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Most graphics cards want 16, unless they are in SLI mode, then they need 8x each. Interestingly this motherboard has two 8x PCI-Express slots (as well as 2 PCI-X slots), but still has the ATI onboard video. If only the two 8x slots were capable of SLI, this thing could be the ultimate motherboard for very rich gamers. With a multithreaded game and 8 cores, and 32 GB of RAM, the CPU and memory sure won't be the bottleneck in the system.

mportant Chassis Notes

To ensure system stability, a 1000W (minimum) ATX power supply [8-pin (+12V), 8-pin (+12V) and 24-pin are required]

That's a LOT of juice!

you can see all their amd solutions at http://www.supermicro.com/aplus

The article at the Register correctly states that they have just kept there Opteron stuff hidden. Aparently hpcanswers didnt read the whole thing or do any research.

There AMD64 boards and systems can be found at http://www.supermicro.com/aplus

I personally have one of these http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Optero n/nForce/H8DCE.cfm and it is a quality product.

The article at the Register correctly states that they have just kept there Opteron stuff hidden. Aparently hpcanswers didnt read the whole thing or do any research.

There AMD64 boards and systems can be found at http://www.supermicro.com/aplus

I personally have one of these http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Optero n/nForce/H8DCE.cfm and it is a quality product.

Supermicro has offered AMD solutions for a quite while now - just not under their "main" brand name. If you don't know that their Aplus products exist, you won't find them. Although I'm sure no one would go on record, I'd wager that Intel has pressured a heavily Intel-dependent vendor to not promote AMD's product.

In fact, go to SuperMicro's home page, and you'll notice no mention or links to their AMD based products.

This isn't the first time that this has happened. When AMD first shipped the Athlon, very few board makers dared to ship Athlon solutions for fear of Intel shorting them on chipsets. I recall, but cannot substantiate, that Asus and Abit first shipped Athlon boards under a "shadow brand", much as Supermicro is doing here.

I, for one, cannot wait to buy some of the Supermicro^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h, um, Aplus gear.

Supermicro has offered AMD solutions for a quite while now - just not under their "main" brand name. If you don't know that their Aplus products exist, you won't find them. Although I'm sure no one would go on record, I'd wager that Intel has pressured a heavily Intel-dependent vendor to not promote AMD's product.

In fact, go to SuperMicro's home page, and you'll notice no mention or links to their AMD based products.

This isn't the first time that this has happened. When AMD first shipped the Athlon, very few board makers dared to ship Athlon solutions for fear of Intel shorting them on chipsets. I recall, but cannot substantiate, that Asus and Abit first shipped Athlon boards under a "shadow brand", much as Supermicro is doing here.

I, for one, cannot wait to buy some of the Supermicro^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h, um, Aplus gear.

You mean like this motherboard with four copper, plus four SFPs that can accept copper or fiber modules? Now if only they could combine it to 2 10 Gig Ethernet plus two Gig Ethernet, that would be one kick-ass server :)

I've just built a 2TB RAID server as a hot backup server for work, there's plenty of pre-built stuff on the market but I found it's all way overpriced if you're looking for RAID-5 (or 6). I've got 2TB of usable space on a RAID-5 server for around £1,700, and it's upgradable to 3.5TB. Standard solutions would have cost me anywhere from £5,000 to £12,000.

If you're after RAID-5, don't forget that if a drive fails you want to be able to swop it as quickly and easily as possible. That means buying a spare drive at the outset and ideally having a case with hot-swop capability.

My solution was a Promise RAID controller, a whole bunch of cheap SATA drives and a case with 8 hot swop SATA bays. I'd always recommend Promise for IDE or SATA RAID, I've had too many problems with Adaptec cards in the past, arrays lost, cards fried, etc... Promise cards have always recovered from everything I've thrown at them, even when I've expected to loose data.

I used the SX8300 which, thanks to Slashdot, I've just found is upgradable to RAID-6, sweet :D
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng. asp?segment=RAID%205%20HBAs&product_id=148

I also found a superb case from Supermicro, the SC743. It's a dream to work in and has more than enough cooling for all those drives. It is a little noisy though:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/tower/? chs=743.

Unfortunately Promise don't guarantee hot swop ability with this case - they'll only guarantee it if you're using their own enclosures, but personally I'm happy enough to take that gamble. My feeling is that the worst case scenario is that it doesn't recognise a new drive automatically and I have to reboot, I can't see me frying a drive or loosing the array.

Good luck with your project, let us know how you get on :)

Ross

I'm trying to see how this is better than Supermicro's 2U 6024H-T (http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/2U/6024 /SYS-6024H-T.cfm) or even thier 1U 6014P-TR (http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/6014 /SYS-6014P-TR.cfm) which holds 4 hot-swap SATA drives, dual PS, Dual Intel® 64-bit Xeon®. Slap in 4x250GB drives and you have 1 (one) Helluva terabyte server at a very decent price. We use these for showing people pictures of other peoples' bathrooms (http://windermere.com/ among other things.

I'm trying to see how this is better than Supermicro's 2U 6024H-T (http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/2U/6024 /SYS-6024H-T.cfm) or even thier 1U 6014P-TR (http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/6014 /SYS-6014P-TR.cfm) which holds 4 hot-swap SATA drives, dual PS, Dual Intel® 64-bit Xeon®. Slap in 4x250GB drives and you have 1 (one) Helluva terabyte server at a very decent price. We use these for showing people pictures of other peoples' bathrooms (http://windermere.com/ among other things.

The BTX form factor is a desktop form factor designed to provide low profile, efficient cooling, and be "scaleable" in motherboard size. The form factor is quieter, cooler, and will allow smaller cases.

See: http://www.formfactors.org/developer%5Cspecs%5CBTX _Specification%20v1.0b.pdf

That said, case manufacturers have adjusted to the needs of the server market with the ATX standard. They have introduced 1U and 2U systems with effective cooling solutions to deliver low profile, efficient cooling, and be "scaleable" in motherboard size already. With BTX being primarily aimed at desktop, so the motherboards may lack server class features (SCSI, RAID, etc).

A quick search on Google rendered a solution from Supermicro that has more drive bays, uses P4 if thats your thing, and does this all in 2U form factor using an ATX motherboard.

See: http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/2U/5025/ SYS-5025M-4.cfm

Tyan S2895: ~£320
2*Opteron 265; dual core 1.8GHz: ~£1000
4*1GB ECC Registered memory: ~£500
Nice Supermicro EATX case: ~£300

That's over £2k without storage, hardware RAID, graphics, etc, with a fairly modest amount of wriggle room for further savings. I hope you have a really good use for all those cores, or at least enough money that the cost is largely irrelevent. You save a lot going dual single core, and there are still reasons you might prefer a simple dual Opteron over an X2 (like support for >4G of memory and more readily available PCI-X), but if you're just looking at a nice desktop rather than a professional graphics workstation or big multi-user server, they probably don't apply much in this case.

Personally, I went for a mid-range X2, left the dual dual Opteron in the data centre and am awaiting a handmedown IBM eServer for my home serverish needs. YMMV.

If that is not enough for you, they even have a version that supports dual hosts.

If that is not enough for you, they even have a version that supports dual hosts.

Until fairly recently, I couldn't get a SuperMicro server with an AMD in it.

The only Supermicro board I can find that supports AMD is the H8DCE which does not seem to be available to retail customers.

I even wonder if this board's existence is a result of the AMD lawsuit. For a long time now I've been puzzled as to why Supermicro was so steadfast in it's Intel-only stance. For a company that specializes in wide range of server boards, you would think they would have at least dabbled in the Opteron market if not embraced it in an open market.

Of course, this Enermax PSU won't fit into any of these devices. I can't even imagine how you could build a desktop system that would ever need much more than 1/2 that PSU's possible output. Quad CPU boards are a little difficult to come by, and they won't run off completely standard PSUs anyway (although the label on the PSU says it's EPS 12V, so it might have the 24 pin power + 8 pin processor power connectors). However, this isn't really the market for whitebox manufacturers, and what meager money you might save would most likely be outweighed by the next-day shipping of replacement parts that name brand vendors can offer you.

Besides, I don't even want to contemplate needing a dedicated 15A breaker just for my system. My little 350W PSU is working just fine for me.

Try Supermicro motherboards. In my experience, these are very stable, and of much better quality than ASUS.

So coupled with all these facts why would you go with Intel? I seriously doubt it has to do with a technical advantage [specially in the SMP world].

Three reasons: i) chipsets, ii) motherboards and iii) overall case, power supply combo

Supermicro makes fantastic Intel motherboards and cases/power supply combos to go with the motherboards. If I wanted a 1U linux server, I ask my favorite vendor what he would recommend and he invariably finds a Supermicro product that fits like a glove. I cannot find a similar supplier for AMD CPUs.

Does anyone know how well these work with linux? They are both ~$100 a peice, and offer 8-ports on a 133MHz 64-bit PCI slot.

Supermicro's SATA-MV8 SATA controller provides 8-port SATA HDD support via 64-bit PCI-X bus interface with high-performance features. Built around the powerful Marvell SATA controller chip, it offers functionalities for server, workstation and network storage environments in a low-profile PCI platform.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/add on/DAC-SATA-MV8.cfm

Supermicro's SAT2-MV8 SATA controller (based on the Marvell Hercules-2 Rev. C0 SATA host controller) provides 8-port SATA HDD support via 64-bit PCI-X bus interface with high-performance features. Serving as a 2nd generation SATA storage card, the AOC-SAT2-MV8 offers double the data transfer rate of its 1st generation counterpart and offers functionalities for server, workstation and network storage environments in a low-profile PCI platform.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/add on/AoC-SAT2-MV8.cfm

Does anyone know how well these work with linux? They are both ~$100 a peice, and offer 8-ports on a 133MHz 64-bit PCI slot.

Supermicro's SATA-MV8 SATA controller provides 8-port SATA HDD support via 64-bit PCI-X bus interface with high-performance features. Built around the powerful Marvell SATA controller chip, it offers functionalities for server, workstation and network storage environments in a low-profile PCI platform.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/add on/DAC-SATA-MV8.cfm

Supermicro's SAT2-MV8 SATA controller (based on the Marvell Hercules-2 Rev. C0 SATA host controller) provides 8-port SATA HDD support via 64-bit PCI-X bus interface with high-performance features. Serving as a 2nd generation SATA storage card, the AOC-SAT2-MV8 offers double the data transfer rate of its 1st generation counterpart and offers functionalities for server, workstation and network storage environments in a low-profile PCI platform.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/add on/AoC-SAT2-MV8.cfm

I recommend SuperMicro It'll have stuff built on, but, thankfully, they at least put the expansion slots in, and you get quite a few. Just go to their products section. Reasonable price, too. Though, it's Intel, not AMD stuff. I have yet to get an AMD since my last one fried 9 years ago.

**4MB memory modules not fully tested due to limited availability

For this reason, you might actually want to consider one of Intel's new 64-bit Xeon chips [intel.com]. I know that Supermicro offers some boards that can handle up to 32GB with only a single Xeon processor.

If you're hellbent on using an AMD solution, Supermicro is supposedly working on an Opteron board. This should provide a better "server" solution than a lot of the current boards offer.

There are a few possible solutions you might want to look at for a big-RAM server. Now, if you really want 64GB and AMD Opteron processors than you really only have one choice, the HP Proliant DL585. That's the only Opteron solution that I know of which supports 64GB of memory.

If you can get by with a bit less memory then you have some other solutions. Tyan carries quite a number of boards with varying capabilities. The trouble here is that the Opteron processors are limited to 8GB of memory per processor, so to get 16GB you're going to be looking at a dual-processor board (quad processor for 32GB). Since the memory controller is right on the CPU with the Opteron you will actually need a second processor in the socket to use this memory.

For this reason, you might actually want to consider one of Intel's new 64-bit Xeon chips. I know that Supermicro offers some boards that can handle up to 32GB with only a single Xeon processor. Something like the X6DHE-XB seems like it might fit you're bill reasonable well. Fairly inexpensive to get you up to 16GB of memory, though going to 32GB is quite expensive. Crucial has a list of compatible memory for this board, including some 4GB modules.

Of course, if you're not limited to x86 systems then there are other solutions that would work. You could get something like an IBM Power system or Sun UltraSparc system with pretty much any amount of memory you need (or can afford).

Then Supermicro has made some quite good motheboards supporting up to 32 Gig RAM
They are really inexpensive too.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeo n800/

How bout just google?

Why use RAID50 instead of RAID5 ? You're not going to get any meaningful performance benefit and you're "wasting" a drive that could be otherwise used for more space or a hotspare.

I would suggest using a motherboard with multiple PCI buses. Basically, look for something that's got two (or more) 64 bit PCI-X slots, as these boards nearly always have multiple PCI buses. It will be in the detailed specs - you want at least three 64 bit/66Mhz (or faster) buses on the board - one for each slot and one for "everything else" (onboard network, USB, video, any other PCI slots, etc). Added to this, I'd go so far as to strongly advise buying a genuine intel "server" or "workstation" board.

Remote admin is something you need to consider BEFORE you buy your hardware.

An ideal solution would be able to
- work when the machine has hung (usually means a separate IP for admin, thru a single ethernet port)
- access/change bios
- access to temperatures/fan speeds while OS is running
- mount CDs for reinstalling an OS, even remotely

IBM, Sun & Dell have rather expensive solutions in their servers. Admin is via a remote serial console.

For the past couple years, I've been building servers for my company, and it's really turned into more of a pain than that money is worth (not to mention we've probably lost more money than we saved due to some downtime). My company is really stingy with money (less so now than they were before), and wouldnt give me the money I needed to buy any prebuilt systems, so I would piece together machines. In the end this turned out not to be the best idea due to a few factors.
1) Shipping problems would always come up where they wouldn't send out items until like a week after I bought them.
2) I recieved quite a few parts that were DOA
3) Putting some of the 1U's together was a huge pain, especially trying to find 1U cpu fans for the faster processors
4) hardware would fail, and due to it being about a year and a half since I built the machine, and hardware changing so rapidly recently, It would be hard to find a local store with replacement parts.
I think out of the 9 rackmount servers I built, I've had 5 motherboards fail, 6 sticks of ram, and a power supply (not counting the stuff that was DOA). Most of the failed hardware I would say happened within the first week of the server being online, so I dont know if that should be considered DOA too, but i'm not including it. Anyways I've recently been buying Supermicro servers and couldn't be happier. All the machines I've got from them, and that my friend who recommended them has got from them have been running great, and they're much cheaper than IBM or any other big manufacturer (though if I had the funds I'd rather buy IBM). Anyways, before I quit building my own machines I found a great place to buy rackmount cases which is rackmountmaster. All the cases I've got from them are laid out great, have good air ventelation, and aren't rediculously priced like so many other rackmount manufacturers.

I got mine from http://www.newegg.com/ for around $150 when you get shipping and tax involved, and they work good.

With 400GB SATA disks around the corner, nearly 6TB of data in 3U is possible.

SuperMicro SC932T-R760 with triple-redundant power supply and hot swap fans.

A 14-disk (two channel) SCSI version is also available.

You should really try out some of the SATA RAID solutions. They offer the best bang for your buck. I know that the next time I have a few hundred dollars lying around I'm going to go with a 1 TB RAID 5 with some WD SATA 250s. Also, Supermicro makes a very nice 5 drive chassis that only takes up 3 - 5.25" bays. This is the ideal home setup in my mind.

You should really try out some of the SATA RAID solutions. They offer the best bang for your buck. I know that the next time I have a few hundred dollars lying around I'm going to go with a 1 TB RAID 5 with some WD SATA 250s. Also, Supermicro makes a very nice 5 drive chassis that only takes up 3 - 5.25" bays. This is the ideal home setup in my mind.

And no, I don't work for them. Just a happy customer.

Supermicro makes super server barebone systems that are very nice. I've got a bunch here at home and at work.

Check it out here.

Building your own 1u box is a pain. Just try to find motherboards, power supplies and 1u cases that all work together. You'll find it is not easy. Intel makes some boards and cases that go well together, but they are pricey. A super server from supermicro includes:

Case (1u, 2u, 3u,....and up)
Power Supply (no reliablity problems so far)
Floppy and CD-rom/DVD drives
and
Motherboard that fits the case correctly.

All you need to do is add CPU(s), memory and hard drives. This way you can choose how much "horsepower" you need with out all the system integration hassles.

Good luck.
-ted

Granted, addressing that much memory must be done through a little game which adds translation cycles to the latency of all of that RAM. However, it doesn't have to be 64 bit to address more than 4 GB of RAM. The quantity is certainly enough for what you describe, and is generally on par with what I've seen the Opteron offer.

The Xeon, however, is going to have to do some work to support much more RAM than that. Luckily, it looks like that support is coming. Which is good since it should add some more competition.

Granted, addressing that much memory must be done through a little game which adds translation cycles to the latency of all of that RAM. However, it doesn't have to be 64 bit to address more than 4 GB of RAM. The quantity is certainly enough for what you describe, and is generally on par with what I've seen the Opteron offer.

The Xeon, however, is going to have to do some work to support much more RAM than that. Luckily, it looks like that support is coming. Which is good since it should add some more competition.

Vipower makes a ton of products that look like they might suit your needs. Keeping the drives in the little "mobile rack" caddies is probably a good idea, since exposed circuit boards left laying around the office are just asking for Ms. Mohair Sweater to come touch them.

As has been pointed out, it's possible to stop IDE devices and disconnect them with the machine on, but this is like playing Russian Roulette. In a spec designed for hot swap, the ground and power connections mate first and disconnect last, to keep the signal connections from carrying any initial current surges. IDE/ATA has no such provision, and hot matings/removals might damage your drive and/or controller. (The same goes for PS/2 keyboards and mice! Just because it works the first 100 times doesn't mean you won't fry your motherboard the 101st time, when the connector goes in a bit sideways.)

Serial ATA on the other hand, does allow for hot swapping, and USB is obviously designed for it. If you can get away with using exclusively SATA drives, check out some of the Supermicro drive racks. If you're building your own RAID system, these things are the way to go. I got a Supermicro server case second-hand and have been extremely impressed with the thoughtfulness of the design. Well-engineered products are rare and special, especially in this cheaper-sooner-cheaper industry.

The poster points out that he bought a mobo with 1 ISA slot for his old modem. Lets not forget that in automation, sometimes old is necessary.

I've been looking at hardware to build a terabyte sized file server for work and this is basic hardware I've been looking at (prices may not be the absolute best, I didn't shop around):

Western Digital 250GB SATA 8 MB Cache 7200 RPM $325.00 QTY 5 [Using RAID5 gets you close to 1TB]
Sub-total $1625

3Ware Escalade 8506-8 Serial ATA RAID
$490.00 QTY 1

SuperMicro SATA Mobile RackCSE-M35T1
$140 QTY:1

Total $2255+tax

The SuperMicro "RAID cage" holds 5 1" SATA drives in the space of 3 5.25" bays. I haven't found anything else that packs this many drives in such a small space. I'd be very interested to hear of people's experiences with this or other RAID cages.

If you have a big enough case, you could add this to your existing computer and be good to go. If the case isn't big enough, just get a bigger case and move the guts of the computer into it, like a hermit crab :)

Alternately, you could buy/build a cheap computer with 4 5.25" bays (need one for the optical drive) and use it as a file server. Budget about $500 for it if it's really dedicated to just serving files, you can skimp on the processor, video card and the little extras. I would choose Linux for the file server but Windows would probably be okay if your main OS is Windows (but then you have to buy a Windows license which skews the cost of the file server). You would probably want to spend a little extra and get a extra pair of gigabit Ethernet NICs, one for the server, one for your desktop PC.

The whole thing should be around $3000 which is not too shabby. It could be even cheaper if you used smaller drives but more of them.
5 250GB @$325 = $1625
6 200GB @$260 =$1560
8 160GB @$156 = $1248
The 8 drive option would probably require bigger (more expensive) case than the other two.

For my project I'm planning on getting a 7 bay case and the 3Ware Escalade 8506-12 so I can just buy 5 more drives and another RAID cage to move up to 2TB. Woo!

Supermicro

Thermaltake

For your information, a PC motherboard with similar specifications is available from supermicro. All these features are plausible.

Well, it's more than one ISA slot, but at least they're there...

SuperMicro has some astonishing cases ( one takes, with their 5-drive backplane-type things, S-ATA, 15 drives .. Stock!! )...

a pair of 3ware S-ATA cards in a dual-Athlon 'board ( cheapest AthlonMP chips you can get, you'd want 'em for unstoppability, rather than for blitz-performance, eh? ... or go for a pair of the slowest, coolest-running, AthlonXP's and short the correct bridges to MP 'em, though the kernel will run as "License Tainted" then... )...

A batch of Maxtor DiamondMax 9 S-ATA drives Model Numbers Table ( plus spares, and check for the prices you want on PriceWatch ), and one could even bolt one onto the side of the chassis ( drill holes for mounting it on, to get the magic 16-drives )

then use RAID-55

3- or 4-drives == 1 RAID5 unit ( within the 3ware card )
2 of those RAID5 units within each 3ware card
4 such units visible to the kernel, which can therefore give you kernel-raid5 on top of the 3ware RAID, so it'd take multiple-drive failure to kill the redundancy of the array.

( yeah, so it'd be a nuisance to have to hot-plug replace the one screwed onto the side-panel, but just arrange that only the other drives fail, right? Simple!
+: )

Be wary of the Enermax P/S's, though, yes they've got an 800w ( or thereabouts ), but I've read that when fully loaded, they don't supply the proper voltages ( Danish review was it? actual tests, they did, but I don't know if they were de-rating for the 'combined' rails that each are rated to a certain current, but their combined rating isn't the sum... all P/S's are done that way... )

Enermax's, though, are as nearly silent as makes-no-difference when loaded to 50%, though, so that's where I want 'em.

Gigabitten Ethernets would make your place cozier, too, rather than all that burningwire stuff....
( though I gather that there are firewire-to-ethernet translation devices 'round... )

PS... that thing-on-my-head ( in me self-portrait ) was supposed to be a Klutz Propeller Beanie, but it seems they don't make one, now, so now it's only a simulation of one, see...

http://supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/E7505/X 5DAL-TG2.htm

Sorry about that.

Perhaps the Drivebay fans in this case might be of use? :) Plus you can fit 6 of them :).. well, five I guess if you want a CD reader/writer or whatever for the host box

>> No, there are no DDR solutions for the Xeon yet.

Actually, yes, yes there are. Of course, they are registered ECC DDR solutions, but - they are DDR.

Behold, The SuperMicro P4DP6

There are a number of Intel E7500 based boards from Tyan and Supermicro. However, IMHO, the Rambus is a better option for the P4, which, after all, was designed for Rambus and takes a hit with SDRAM.

A case with a lock on it? - You'll have to crack into it without a metal cutting saw.. and thats gonna be noisy and take some time. (Not to mention leave a mark.) Note also that most manufacturers sell cases with BIOS level intrusion detection built in if you want it.

I applaud the efforts of junior MacGyvers, but if you really want to be secure, there are obviously better solutions.

Speaking of computer security, that reminds me of the time when the CS department at the University I went to got a bunch of brand new lab machines. They all had intrusion detection, which we CS dept. admins thought was pretty cool. We told the campuswide IT guys that we needed them secured in place. They dragged their feet on it. A month later, the CS department threw a Lan party in the same building (though not in the same room) and some enterprising students used it to cover the theft of 4 of the new lab machines. Security wire and cameras were in the room within a week. As far as I know the stolen computers were never recovered. We took small solace in the knowledge that the computer beeps at them and displays a brief annoyance message now before booting the OS. That is, as long as they opened the case and didn't flash the BIOS.

I haven't seen any references to my favorite case here, the Supermicro SC-750. So here's a few quick tidbits about it. I chose this one because I got tired of having to move cables around when I changed anything (video card, new drive, etc.) It's a full tower, with the bottom half for the motherboard, and upper half is reserved for drives. It's got 6 5.25 bays, and a mounting bracket for 2 3.5 hard drives, with a mount point for another 2 3.5 hard drives. The front pops off, then you loosen a screw, and swing the side open like a door. I love working on my system ever since I got it. It was kinda pricey at about $200, but they've come out with a new version (SC-760) and it can be found for close to $100 if you look.