATX12V Power Supply 100 - 240 V - OEM 15$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817709010

- yes, its a **** PSU. Yes you wont need more. Everything is on board and that CPU has a ridiculous low power consumption. It should do perfectly. This OEM PSUs aren't great when we are talking performance machine, but they work real nice when they aren't too much pushed to the limit. And this system will use less than 100 watts in full load.

This means per machine

CPU = 34$
MOBO= 49$
RAM = 22,50$ (1Gb, you will prolly find less and cheaper, 256mb or 512mb are enough)
PSU = 15$
--------------------
Total = 120$ before rebates and shipping.


Noticed i didnt use any HDD ? Because you got 2 choices, first you might not need, second you can ebay a batch of 10GB or 20GB really cheap on Ebay. With a bit of juggling i think you can set up a machine for abotu 100$. You wont need so much ram so the Ebay argument sticks here. You can buy a batch of used 256MB DDR2 533Mhz for much less.

Casing

Here is where we are going to see if you are really an enthusiast , or you are low on enthusiasm. It is a Linux approach. Make it yourself. The TDP of this cpus are low, nothing else on the machine generates any heat. Ive made frames for those 32 (well, i have ordered them, 32 it is a bit exaggerated, but its doable until 12 units, done it before, its fun,, ill do it again). With some real searching ( not posting on a forum while I'm working ) you could easily squeeze 6 PCs on 500$.

6 of those CPUs, 64 bits would pack a really good punch. would a dual Xeon pack more punch ? Probably not. Multi-Threading and Hyper-Threading don't work too well on single thread apps. And you would keep another 500$ for you gaming machine.

Its my 2 cents, and i believe the community would agree with this approach. Faster, cheaper, optimized.
 
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