Advice wanted for dual processor system

[terp182]

Hello gurus,

I want to buy or maybe build a dual processor system.
However, prebuilt dual processors boxes seem hard to find and quite pricey compared to the $400 Dell boxes on sale for ordinary consumers.

Tried to find a prebuilt version of what is mentioned in Tom's article, "Two Xeons better than one P4 Extreme",
http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040514/index.html

Closest I was able to find was a SystemMax 7505WSA dual Xeon 2.4 Ghz at Tiger Direct: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=90810&Sku=BTO 988521&CatId=1360

It's rather sparse on amenities and the $1399 price does not seem to include the second processor.

Wonder if it would be much cheaper to build my own or can folks can recommend other pre built choices?

Thanks in advance.

 

[trooper11]

well whenever you consider a dual system, its going to cost some money, even building your own. of course building it will save you some money.

you could get 2 opteron 242s or 2 xeon 2.4ghz cpus for the same price, so its more about what you want to use a dual system for. either of those you can buy 2 for ~$400 , then of course pick the rest of the parts that suit your system. you can definitely get more out of your money if you build it yourself. for oen thing, its wise to have at least 512mb of ram per cpu, 1gb per cpu would be best since you can use twin 512 dimms per cpu, taking advantage of dual channel supported by both opterons and xeons.