What platform? (3 IDE drives, 6 scsi)

Hi all,

I am trying to get rid of two pcs that I have & build something a little more modern. I am have a few PC's that are overclocked & I want to get a server setup that will never be OC'ed or futzed with, just straight computing.

I am also a little concerned about what type of PSU to get for something like this. I have a total of 3 IDE drives, 4 Scsi drives, 2 scsi cdrws & then some basic sound & decent video (not planing on gaming).

The old SMP system I have is a Tyan thunder 2400 with 2 P3 700's & 2 gigs of ram. Something funky is happening (one PSU is dying of the 2 & the raid card things one of the 2 scsi drives in it is dead but they both work fine on standalone. So the SMP setup is just about to be replaced & my other workstation is a P3 933 & I figure I can put everything from both PC's into a new server.

I dont want to mess around with overclocking. Stability is the goal of this PC.

So with those needs being said, what type of setup should I pick up? Maybe a Dell server (they seem to be pretty cheap these day). Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Rich

[shameless plug]

You could read my sticky, entitled "Step-by-Step: How to build a cheap and quiet AMD dually."

There is a link in my sig.

Make sure you get at least a 500 watt PSU. The 530 Watt Fortron is supposed to be really good and it isn't too expensive.

[/shameless plug]

Get the MSI K7D Master L like cmc says in his article/sticky. Who says you have to overclock it. If it works great overclocked, it has to be rock solid stable in the first place. It also has nice 64bit PCI slots for SCSI RAID cards.

I wouldnt mind going for AMD. Its just that the current system I am working on is a XP1900 on a Asus A7V-266E & it is almost as slow as my P933. Maybe that is an exageration, but this system certainly runs faster but it doesnt feel like much faster.

I guess thats why I have been hesitating with going with an AMD dually setup. Stable & speedy!

AMD duallies are fast and stable. They FAR outperform dual PIII's.

If you go with dual Xeons, expect to spend $500 to $1,000 more than an MPX duallie depending on which speed of Xeons you want. Also the Xeon memory won't work on Opterons if you decide to migrate there but the MPX registered memory will.