Building a budget file/game server need mobo reccomendation.

[Da Fan Man]

Hey all,

I'm in the process of planning out and ordering the parts for a rackmount server that I will be using around the house for file storage as well as at lan parties as a game server.

I've already ordered a hardware IDE Raid card to do RAID 5 with and have a 4U Rackmount case on the way. I'm also considering putting in a SCSI controler and going with a 10k RPM Drive to boot and run games from when its acting as a game server.

I'm leaning towards going with an AMD Chip for the server, something like a 2000+ or possibly a Barton 2500+ but can't decide what board to get. I dont really need any raid controlers onboard or anything fancy, USB, Parallel, Serial, and LAN onboard would be good. Should I spring for a NF2 400 Ultra and go dual channel? or Would the 2000+ in a standard NF2 board be okay?

Alternativly the case I bought comes with a Tyan PIII board in it, so I could pop in a 1.2ghz PIII and 1 GB PC133...how would you say that would perform as opposed to the options above? I'm guessing going the AMD route would be better/faster.

I'm trying to keep costs down as much as I can, which is why I kind of lean towards the 2000+ and single channel mobo.

I'm looking for you're reccomendation of Mobo(specific) and Chip you would choose and why. Also include what you would do for ram if you have an opinion.

Thanks guys
-Matt

 

[HvyMtl]

erm, you have a raid card (brand? bus compatibility?) that does raid 5 plus a scsi controller (same questions) - One thing to think of is the thruput of the standard pci bus. One of those cards by itself will saturate the standard pci bus (133mb/sec) My suggestion is to look at the cards and see if they are 64 bit pci compatible and buy a motherboard with the 64 bit bus - There are several choices from p4, zeon, opteron and athlonMP. For price/performance I suggest a MP setup.
You also state "rack mount" well, how big a rack mount we talking? 1U, 2U, 4U? We need to know that so we can advise you in what board to get as some will work well in a 4U but wont fit in a 1U/2U...
so we need a bit more info...
Here is a good option:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-152&catalog=302&depa=1
Also MSI, Tyan, Asus, and Epox have good 760MPX chipset boards as well.
Now these will be a bit pricey.
My suggestion if you want to go single athlon XP and cheaper - go with the DFI lanparty as it has 4 sata ports and raid 0+1 capability - this will perform well and you dont have the bandwidth limitation of the old 33mhz/32 bit pci bus, and teh nforce 2 ultra 400 is the strongest chipset available for the XP.

 

[Da Fan Man]

Thanks for the response:

As for cards I have a Promise Supertrack66 on the way which will be for the Raid 5 storage array, and Will probably be ordering an LSI U160 SCSI controller card to run my boot drive.

Not too worried about the throughput as both will not really be needed at the same time, I'll either be transfering files or running games off the SCSI drives, but wont be using it to do both.

I would LOVE to go with a DualMP board w/ 64bit PCI but at the moment that's out of my price range. I dont need any fancy onboard Raid/SATA stuff as I wont be using any of that, I actually just got a good deal on an Abit NF7 2.0 board so I'll either get a 2000+ or a Barton 2500+ to put in it and either a stick of 512mb memory or if I can swing it a 1gb Dual Channel setup.

It will all be going in a 4U Case.

-Matt

 

[HvyMtl]

go 2500 as it overclocks well (mine is 11x200 or 3200+ range...)
and is cheap too...
I hope you dont access both cards at the same time - it would be the computer equivalent of sucking an elephant thru a straw...