Just build a cool server at work....

[Dr. Ffreeze]

Hello All,

I just build a fun server here at work. I just got it built but I am not sure I will be able to do much benchmarking. We crunch some 1GB logic analyzer data files. We did a quick benchmark between a 3.2GB P4 vs. Dual Opteron 240. The parser is single threaded, but it still was about 40% faster on the Opteron than the P4. I will see how it works on a single Opteron (FX actually) but I can always just use one of our dual boards. The crunching seems to be CPU / memory bound (I suspect latency but I am not for sure) but we went ahead and got some decent hard drives because they are not much more expensive than the slower models.

Win 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (some WinXP 64 version when nonbeta)
Asus SK8N
Athlon FX 51
4GB DDR now (will be 16GB once it is all setup)
Maxtor 80GB 7200rpm 8MB Cache (OS drive)
Promise SX4000 Raid card 256MB cache hardware XOR
(4) WD 250GB 7200rpm 8MB Cache drives RAID 5 (data storage)
DVD Drive now (will be DVD Burner soonish)
Antec Plus1000 Series Case
Antec True430W (might be upgraded to Antec True 550?)
GeForce 2 MX200
(might install a 8GB solid state HD, not sure yet)

Anyway, it was fun to build. I can't believe there is 1 terabyte of hard dive space in there (only 700GB unique data, the other is parity data). I wish I had one of these at home. =)

Dr. Ffreeze

 

[Dr. Ffreeze]

Oh,

The Promise SX4000 RAID card looks very interesting for only $140 at www.newegg.com . It has hardware XOR support (I would not use that in a RAID 0 application but some might) and it has up to 256MB of cache. I wonder why it only supports 256MB? With a new BIOS update it now supports writeback. I would love to see a review comparing this controller (64MB, 128MB, and 256MB) in a RAID 0 array vs. a cheaper Promise RAID controller. If anyone finds such a review on the net, let me know.

Dr. Ffreeze

PS. Why the heck doesn't some IDE card controller company just make a full-sized IDE card that had 4 SDRAM (or DDR if 66MHz PCI or PCIExpress) slots? Cheap Promise (or Highpoint) RAID cards only cost $23. I would LOVE to stuff it full of memory for a budget solid state HD for my virtual memory. You can get your hands on 4GB modules now. (oh, those aren't that cheap) =P

 

[Saem]

Having a large chunk of memory as cache isn't necessarily the big deal. The idea is that it must be searched quickly otherwise the penalty will be too high. The more RAM would increase power draw, PCB cost and so on. Even after all that the performance gains are likely going to be minimal. There is probably longer traces involved as well, which means your signal has to travel farther, increasing latencies.

Is the RAID software -- save the parity checking?

 

[AAlcHemY]

Dont save on the PSU, most stability issues are from bad PSU's. 550W woud be good imo.