NCCH-DL or X5DL8-GG for fileserver

[rogue_jedi]

Well, I dislike the tyan p3 board I have currently in my fileserver... lots of little quirks that make it pretty much a POS. Plus only 2 64-bit PCI slots (and no other expansion slots) makes it unsuited for what I want to do with it - hard to get 13 hard drives and gigE out of 2 slots. (2x supermicro 8 port sata cards and a dual port broadcom gigE nic) So, I'm looking at my options. I'm considering dual xeon boards, and these two caught my eye. The X5DL8 is a Serverworks Grand Champion-LE chipset board, with 6 pci-x slots and 4 pci-x buses and other good stuff like that. However, the only information about people actually using it (from google search) is that it is slow, as compared to other xeon boards.

The NCCH-DL is based on 875p and thus doesn't support registered memory. It also only has 2 pci-x slots, but it has standard PCI slots too and I could get away with that (I think).

I'm probably going to put a pair of 1.6LV xeons (or whatever I can get cheap) in this, as I don't need much power - but if I got the NCCH-DL I'd be tempted to put a 9700pro in it and get a kvm.

So, basically... has anyone actually used the X5DL8? Is it any good? I've heard good things about the NCCH-DL as a gaming system/workstation but nothing about it for a server. Are there any other recommendations for this application (available cheaply, preferably - I don't want to spend more than $200 on this, and the less I have to spend the better)

Thanks.

the black knight always triumphs!

 

[rayman2k2]

from what I understand, the 875 chipset can use registered memory. since it is a workstation chipset, I am pretty sure it can.


might be wrong though.

 

[movax]

If it's for a home fileserver box, look for a Athlon MP or P3 board with the features you need. No need to spend ~$1000 on a new mobo/procs...you can get a nice Areca 16-port AND a dual-P3 server off eBay in less than that amount.

 

[rogue_jedi]

Well, the only P3 board I see that fits what I need is $130 for buy-it-now - lost the auction for one like it with some other nice extras, or I wouldn't be asking this....

I'm not planning to buy anything new - both xeon boards are on ebay for less than $130 and the chips are cheap. I already have the disks and controllers. Athlon MP would be nice, but the boards are kind of iffy - also all the MP boards I'd consider are more than these xeon boards.

rayman2k2: The NCCH-DL lists this for memory support:
Dual Channel PC3200 ECC or Non-ECC unbuffered up to 4GB
so I don't think it does registered. The 875 is a desktop chipset adopted to dual-cpu use by asus and iwill (maybe a few other companies as well, but these are the ones that I know of)

I'm leaning towards the NCCH-DL simply because the box will be folding, but I'd like opinions too.

the black knight always triumphs!

EDIT: Never mind. The NCCH-DL has this little gem:

And it is thus here, at this juncture, of the i875 and the 6300ESB, that appears this maximum throughput of 266MB/s, toward the memory.

So basically, on the NCCH-DL, everything on the southbridge goes through that little 266mb/s link. So I'm not considering the NCCH-DL anymore... just gotta decide whether I want to go dual xeon or not now.