Aperture

My cat’s behaving strange lately. He (yes, she’s a he) spends a lot of time sleeping on my computer or on top of the monitor.

Something is also wrong with my PC (the one with the cat on top), configured as a server since 2004. By some strange twist of faith, both of the RAID1 arrays dropped the volumes from the configured logical disks. This happened actually after a normal reboot required to complete a patching session.

Everything was working normally (including the 2 virtual servers configured on VMWare GSX) but frankly speaking I was feeling a little uncomfortable do to anything else on this PC except a full backup for all drives.

On closer inspection, I found that the embedded ICH7R controller switched to IDE mode. Setting it back to RAID meant rebuilding the logical drives, thus, total loss of data. Not an option. In the same time, part of capacitors from motherboard’s CPU voltage regulator were “cooked” and one of PSU’s fans is totally out of order causing extra heat inside the case. Does is worth the time spend to resuscitate 4 years old technology with what I still find on the market? It meant anyway new mobo, new 4GB of DDR2 memory (much less expensive than the DDR “oldies”). So, I said it’s time for an upgrade.

Let us do the math first. A good motherboard will cost you 200 EUR (with RAID and on-board video). A good CPU 200-250 (we all want quad cores today, don’t we?). Add the DDR2 memory (and since it is an upgrade, I thought about 8GB DDR2 800 for the system memory): 250 EUR. Power supply needs to be replaced also (another 150 EUR, I learned my lesson with cheap power supplies ). Total: about 850EUR.

That seems a lot of money if you talk about only motherboard, CPU, memory and a PSU (no case, no fancy video card, no hard drives, no optical units, no display) therefore I’ve decided to have a look at current offerings from entry level server market and since platform of choice is Intel, here are my picks:

• Motherboards: Tyan, Supermicro, Gigabyte and Intel: all dual Xeon 5000 series with on board video, based on Intel S5000V chipset with embedded RAID controller. My winner: Intel S5000VSASATAR. Reason: price / features. Price range 250-280 EUR).
• CPUs: That was simple. I had 2 choices. Dual or Quad core. You have here 2 different series 53xx and 54xx. My winner: Intel Xeon E5405, a 45nm 2GHz Quad core with 12 MB L2 cache running at 1333 MHz FSB and a TDP (total disipated power) of “only” 80W. Reason: Price / MHz (go above that and you’ll pay more than it can deliver. Price range: 140-160 EUR / CPU.
• Memory: Well, that was a challenge since all reviewed dual socket motherboards supported only the new DDR2 FB-DIMM (Fully buffered) with ECC configurations. My winner: Kinston KVR800D2D4F5/2GI, a 2GB DDR2-800 FB-DIMM ECC Dual-rank module. Price range: 120-140 EUR / module
• Case & PSU: Since the dual CPU motherboards are in 2 different flavors (CEB or E-ATX form factors), a new case was needed, because my old Thermaltake only supports ATX mobos. I’ve looked at Thermaltake, Akasa, Chenbro and Intel. My winner: Intel SC-5299E. Reason: price / included 550W server PSU, which spared me additional 150 EUR for a decent PSU with dual 12V 4-pin CPU power connectors. Price range: 150-170 EUR.

Doing the math again: 1160 EUR (yes, I’ve paid the cheapest possible). So, with a difference of ~ 310 EUR you can have your own little home made server… Is it worth it? If you consider buying one for gaming, hell no, if you want to benefit only from the raw processing power (eight 2 GHz cores) plus memory expansion up to 16GB (for Intel S5000VSA chipset) and hardware built-in virtualization functions, that’s the way to go.

Come to think about it, the entry level servers are becoming more and more accessible to SOHO market than 2 years or more ago. Three years ago, you would have paid at least double for equivalent technology available at that time.

Want also storage, through in another 250 EUR for a couple of good 300-500GB hard drives mounted in a RAID1 volume and voila: fully functional server for only ~ 1400 EUR. That’s about how much a gaming maniac (or PC enthusiast, how the hardware manufacturers euphemistically call them) will pay for a brand new gaming PC and this could be even more for SLI / CrossFire setups.

I will update you later on how did it all come together.

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