Supermicro X8 Single CPU?

[scottneh]

Hello, I'm doing some initial research for building a workstation for CFD. I have seen a couple of really good posts and was curious about the Supermicro X8 boards. Does anyone know if the X8 series can run single CPU? I'm thinking about using the X5570 or W5580 chips and since they are a small fortune I wanted to see if I cna run single CPU and htne buy a seond CPU later.

The Supermicro boards seem to be ~$100 to $200 more then the ASUS boards and i'm also curious what drive their cost. Are they really a better board or have something special about them or is Supermicro just pricing themselves high. Will I get anything for my extra $200?

Thanks
Scott

 

[Shadow703793]

1. Mind listing the exact requirements (ie. mission critical,etc)? Computational Fluid Dynamics is kind or a broad term. Also what software?

2. Total budget?

 

[whitewhale1]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/supermicro-5046a-xb-workstation,2167.html

thats a single processor mobo

compared to an asus you wont get the overclocking options but you get xeon and ECC support which is important for what you are doing

but you would need a new mobo if you are wanting to go dual xeon in the future

 

[scottneh]

I haven't picked the software yet but I'm looking at running Gentoo Linux as the OS, and there are several CFD and Mesh codes at www.cfd-online.com and I will probably use on of their codes. My main interest in looking at boudary layers around surface discontinuities on aerodynamic bodies i.e. small bumps, divots, cracks, etc.

Total budget is around $4K.

I'm interested to see if I can buy a dual Supermicro board and run it single CPU until I can buy another processor as an upgrade. My first dual cpu system used an MSI board and I could run it single cpu if I chose too but the processor were much less expensive as the X5500 and I was able to buy both CPUs.

 

[scottneh]

I'm still interested in finding out what drives the cost of the Supermicro boards as well...What do I really get for my money over the ASUS boards?