Workstation motherboard

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thenickmix

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Jul 21, 2005
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Ok, I'm putting together a pretty insane desktop workstation/server setup. It needs to be dual socket 771, I'm putting in 2 Xeon 5365's (8x3GHz cores woo!), 16GB of RAM (8x2GB sticks), and am planning on running 8 Maxtor Atlas 15K II 147GB 15,000RPM SAS drives in a RAID 0+1 setup, but will probably have a dedicated PCI-X controller card for better performance.

Here is where it gets tricky. I want to run 6 displays simultaneously. From left to right on the desktop it will be a 20" widescreen in portrait mode, 30" widescreen, another 20" widescreen in portrait mode, 20" regular LCD, and then a 23" apple widescreen, and then behind these mounted above them on the wall will be a 37" HDTV.

I'm thinking I want 3 video cards. I definitely want a Quadro FX 4600 for rendering purposes. The 30 inch widescreen and the 4:3 20 incher would be connected to this. Then maybe a Quadro NVS 440 for the two 20 inchers in portrait mode and the 37" on the wall. Finally, I want to do some light gaming now and then on this thing, so I was thinking one of the new 8800 GT's powering the 23" apple would satisfy my WoW addiction.

Is there such a motherboard out there that has dual xeon sockets, 8 RAM slots, at least one PCI-X slot, and THREE PCIe slots? The quadro fx and 8800 gt are both 16x cards, and the NVS can be had in a x1 form.

Is there a decent motherboard out there that satisfies this? Or am I going about driving all the displays in a stupid manner (this is the first workstation I will have ever built). Any comments appreciated!
 
Wowza - that's a helluva build. I'm not sure on aftermarket boards but the Dell Precision 690 supports the config you are looking for except 1 - it's only has 4 internal 3.5" drive bays. You would need to get an external drive array chassis to use 8 drives. On top of the the 690 is a massive professional workstation. But - in the 1KW version with the graphics riser it comes with a 1000W power supply, 16 DIMM slots, 1 PCIe x8 slot (wired as x4), 2 PCIe x16 slots, 2 PCI-X 64Bit 100Mhz slots. The only other gotcha is dell currently only offers it with dual x5355 2.66 Xeons although you could always upgrade the processors yourself. The machine does support up to 64GB of ram which is also nice and supports both SAS and SATA hard drives.

In the end you do however get a bullet proof reliable machine with a best in the business trues business class warranty but it will be expensive. The other plus side is building a machine of this caliber takes quite a bit, going with an off the shelf solution solves a lot of issues as this has been very specifically designed to handle the heat loads, compatibility issues, etc. I have the one in my sig and a couple of other members around here have one as well. They are some badass hotrod rigs for sure.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/precn_690?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04

Edit - on the configuration page on Dells site they now do offer the x5365 processors as well but they sure do jack the price a LOT. Once you add in the extra RAM and everything you are going to be pushing over ten grand as you have it spec'd. On mine I did a lots of the upgrades myself and ended up a little under 3 grand for everything.
 
thenickmix said:
Ok, I'm putting together a pretty insane desktop workstation/server setup. It needs to be dual socket 771, I'm putting in 2 Xeon 5365's (8x3GHz cores woo!), 16GB of RAM (8x2GB sticks), and am planning on running 8 Maxtor Atlas 15K II 147GB 15,000RPM SAS drives in a RAID 0+1 setup, but will probably have a dedicated PCI-X controller card for better performance.

Here is where it gets tricky. I want to run 6 displays simultaneously.
Click to expand...

Can't.
Won't put up with ignorant arguments from the kiddies.
Can't run 6 3D accelerated displays with Xeons. Or 3 PCIe cards. Period. Not up for debate.

Your options for that are as follows;
Iwill H8502 with two 3DLabs REALiZM 800's and a REALiZM 500.

Quadros will not accelerate multiple displays except 3450 multi-display and 4500X2. FireMV multi-displays are 2D accel only. And no current Xeon board has 3x 16x slots.
 
The only problem you will have is with the FB memory it is awful slow. Yes I know because I am running Vista on a rig just like you want to build. I would wait 3 more months and hopefully there will be something not running FB memory.

Good luck Oh FB memory only scores a 4.4 on Vista.:eek:
 
Well after searching for hours, I'm wondering if this will work. I noticed Intel just announced their new 45nm procs, so I may wait for the Xeon flavor of those to come out. Of course, Tyan was quick to show its new line-up of compatible motherboards:
http://www.tyan.com/tempest/tempest_s5397.htm

Now,this would require some case modification and a slightly gerry-rigged setup, which I'm all for doing if I can get this to work. I would use one of these:
http://www.mypccase.com/1uricawcapcx.html
And plug that sucker into the x16 slot on the motherboard closest to the RAM slots, and plug the Quadro 4600 into this riser. It will then be "floating" in front of all of the other expansion cards. I'll just have to cut some holes in the back of the case to allow me to plug the monitor in, and fashion a bracket of some sort to keep it from dangling. This will prevent the x8 slot in between the two x16 slots from being covered up, allowing me to plug the NVS 440 into the x8 slot. The next x16 slot can take the 8800 GT, and that leaves room for the PCI-X slot to take a high-end RAID controller card. As far as configuring the displays, I'll plug just the 23" Apple into the 8800 GT, just the 30" Dell into the Quadro, and the other 4 into the NVS 440.

Logistically it seems possible, the only problem I would see myself running into would be getting 3 very different graphics cards to play nice in windows. The fact that they are all nVidia probably doesn't help.
 
that riser idea isn't gonna work. you need to get a different motherboard entirely as AreEss already pointed out. the problem isn't amount of slots it's the issue of

a.) running nvidia cards in 3x non sli accellerated 3d mode
b.) trying to do so on an intel chipset with xeons.

you are better off just doing sli on one pair of quadros and getting the matrox triple/dual head to go. will work with less headaches and spread the displays out the way you want.

or wait a bit for the ati 3870 and do quad crossfire into the matrox triple head
 
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