Though some odd and ironic twist of fate, I have managed to end up with a completely free dual core Opteron 246 CPU which is currently sitting on my desk. So, I figured that I may want to get a system to build around this chip, and since it is such a nice chip, I may as well just build my next rig around it (in theory at least, still haven't decided). I was browsing motherboards, and came across the Foxconn NF4PIK8AA-8EKRS (try saying that at least once fast!), which is very cool, but the SATA II ports seem to be split across two controllers, and neither support RAID5 (which would be a major plus if I had an 8 port SATA II RAID5 controller built into the mobo). Otherwise it would be nearly perfect What mobo would you guys reccomend for this chip?
Wait... 246 is dual core? I thought only 265, 270 and 275 (and 280 if it exists) were DC. Of the three single-940 boards at newegg, that one looks to be the best (the other two are under server boards). Seems pretty good. You might just consider raid10 if you need the redundancy - sure it's not as good for the space but if you can't get raid5 without an (expensive!) addin card, that would seem like a logical choice.
All Opterons require ECC registered memory; this is not uncommon in high end workstation and server platforms. Tyan makes arguably the best socket 940 boards on the market; see if you just cant find something with the Nforce Pro chipset; this will give you everything you need-and will let you run SLI. I guess that little trip turned out to be more fruitful than originally anticipated, eh Yo-DUH?
Yes, do a google search for Opteron 246, you will come up with both single and dual core models. This is a dual core. I don't want to be completely redundant, I just want to be able to have a little bit of a margin for drive failure without sacraficing too much space or speed. RAID5 is the perfect (IMO) compromise between redundancy, speed, and cost. Only one hdd in the array is really "wasted" on redundancy. Tyan unfortinately doesn't have anything that fits the bill better than Foxconn, they were one of the first I checked (though I rechecked due to your reccomendation). I emailed Foxconn and their board supports an 8 drive array, but not RAID5 (which sucks). And yes, the trip was a little more productive than anticipated. Not only did I come away with a new closet full of clothes, I got a CPU for my trouble as well
Sounds like a fun trip, where did you go? I'm not sure how much it is but I've had a little play with one of these , and it's pretty nice. Although I know you've only got the one processor, and it doesn't have RAID5 onboard, (does any board?). (mmm, I'd love to fully stock one of these dual-proc boards with a couple of dual core chips, lots of ram, some water cooling, nice graphics card. Would be a fun project...)
Went to the tour in Seattle, about a 4 hour drive (one way) from my place. Carpooled with a bunch of friends, and it was pretty cool. That ASUS board is pretty cool and all, but it lacks a few things as features go (such as dual x16 slots and so on). I've actually been going back and forth with the marketing department at Foxconn and in theory the Foxconn board I linked to earlier could do an 8 drive RAID, and in theory could support RAID5 (though it has not been certified at all). I'm going to keep hounding their marketing department and see what I can get out of it I'm having a hard enough time finding a single cpu model that does what I want, I can't imagine trying to find a decent dual cpu board I am going to at least be using one very nice nVidia graphics card, if not two. Watercooling is a maybe, depending on if I decide to throw the watercooling stuff I currently have on my current rig or wait for the opteron machine to take form. I am also unsure as to what case I'm going to use for it and how I would mod it, it would be quite a large (and heavy) rig and I am unsure the alu case I'd purchased several months ago for my next machine would be able to take it. Thanks for the suggestions guys! Keep them comming!
Have you looked at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813151148? You wouldn't have to use both sockets. With RAID 5 you really want a hardware implementation, not software, and there aren't any MBs out there that have that onboard. This Tyan board has PCI-X, which gives you a great range of RAID controllers to look at. It's the board I am looking at to do what you are thinking of doing.
Yeah, I've looked at those, but cost is kind of a concern for me as well. That motherboard costs around 2x as much as the ones I'm looking at, plus a SATA II RAID controller (a decent one) will run around $500 I could stick an extra 7800GTX in my system for that The Foxconn supports RAID across both chipsets (so you can have an 8 drive sata RAID), but they have yet to say they support RAID5. They are under the impression that nVidia's RAID5 is Intel only, which is the fact for the nForce 4 chipsets, not the Pro chipsets. If anyone has contacts within nVidia that could shed some light on this it would be appreciated (hint hint BigZ)
Well, durring by brief affair with "the dark side," I seem to have found out two things: Due to AMD making their chips backwards compatible with motherboards that are nearing 2 years in age, the motherboard market seems to be pretty darn dead as far as new stuff goes. At least with Intel you have to change the chipset every few chips (which seems to result in more features being introduced gradually). Also, I found out that this is indeed not a dual core, the dude running the program obviously didn't know what he was talking about. This is a 2 year old single core chip. So I am seriously considering selling this chip, it isn't worth switching to AMD for this peice of junk. I'm going to have to find a socket 940 mobo somewhere to make sure it isn't dual core, then it will likely go up for sale on this forum and a few others. Thanks for the suggestions and whatnot, but the darkside obviously is not for me
I am currently on vacation and didn't bring the chip with me, however I do have a very bad picture of the chip. osa246cepsal (the E may be an F, can't tell from the picture) caaic o423xpmw 1063254140271 (subject to the poor quality of the picture, of course) Assembled in Malaysia, Copyright AMD 2001... Etc. and so forth.
Well they weren't making dual-core chips in June '04, and the rest of the code is nowhere near. It's single-core.
