Hi all, another mini project has landed itself on my doorstep, in the form of a Dell Precision 670 Workstation. Specs are as follows: Dual Xeon (Irwindale P4 era) 3.0 Ghz Single cores (socket 604) 2GB ECC memory Sata/IDE controllers Quadro FX540 on a PCI-E x16 (v1) rest is all arbitrary stuff. So what to do with it. Ultimately, the dual 3.0Ghz Xeons are rubbish, they're basically just 3.0Ghz single core 90nm pentium 4s with Hyperthreading. I had a quick look on Wikipedia yesterday, and it looks like this socket (604) can take pretty much anything up to and including 45nm yorkfield/dunnington quad and hexa-cores - but at a cost of £2500 (PER PROCESSOR) for the top 45nm Xeon Hexa core X7460 (clearly out of my range). Now i know ECC memory is expensive, so 2GB will do for now. What i need to consider is: What will i use this for? Currently two options: a file server (linux based) with DVB-T recording and torrent downloading for my flat (three of us and 6 computers). Will i need any extra horsepower or will the dual P4's do me? This would be a headless solution, probably tucked away in a cupboard or corner, and purely be remotely accessed. Second would be a kitchen-based gaming/all-rounder rig. Basically still be a fileserver, but maybe add a discrete GPU and make it possible to game on (not everything, perhaps GTA series, GRID, COD LAN, etc etc. My hosuemates Macbook Pro is also gameable, and this would allow my mate to join us without having ti bring his PC over, as well as give us a decent rig for the kitchen. What's there now is a Dell GX620 with Pentium D 820, 4GB DDR2 667 and a Radeon 2400XT low profile card, and that fulfils its aim, is very quiet etc etc. What needs upgrading? Looking on the web, a pair of decent 65nm Quad core Xeons on socket 604 is gonna cost me about £600 - is that really how much Xeon's cost? is there any other way? Perhaps if i left the hardware as-is and then merely did a cosmetic mod to fit it to a tidier case, or build it in to some furniture or something, not sure. Any suggestions more than welcome, i wanna do something wiht it, but if its gonna cost me more than a Nahalem rig to upgrade to effectively Xeon Class Q6600's then i'm clearly not gonna spend any money on it.
The socket may be able to take newer shinier Xeons but can the chipset? Would be worth double-checking that out before splashing out.
i'm beginning to think this is gonna cost an arm and a leg, and not some cheapy wooden leg, we're talking platinum plated top of the range leg. £2500 EACH for the X7460 Six core, ok, a bit excessive, but still, going back down in spec a bit, to E7350 (which by my understanding is equivolent to the G0 Q6600) they cost £1500 each. for that money i'm looking at a brand new CoreI7 build, so this is celarly gonna be a headless linux server, and i'm gonna stick with the D820 + HD2400XT for the kitchen rig.
Just because the plastic is the same doesn't mean the CPU is compatible. http://ark.intel.com/chipset.aspx?familyID=5541 These is a list of CPUs that should be compatible.
