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KWSN - Sir Brian C....... Stop calling me 'she'
Joined: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 2032 Location: Judea, AD33, at a stoning with me mum.
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Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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JerWA wrote: | Wish someone made a Core2 dual processor motherboard. Been looking at the Xeon MBs and I dunno where those processors fall in terms of performance. I also dunno why they're in active and passive setups (would you want 2 actives, or one of both?). There are "affordable" Xeon quad cores, but I dunno where those processors fall in terms of grunt. Blah. |
Hi Jerwa,
this minefield is actually easier than you think.
the xeon 51xx series xeons (woodcrest) are pretty much like for like with the Core2 (conroes and allendales), when comparing Ghz & perfromance except the lower xeons have more L2 cache...
So a Xeon 5120 (1.86 ghz) is the same as a Core2 6300 with just a bigger cache so you can expect the same performance, but you can put 2 xeons together on the same mobo, the quad cores (clovertowns), are just two woodcrests on the same chip bolted together....
to explain all this
1 Core2 6300 = 1 Xeon 5120
2 Xeon 5120 = 1 Xeon E5320
so a dual Quad core 5320 = 4 Core2 6300 perfromance wise...
you can pretty much scale this up and down the range just look for the Ghz....
the real killer is the mobo's, PSU's and cases as most xeon boards are Extended ATX and so you need a specialist case. Both are more $$$ than a standard Core2 board and ATX case.... Even the ATX xeon boards you can get need a specialist PSU, as they need an extra 8 pin connector as well as the normal 24 and 4 pin connectors so the $$$$ adds up pretty quick when building your own 8 way mega shrubber. That's why I went down the Dell sc1430 route, that now appears to be biting me back......
As for the actives and passives, these are the heatsinks that come with the CPU in the retail box...
Active is a 1u heatsink witha Fan attached. Passive is a 2u that doesn't have a fan... Some cases have a large case fan and dusct the air over the CPU, so these need the passive heatsink, for a more standard case layout you can use the active heatsinks........ see the pictures at the bottom of this link
http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/products/server/processors/5100/feature/index.htm
hope this helps......
Ni _________________ Oh, it's blessed are the meek!, Well I'm glad they'll get something as they have a hell of a time!
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JerWA Prince
Joined: 01 Jan 2007 Posts: 1497 Location: WA, USA
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Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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That was actually quite informative, thank you. As for costs, I already knew that part. The lower end Xeon quads are much cheaper than the core2 quad though.
Xeon 5310 - $359/ea
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819117112
Much cheaper than a single $800+ Core2 Quad.
Cases aren't too bad, as long as you're shopping EATX instead of "Server" and keep it simple. Since I don't intend to run 8 drives or 2 PSUs, it's a non issue for me.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811200033
or maybe
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811112062
if you're feeling fancy and like the BTX setup. ($149-$279)
As for power supplies, the 8 pin CPU power connector is pretty standard now. Newegg doesn't even have an EATX PSU category, and all of the server PSUs are "U" format.
520w PSU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817139001 - $129
$997 for the Case, PSU, and 2 CPUs. Not cheap, granted. I don't know what RAM is native for those processors hehe, I'll check the MB later and see. Then my wanna be cheap shrubber of sorta kinda doom some of the time build can continue. I should probably move this to it's own thread haha. _________________
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KWSN - Sir Brian C....... Stop calling me 'she'
Joined: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 2032 Location: Judea, AD33, at a stoning with me mum.
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