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Best server mobo/cpu combo?

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PolyPill

Senior Member
Joined
May 20, 2001
Location
Germany
I've been thinking about upgrading my personal server and I was wondering if I could get some suggestions about what to get from where at the best price.

I was thinking about spending around $300 to $400 on mobo/cpu and this is for a linux server so hardware stability is a must. It has to be up 99% of the time. Wanted to get something in the 2ghz range. Will be running scsi everything so I don't care about IDE and wont be overclocked, can't afford the stability sacrifices. Most likey will use DDR Ram. I don't care about gaming and graphics display on it, it wont even have a GUI interface.

It will mostly be doing web, ftp, email, and databases, not sure if that matters. The load is quite heavy for being a personal server and i want it to not die in the event of getting slashdotted. The internet connection should be able to handle just about anything, (46mb fiber line) I just want some hardware that is worth of that kind of bandwidth.
 
I could get some sort of feed back here?

So far I was thinking the Gigabyte GA-8PE667 but it would be nice to find one with a 64bit pci slot, a 1000/100/10 nic, firewire, and I would rather it not have an IDE RAID.

I'm building a custom case for this, it will hold 2 motherboards with shared scsi hd's for a cluster, I would like to make a decision so I can start building.
 
The problem, Poly, is your budget.

For no more than $400, you're going to have to use a desktop board. I'm not aware of any desktop boards with a 64bit PCI slot.

Since stability is your first priority, I'm going to recommend one of the Intel 845GE boards. They come in about a half-dozen different flavors, so you should be able to get one in the size format and close to your ideal feature list. You will have to add a Firewire card, however.

I'd pair that board with a retail P4 2.4B CPU.




BHD
 
I can up the budget, what would you recommend at a reasonable price? Maybe I should spend more like $400 or $500 just on the board? I'm used to ordering something like a Dell 2650 and selecting the few extras needed. I don't want to pay $5,000 for a server.

If an Intel 845GE chipset is recommended which manufacturer is the better choise? What kind of cpu do I need for that? One of those Intel Pentium 4 2.4BGHz 512K 533MHz CPU Northwood P478 that I see on sale at newegg.com?

I've been out of the hardware loop for a while, so I'm not sure what goes with what on all the new stuff.
 
I was recommending one of Intel's house brand boards. They have the best stability in a desktop board, and the intergrated graphics are more than enough for server chores without digging more money out of your wallet.

Here's a list of the Intel 845GE boards available at Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=property&DEPA=1

The GB is based on a server chipset, but I can't recommend it until I see some reports on its reliability.



BHD
 
I agree Intel boards are known for their reliability and compatibility. I recommended a server board because of the features he was looking for (PCI-X) and what he wants to use it for. Server boards are usually more robust (ECC memory, redundant network connections) and scalable (4GB RAM) than desktop boards. But obviously they're more expensive also. And I think most of them come with IDE RAID.
 
Well I don't want IDE RAID, I've got some PERC 3 cards for that, also I don't plan on using IDE drives. You can't do shared disks with IDE.

The 64 bit PCI isn't required, the cards will just default to 32, it's just it would be nice if the cost wasn't enormous.
 
I understand what you're saying, but you can easily burn twice your budget on a Xeon board and proc. (The least-expensive Xeon board I found at Newegg goes for $419.)

If you'd consider an Athlon MP setup, you could get everything you want on a $450 budget. I don't have any hands-on experience with them, so I can't offer a recommendation on anything but the price.




BHD
 
I thought about athlon, I'm not sure about them. Heat seams to be more of an issue with them and the fsb is only 233. I looked at the duals and they seamed to have an even worse fsb. Also it just seams like intel have been more stable not overclocked than amd, but if I can get a board with more features, a comparable speed, and cheaper by going with amd I'm sure my mind will change.
 
AMD is good. :)

You won't get the memory bandwidth, but the money you save on cpu's and motherboard you can spend on ram or something else. Heat isn't an issue if you don't overclock and you use sem-decent heatsinks. My recommendation goes to AMD, because I've built two servers and both were very stable.
 
Well, then should I post this in the amd section?

I know even less about amd boards than I do intel, which is very little.

I also thought that ram speeds in a server would be pretty important.
 
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