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Clusters at Home?
dallastgi asks: "Sitting at my desk (a bargain second hand, due to lack of drawers) I looked at the side and realized I could build a nice little cluster, on either side of it. It already has wooden rails for rack mounts, holes in the back (from previous cables for computers) for cooling, and several computers in the cupboard. I just needs a door, power and cooling ducts. What is the best possible way to power 6+ motherboards, with a minimal amount of power-points and heat dissipation? What is the best way to cool those CPU's in minimal space? I'm sure many others on Slashdot have thought about their own clusters, so what are your recommendations on how to go about this?"
Mini-ITX Cluster has some useful info: http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/cluster/
But yeah.. what do you want the cluster for?
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If you have the sort of application which scales well across a parallel processing environment then even the rather underpowered Via Mini-Itx boards would do a good job.
If you had a cluster of Prescott P4's you could probably heat your house all winter.
Sitting at my desk (a bargain second hand, due to lack of drawers) I looked at the side and realized I could build a nice little cluster, on either side of it. It already has wooden rails for rack mounts, holes in the back (from previous cables for computers) for cooling, and several computers in the cupboard.
Never, ever, EVER put electronic parts anywhere in the general vicinity of wood - you're just asking for a conflagration if you do.
One of my best friends was in a professor in a big EE lab that had some benches and risers made of wood - and subsequently burned to the ground. Thereafter he spent several years of his life doing nothing but filling out millions of dollars worth of claims with insurance companies. Trust me - you do not want to go there.
[And he was one of the lucky ones - he got out unscathed.]