4 socket g34 board... $150??

Is it compatible with any other chassis? And what about the power board?
 
well it is pretty cheap for what it is, you would have to make a custom case, looks like it uses the C6100 type power supplies so chances are the board only takes in 12VDC

I think it would be possible, but would be a challenge for sure
 
We use a lot of Dell servers at work and have found they are extremely picky about what memory you use with them. We gave up and started buying Dell RAM and that RAM is pricey.

I added my two 4Ps to super tower cases for folding usage by reinforcing the motherboard trays with additional aluminum plate rivoted to the case and drilling standoff holes. That leaves plenty of room for tall quiet CPU coolers. They are Supermicro and Tyan motherboards. Both support several different types of ram including desktop ram. I much prefer the towers to the typical server case to get more room for large quiet fans.

Take a look at wiredzone for server motherboards.
 
Yeah, i figured this was going to be a proprietary board... I cant decide how much i want to spend on this... G34 quad socket boards are $500 minimum plus 150$+ per cpu etc... Versus a quad socket F board maxed at 24 cores total... But far less money 500$ vs $2k+ for ebay specials.. however i get an obsolete platform that i may simply throw away a few years down the road with socket F and im already running a 12 core/16gig setup....

This is for media center streaming/video conversion etc so i may do this all on a physical 2008r2 setup...
 
Don't waste any money on socket F. Even a dual socket 1366 system would best it. Cheaper and far less power hungry.
 
Which is why im thinking of just biting the bullet and doing g34... Im just having a hard time explaining "$500+ motherboard" to myself.... Doesnt quite compute lol... $150-175 processors im fine with tho...
 
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Server boards and processors do well for continuous constant load. For inconsistent load and ultimate speed, I think you'd be better off with a desktop board with a fast disk subsystem and a faster intel hex core.

BTW, I have the following AMD server rigs at home.

4x-6172
4x-6272
2x-6180

Even the 2x-6180 seems slow for video processing compared to my Haswell running around 4.0 in Turbo. Yep, it has more cores, but most software doesn't efficiently use them.

If you really want more cores, consider a 2P board in a tower case with 6180s or equivalent. That will give you 24 faster cores in a cheaper motherboard.
 
Interesting.... In that case i may well put together a 2x haswell xeon server and run hyper-v 2012 through it. This is all mostly streaming video to extenders and encoding etc. The only reason i was considering opteron was that surplus cpus from old servers are cheap and i was thinking 4p boards would be reasonably priced.... Theyre not but thats not to say they will never be... Quad socket F boards are going for 50-100$ with heatsinks and four 6 core cpus is another 150-200 on top of that...but im sure power consumption is nuts.

Haswell would at least allow me to load the boat on RAM and still have plenty of cores to play with.

Id be going with hyper-v 2012 due to less restricting VM cpu core limitations.
 
I'm not sure why you are installing Hyper-v, but if you don't plan to install it on OS with tools in it or have a domain, it may be harder than you might expect to work with.
 
I'm using Hyper-V because of the core limitation in ESXi free version (8 core per VM)... I'd like for this thing to have access to as many cores as possible.

I may simply install all of this on physical hardware, though.

Also, i was under the impression that while hyper-v 2012 is hard to use on its own, you could connect a remote management app to it.
 
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You can remote manage if you have a Windows 8 system or Server 2012 or System Center. If you have all on the same domain it's easy, if not, it's not so easy. You might want to investigate a bit more. KVM on linux on the other hand, doesn't have core limitations either. If you want to stay with windows buy a Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V.
 
We use a lot of Dell servers at work and have found they are extremely picky about what memory you use with them. We gave up and started buying Dell RAM and that RAM is pricey.

I added my two 4Ps to super tower cases for folding usage by reinforcing the motherboard trays with additional aluminum plate rivoted to the case and drilling standoff holes. That leaves plenty of room for tall quiet CPU coolers. They are Supermicro and Tyan motherboards. Both support several different types of ram including desktop ram. I much prefer the towers to the typical server case to get more room for large quiet fans.

Take a look at wiredzone for server motherboards.

Crucial memory, never had an issue with any of my dell servers.
 
on a side note.... does anyone know if any overclockable 2P 1366 boards (for Xeon) were ever discovered?

I might want to do a 2P Xeon setup if I can find a board that can overclock (that isn't the evga SR2)
 
2P boards that are designed to overclock are as expensive as 4P boards. I believe Asus made a board as well.
 
And they are finicky with overclocking as well. Asus has a few WS boards with some overclocking settings and then there's the EVGA SR2 mobo. All of which support Xeon's.
 
Don't waste any money on socket F. Even a dual socket 1366 system would best it. Cheaper and far less power hungry.

I'm curious though so I will run some benches on my socket F box 8389 2.9ghz vs a dual 1366 box 5570 2.9ghz

so ran some benches on my two boxes

box 1: Sun X4170 2x X5570 Xeon (dual quad with HT 8 cores 16 threads)
Dhrystone 2.1 44063
Whetstone 15985
Eight queens problem 60852
Matrix operations 1831640
Number crunch 2801788
Floating point 165108

box 2: Sun X4600M2 8x 8389 opteron (32 cores)
Dhrystone 2.1 155113
Whetstone 31489
Eight queens problem 223995
Matrix operations 4450269
Number crunch 5063973
Floating point 409365

both of these were running server 2012 core
 
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Thats why im considering quad socket F boards filled with 6 core CPUs.. if i could get 8 socket i would... Socket F stuff is so cheap.

The only downside would be having to load up on old DDR2 ram which isnt going to be cheap.. and wont transfer to newer platforms whereas ddr3 will.
 
I think the Westmere models would fare a bit better. Not to mention you're looking at 6 core processors then instead of 4.
 
I think the Westmere models would fare a bit better. Not to mention you're looking at 6 core processors then instead of 4.

ya but those are still big $$$

I got that 8-way machine for like $300 shipped with the 64Gb ram and 8x dual cores, got 8x quad cores for like $150 or so

socket F may be far from the best but it's not useless
 
jeeze, $300 for that? are those things 6-core compatible?

48 core socket F ... would be a power hog, but damn..
 
Just realized you were using an 8 socket system instead of 4. That makes quite a difference (and my original statements were aimed at quad socket). With the amount of power that thing uses, you might as well just build 2 dual 1366 systems or just get a dual/quad G34 one (just not some proprietary Dell one unless it comes with the chassis).
 
115w chips x 8 is over 900w.... Peak... Though compare that to an overclocked GTX 780 with overclocked i7 etc playing battlefield 4 for 5 hours... Id be interested to see what kind of power that 8 cpu box consumes at idle, load etc..
 
Just realized you were using an 8 socket system instead of 4. That makes quite a difference (and my original statements were aimed at quad socket). With the amount of power that thing uses, you might as well just build 2 dual 1366 systems or just get a dual/quad G34 one (just not some proprietary Dell one unless it comes with the chassis).

it draws about 600~800W depending on load

my dual 1366 systems draw about 300W... so it's not much less efficient for the processing power

and the application it's running is not scalable past one box, so 2 boxes won't help me at all
 
Just realized surplus proliant boxes are cheap on ebay...

So 4x 6 core 5650 xeon (48 threads)
Vs 8 six core opterons socketF..
 
Just remember you're going to have to split those Xeons between two servers. Socket 1366 is only single/dual socket. I'd personally go for the Intel setup since you can pick up barebone servers for next to nothing on eBay.
 
Hp proliant dl580 four six core xeon x7460 @ 2.66ghz 64gb ram $350-400 +shipping.

Hp proliant 785 eight six-core opterons @ 2.4ghz 64 gb ram $600

Thinking the xeon 580 also... Cheaper initial cost, lower power, roughly the same performance (maybe better?)

edit: Just realized the 7460 is really old tech... so the proliant 785 would probably best it (but more money)
 
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Just remember you're going to have to split those Xeons between two servers. Socket 1366 is only single/dual socket. I'd personally go for the Intel setup since you can pick up barebone servers for next to nothing on eBay.

the problem is once you need something better than dual 1366 you either get raped with dual 2011 or you start looking at things like the sun I ended up with or the DL585 with quad hex opterons it replaced

very cheap and powerful, not as efficient than newer intel tech but the difference in price is huge
 
2P boards that are designed to overclock are as expensive as 4P boards. I believe Asus made a board as well.

they did but you could not over clock on it that was not available on an asus 2p board until the Z9PE
 
If you folks like 4P boards... you can find OEM Gateway SuperMicro H8QGi-F motherboards for just over $400 or so sometimes. This is what i am using for my project rig. The only real difference that i can tell... its flashed with the Gateway BIOS... stock... basically an older version of the SuperMicro BIOS customized for Gateway...
 
I'm using Hyper-V because of the core limitation in ESXi free version (8 core per VM)... I'd like for this thing to have access to as many cores as possible.

I may simply install all of this on physical hardware, though.

Also, i was under the impression that while hyper-v 2012 is hard to use on its own, you could connect a remote management app to it.

Use KVM or xenserver. no such silly limits like ESXi
 
Use KVM or xenserver. no such silly limits like ESXi

+1 for Xenserver. Easy install, easy management for Xencenter, perfect for a beginner. There is some good documentation around too, and it's really nice and easy to expand your cluster if you want.
 
Server boards and processors do well for continuous constant load. For inconsistent load and ultimate speed, I think you'd be better off with a desktop board with a fast disk subsystem and a faster intel hex core.

BTW, I have the following AMD server rigs at home.

4x-6172
4x-6272
2x-6180

Even the 2x-6180 seems slow for video processing compared to my Haswell running around 4.0 in Turbo. Yep, it has more cores, but most software doesn't efficiently use them.

If you really want more cores, consider a 2P board in a tower case with 6180s or equivalent. That will give you 24 faster cores in a cheaper motherboard.

jimh425 i know this is an old thread but i was wondering if it is possible to make a board like this function outside of the proprietary chassis?

Dell PowerEdge C6145 Server Quad Socket G34 AMD System Motherboard 40N24
 
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