Building dual opteron system, advice/suggestions?

D

Drudenhaus

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 27, 2005
Messages
3,126
I'm going to be building a dual opteron (2x240s, they were megacheap) system and was wondering what you guys that have experience building dual systems would suggest for hardware to go along with it.

What I've been checking out:
Asus K8N-DL and it appears that the bios will let you OC (a little)
Patriot PC3200 2-3-2-5 ECC/Registered (might pick up 2 sets)
Sapphire X800GTO2 (if I can get one) or a Nvidia 6800LE (the one that can be modded for pipelines and whatnot)
SB Audigy 2 (got one lying around collecting dust)

I plan to have a 2 drives (probably going to put a swap bay in) for OS (1 with Gentoo linux and the other with Winblows) along with a 2 (RAID1) or 4 (RAID10) drives for mass storage. I'll have the Windows drive just in case I need to box another Shadowbane client or as a spare PC if I host a LAN (or maybe host a server with it at a LAN). Rest of the time I plan to be booted into Gentoo for F@H, reencoding DVDs, serving up MP3s/DVDs, SSHing into it from work, and other non gaming related things.

If at all possible I'd like to OC this system a bit just for fun so if you guys know of any good dual opteron boards (preferably with PCI-E), please let me know. Lastly, you guys think should I rackmount the rig or put it in a tower?

Comments, suggestions, and constructive criticism?
 
How is the memory subsystem of this board organized? I think that's the most important thing to consider when choosing an Opteron board.

Unfortunately, the manual doesn't provide a block diagram. But it looks like there's four DIMMs for one processor, an two DIMMs for the other.
 
mikeblas said:
How is the memory subsystem of this board organized? I think that's the most important thing to consider when choosing an Opteron board.

Unfortunately, the manual doesn't provide a block diagram. But it looks like there's four DIMMs for one processor, an two DIMMs for the other.
Click to expand...

Theres a block diagram in the manual here on page 111.

Appears 4 DIMMs are assigned to CPU1 and 2 to CPU2.
 
Volkum said:
Theres a block diagram in the manual here on page 111.

Appears 4 DIMMs are assigned to CPU1 and 2 to CPU2.
Click to expand...

Good find! I'd stay away from that.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Agreed. I'd go for a board that has 4 slots for each CPU.
Click to expand...

Would this matter if I don't plan to fill more than 4 slots (I doub't I'll put more than that in there ever)?
 
If you don't need more than 6 DIMM slots I don't see what the problem with this setup is.

You will want to ballance the memory between the CPU's as much as possible, but NUMA will still work with unballanced memory.

==>Lazn
 
Lazn_Work said:
If you don't need more than 6 DIMM slots I don't see what the problem with this setup is.

You will want to ballance the memory between the CPU's as much as possible, but NUMA will still work with unballanced memory.

==>Lazn
Click to expand...

I don't see any need to have more than 2gb of RAM which would be 4x512mb. If for some reason I needed more I could upgrade to 4x1gb which is more than I'd ever need.
 
What case you plan on using for this? I am thinkig about building a dual rig and want to use an Antec P180, but not sure if the board will fit.
 
Volkum said:
I don't see any need to have more than 2gb of RAM which would be 4x512mb. If for some reason I needed more I could upgrade to 4x1gb which is more than I'd ever need.
Click to expand...

Or just have 4x512 on one CPU and 2x1GB on the other. That should work fine and still be matched close enough.

==>Lazn
 
Spaceninja said:
What case you plan on using for this? I am thinkig about building a dual rig and want to use an Antec P180, but not sure if the board will fit.
Click to expand...

I'm thinking of rackmounting it. We scrap lots of old cases every month to keep down old inventory where I work so I could probably get one out of the dumpster NIB for free.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top