[AG-TECH]Question about motherboard models

Tom Oinn tmo at ebi.ac.uk
Fri Oct 21 05:58:18 CDT 2005


Christoph Willing wrote:
> 
> On 21/10/2005, at 7:52 AM, John Langkals wrote:
> 
>> Hello AG-Tech,
>>
>>
>>
>> What motherboard model drives your single node Access Grid?  What  
>> capture card, video, and audio cards you have found to be good  
>> performers?
>>
>>
>>
>> I have received reports from the OSC a board from Tyan Model: S2895  
>> Thunder K8WE has great promise:
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp? 
>> ProductCode=241864&affiliate=yahoo
> 
> 
> John,
> 
> I've been drooling over the prospect of having that mobo for a while  
> now, but haven't been in a position to build a system based on it.  Its 
> seems to have everything needed:

I have one of these boards in my workstation here, the intent being to 
set up a single node AG (we haven't yet due to network issues). I've 
been using it heavily for a while and it pretty much lives up to the 
hype, excellent board.

Configuration here is dual opteron 250, 4gb ram and currently a single 
gf6800 for graphics driving two dvi panels. I've run xp pro and xp 64 on 
it thus far - one thing to bear in mind is that the RAID built into the 
motherboard isn't recognized under any linux variant I've found so 
you'll probably want to add a disc controller if you're seriously 
hammering the IO, maybe allow another few hundred pounds (or equivalent) 
for a decent hardware RAID5 setup.

You'll need a decent sized case as well, this is a large motherboard. It 
just about fits in the YY021 cube case, I've managed to get the setup to 
be very quiet if not actually silent using this and some zalman coolers 
(the enormous copper ones with 120mm fans fit nicely and don't sound 
like jet engines).

Feel free to mail me if you need more specifics, the box cost something 
like 2000gbp all in and I don't imagine replacing it for a long while, 
maybe adding another graphics card at some point though.

Cheers,

Tom

nb there's more info, if rather well hidden, at http://www.k8we.com




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