[HELP] - Need to spec out a quad system for around $2k ?

[Mr.Guvernment]

If possible?

or even ahigh end dual xeon with hyper threading



Well, here

the main usage of this system will be MySQL database - with will be made up of many small 200mb folder in the mysql data folder

this system will have PHP accessing and running various reports - many of which can take hours to run!


So i would assume ultra scsi 320 is a must

nopw what about processing power and ram?


all input is appreciated.

[MLMIB]

er, snag 2 2.4 xeons, mod them to 3.6's with a pl-dc, thats about 600, run a raptor as ur hd, psu, gb of ram, cdrom, puts it over 1 g, install folding, and ur golden

[SK8]

i dont think you can get a brandnew quad for 2k , might try a used server that has quad, i got my quad xeon 500 for 300

[Mr.Guvernment]

yeah going to skip on the quad xeon as a decent mobo would be about $2300 alone

i want something in the 2.4ghz + range for xeons and 2ghz + range for opteron. quad 500 would not do it.

looking around the budget is now more like $2500 - $3000k US.

checking out dual Opterons so we could use linux and 64bit MySQL binaries.

[Mr.Guvernment]

anyone....

[Xaotic]

If you anticipate SCSI U320, stay away from workstation boards without PCI-X. Easily within the price range would be a e7505 chipset board supporting the 400 and 533 FSB Xeons and HT. I use a couple of MSI 9121 boards which have triple peer PCI-X buses, AGP8X and dual onboard U320. ZCR may be a possibility on boards with onboard SCSI, though I usually prefer using PCI controllers. Add a gig or more PC2100 Reg ECC, EPS power supply, a good EATX case with active cooling for the HDDs, optical drive and some HDDs. I prefer Fujitsu MAS and MAP series drives, though preferences vary.

Other good boards include the Tyan and Supermicro boards and since it's a true server, boards without AGP using onboard video are usually preferred.

You can save some money by getting boards with PCI-X, without onboard SCSI, and use PCI controllers like the LSI 21320-R. Retail kits for this controller are around 140.00 at newegg and support RAID levels 1 and 0.

The e7505 chipset is not an overclocking chipset, but very stable and has good features, many boards have dual Gbit nics as well.

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^^^ thxn for the info

i was thinking onboard SCSI U320 - i have a U160 Adaptec card at the momoment.

I will check out a board with out scsi and a pci-x slots and see what it costs to go that route.

[emboss]

MySQL being the main "heavy" task, I'd say go with the Opterons. Depending on your queries, a properly configured dual-opteron setup will either destroy or completely destroy a dual Xeon (with or without hyperthreading) system. I beleive there was an AcesHardware comparison of the two, and a dual Opteron 242 or similar was wiping the floor with a dual ~3GHz 1MB L3 Xeon in MySQL (among other things).

[wquiles]

Xaotic, why is having "triple peer PCI-X buses" a good thing? I searched a little on google and found that it is GOOD to have, but not why :)

[Xaotic]

What it does is provide a separate PCI bus connection for each peer. This is similar to having PCI, AGP and IDE peers on a conventional MB. I run up to 3 SCSI RAID arrays on PCI-X. By having separate buses for each, I have no bus contention issues. This is ideal for running high end RAID arrays and load balancing multi port Gbit nics. You'd have to see the native IRQ listings to believe it.

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^^ i see -so they are not all sharing the same bus :D

I was reading up and it does seem opterons are doing darn well - the main issue thought is price for a opteron - 2 cpus could be $1000 alone where as 2 xeons wouldbe around $600 - but their is that performance factor..lol

[- W.C Pohna -]

well if you look a bit furthur up the thread at what emboss hass said that dual 242's will beat 3ghz Xeons at what you'redoing it'll be cheaper to go with the dual opty's