Hi both.
First I'll answer tibetan, and just after Joe.
First, the second message from
tibetan, as it covers a lot of the first message.
If money is an issue (and for most of is, it is one way or another), I would also focus on making each box, server or HTPC, as good as it needs to be, but no better.
That's really a good advice. Thanks for remembering me that. REally, it's too easy for me to go for the best possible on both, and then having to set loose and making one above my needs, while the other will be under it.
This is important. Over-building is a sure way to waste money. Supporting 8 threads today vs. 4 is wasting money unless you have rendering work that needs to be done yesterday. For any other situation, forget it.
Believe me, this is not the only kind of work that can make use of as many threads as possible.
Now, let's see: I really don't know what is an "iso box". I can LATER upgrade the "server-workstation" to watercooling, but not right now. Moreover, I think "quiet" and "silent" has different meanings in portuguese and english, what could have led me to an error: quiet can be a bit more of "as silent as possible, and not a noisy hell at least". Silent is the word that would usually means "no sound, absolutelly". I wanna make the system as possible, as anyone can expect that two cooler processors plus chipset cooler and the case ones will be as noisy as hell!
About the processors: Again, I want dual-socket cuase I wanna take as most as possible from the machines, if not now, in near future. A single socket machine will not go any further than 4 cores. Moreover: In reallity, things get a bit too expensive to get here. The soo beauty quad-core xeon of 250$ would get here at 500$ (yes, still dollars, still have the currency exchange over it) when intel was on its "bad days". In the good days now, it can easilly reach 650$. On the other hand, this leads to a whole bunch of used AMD processors available in the market at low price: we are talking about opterons 2xxx starting at 75$. You have to admit, great deal.
I really don't see any sense in PCI-X. Ok, they are good. They are nice. They are faster. But, also, they are backwards incompatible with usual PCI, as expected, but also has too few options, too few manufacturers, and too few wupport to my taste. At least, relativelly speaking.
I would rather go with PCI's and PCI-E's in this point.
About the HTPC: Still don't know where to move. I have on hands a P-IV 1GHz available here dispared, or I can get a 1.8GHz turion for 50$. Both systems are single core. I don't know how low I can make the P-IV get with undervolting and underclocking. The turions are good at energy saving, but don't know if the AM2 guys can get it lower than this guy. At this specific point, what would you suggest me? Pick a new, use the used, or pick the used? Remember, cost is and issue, and the prices you are considering for the new ones gets "twiced" here.
About disks: I'm expecting the HTPC would live quite well with one single 250-300 GB disk. The opteron system I'm expecting to use a mirroring of two 250GB-300GB SATAs. Of course, it's not as fast as any new crazzy scsi: but the kind of work I do concentrates itself really MOST of the time in cpu and memory: just a bit of disk access in comparison.
All the stuff you use for the extra slots is not going to have a place on this workstation. Its going to be alone, the most connected to a hub to divide the internet connection, but almost no "conversation" by all means with other machines. SATA raid is onboard or "linux made". scsi things are also "out of the pallete". This leads to2-3 PCI-E and 2-3 PCI would do the job for the years to come. The iscsi is also out because, again, the "server" is much more like a workstation than a server: this means, it can get on for long periods (maybe even a month, I've already did that using full two cores of my actual 4200+), but it's absolutelly NOT supposed to be 24/365.
ok, so zallman's will be down up. no problems with that.
Maybe we can move towards the thermalright guys, but that's another topic as thermalright guys are usually more expensive here than zalman (I mean, REALLY more expensive. Don't try to understand Brazil as we also can't.
). For example, antec don't sell cases here. I'll have to ask for them to be imported. 3 times the prices to get here is what I got so far.
This is why antec's solo once in a while looks more "nice" than the p190.
The HTPC: it's not going to be in the office (there I'll probably have the actual 4200+ plus the "server-workstation" guy. The HTPC is gonna be in the living room, only and specifically for entertainment uses: plyback music and movies, record movies and TV programming, horizontal cased and only remote controled (as expected). IF POSSIBLE: linux powered, gaming only 1% of time or less. So, one of the processors above should do the trick. The question will be *which* one.
Joe: thanks, any info from thermalright would help a lot.
Also, thanks for elucidating a bit the new processors thing: I'll hope a lot that bios atualization do most of the tricks from the chipsets. Also, of course anyone expects that the first stepping of barcellonas is going to have some issues. I expect, at least, that AMD clean them out much faster than intel is doing with their core2 ones.
The biggest question on thermalright 120s is: do they cool down such systems alone, or do them need on (slow pass) fan over each? In the first case, it will narrow the question to cost and if fit in the mobos together. In the second one, it will move towards out of the scene, as the zalmans will be better by all means due to tibetan's reponse on this topic.
Ronrem: you got a bit more of the "server-workstation" application in your last message.
One extra question I just reminded: IF cnps: 9700 or 9500?
