XP -> MP server?

po0k

I'm planning on building a server for GalwayLAN in the next 6 months.
Will be running (simultaneously):
Under Debian: 1 or more Q3, QW and CS servers, FTPd, IRCd, DHCPd and DNS
(though the last three may be farmed off to an always on P200@225 box)
Under Win2k/2003 Server: Battlefield server (upto ~40 players - mem requirements?)

Specs:
CPUs: Dual AMD XP2500+ 333MHz FSB Bartons (1.8GHZ) modded to MP (~€180 from komplett)*
solid quiet HSF reccomendations? Probably won't be overclocking this one.
Motherboard: No idea, suggestions?*
Need 333Mhz FSB, RAID0,1, 1+0 UDMA100 support, scsi a bonus - what Rating CPU required?
RAM: 2 512MB sticks of PC3200 (~€230 from shop4memory)
Optical: Samsung CD-burner IDE 52x/24x/52x (~45 from Komplett)
Storage:
-[System] 10Krpm UW160 SCSI 18Gig*
-[Mass] 2x 120Gig 7200rpm 8meg cache UDMA100/133 WD/Seagate/Maxtor in RAID0 array
LAN: x2 3Com 905C-TX-Ms (~€65)
Graphics: Sapphire Radeon 7500 64MB DDR, DVI (dualhead), TV-out (~€55 from komplett)
Enclosure: Antec SLK1600 Midi Tower 3x5.25" 5x3.5" 300W PSU (~€67 from elara)


*Dunno if dual 1.8 is overkill, dunno what the price of the motherboard would be.
Can you still do the L5 bridge XP->MP mod on Bartons? Are there any MP motherboards that run at 266MHz FSB?
Is 300W PSU enough for 2-3 Hdds and dual XPs?
Was looking at dual 1.2Gig P3s, but they seem to br priced higher than what I can afford.
The system drive poses an interesting problem.
One one hand, I want something really reliable and high-performance for system and the servers,
with storage being a nice compromise between reliability (mass storage,
looking for a quiet and stable hard drive manufacturer, not blistering unreliable speed)
and performance (RAID0), on the other, excluding the SCSI+Controller, mainboard and HSFs,
I'm looking at €800 for all the above.

This machine needs to be confidently powerful, on a budget.

OfflerCrocGod

You need more then a 300W PSU to be certain your machine will be stable apart from that it seems fine dont know about the XP -> MP mod I dont see AMD letting it go for so long......

electrofelix

Originally posted by SyxPak
I'm planning on building a server for GalwayLAN in the next 6 months.
Will be running (simultaneously):
Under Debian: 1 or more Q3, QW and CS servers, FTPd, IRCd, DHCPd and DNS
(though the last three may be farmed off to an always on P200@225 box)
Under Win2k/2003 Server: Battlefield server (upto ~40 players - mem requirements?)

RAM: 2 512MB sticks of PC3200 (~€230 from shop4memory)

Reconsider getting PC3200 Ram if you don't intend on overclocking the server, unless you plan on jumping to the 400FSB Bartons. Last time I checked the performance benifits of running DDR 400MHz Ram into a 333MHz FSB were neglible over using DDR 333MHz (PC2700). I don't think the extra cost will be worth it for the server.

po0k

the extra cost is about €20 for the two sticks.

Do ye know if the MP motherboards support 333Mhz FSB?

electrofelix

had a look around, unless some of the more common ones support overclocking to 333MHz I think that one supporting the 333MHz FSB MP's are very rare.

Guess your going to have to contact AMD to ask if they know of any motherboards that support the new FSB333MHz MP's since I think all Dual AMD CPU Mobo's use a AMD chipset to support the Dual CPU.

po0k

Feck it, might have to consider 266Mhz so....and maybe over clock as close to 333 as I can with PC2700 ram and a barton. Will totally depend on the motherboard chipset though...

Matt Simis built one of these sorts of machines a while back with watercooling.

You around Matt?

Matt Simis

I am now..

Yeah, you are pretty much screwed on the FSB front, 266MHz is the max any board officially supports. The only chipset available is the AMD MPX (its around two years old). Its a functional chipset, but dont expect any modern niceites (SATA, USB2 onboard etc). One particular MPX board (IWill I think) was renowned for its ability to run at 166MHz FSB, but remember at this speed you would be overclocking AGP, PCI etc.

Ram speeds are limited to either 200 or 266 MHz (PC1600-2100), unless you overclock. For a server, Id recommend ECC ram (unless it works out much more expensive, it shouldnt), min 1GB.

Running that many servers at once will seriously eat up RAM, luckily if you use ECC ram you will have no problems filling 4 Dimm slots should you want to expand later. Unless there are issues with your choice of *nix and SATA contollers, Id recommend a 64Bit (or 66MHz) Sata controller in one of the motherboard 64Bit 66MHz PCI slots (most MPX boards feature 2). Id also recommend a beefier PSU, I used an Antec TruPower 480W last time (the temp 350W really struggled).

The CPU choice is where it gets real messy:
Bartons can be modded to MPs, but there are oddities with newer Bartons in several regards that may prove problematic. Id recommend checking this out on the forums of www.2cpu.com . However, even if you succesfully mod them, you are gonna be a bit messed up on the FSB front. The 2500 Bartons will run 1420MHz (11x133). Some boards allow the multiplier to be set, and in those case setting the multiplier lower results in access to (required) 12 and 13x multipliers taking effect. Otherwise you can hard mod the multi, forcing the cpu to a new one (permanently or wire wrapped, a temp measure). Alternatively, take your chances with increasing the FSB!


Matt

PS: Dont touch dual P3s. I looked at them last time, and while reasonably fast they are way overpriced. You only real options are XP-MP, real MPs or bite the bullet and move up to Xeons. Perhaps a secondhand Xeon might fit the bill either?

po0k

The ECC ram isn't really neccessary, this isn't going to be used intensively for more than 3-4days every 2-3 months, and data integrity isn't crucial, no-one's business is depending on it, unless there is a problem with having more than 2gigs of unreg'd ram?
Trying to track down a site that still sells the 760MP boards, not having any luck.
I had considered the multiplier problem, might just get T-Breds instead, get as cheap a box as posisble, maybe get an athlon64/FX/single opteron system later on for the heavier load apps.

Can't really go over a grand on this, and still want to go dual for redundancy purposes, farming off seperate processes onto each cpu (ftpd + qw on one, q3 and cs on the other etc.)

Would I be better off going straight for a single cpu (Barton)system though and overclocking it a bit?

SATA isn't really a problem, unless I get a WD raptor, the performance difference between it and PATA isn't quite enough.
if the board has it and the controller is supported under debain then fair enough, might consider getting a raptor for system with 2x 120gig sata raid0 array for storage.

po0k

2x AMD Athlon XP2400+ 2.0 GHz 266 MHz bus (~€170)
on Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW-P Dual MP Processors AMD Socket A Motherboards w/ Audio, RAID, & LAN, Support 4 DDR Memory, USB2.0 (~€200)

electrofelix

belive I saw a decent dual board with onboard scsi as an option.

see if either of the following boards have all you want.
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk7.html
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk7xpro_spec.html

both look nice

Matt Simis

PC2100 or 2700 ECC is cheaper than PC3200 Buffered in many instances. I use ECC on my standard desktop machine, there is usually only a 1-5% premium, well worth it IMO.

Ive used the MSI Board before and heard good things about the Iwill, but have nothing on the Gigabyte. I do know that MSI are still making BIOSes for their board, I doubt the rest are. Considering just how many servers and services you intend running, I think SMP is genuinely required.

Tyan boards, while excellent, are extremely expensive.


Matt

po0k

Yeah, I was looking at the thunderpro.

if it is available for about €180 (€220 with the scsi option) I'd definitely consider it.

266Mhz isn't a whole lot of a problem, especially with 2 2Ghz cpus under the hood.
So long as this machine is stable I'm not too worried, and Gbethernet would be nice, would mean I only need to get one extra NIC in that case (might even stump up to a 3com gig card).
The option of 64-bit PCI cards is also attractive

Matt Simis

What annoys me is that in the US, Newegg.com have dual Opteron boards for $200 and Opteron CPUs from $200. Those are tempting prices!



Matt

po0k

Having looked at PC2100 ECC memory prices on www.shop4memory.com (Irish site) I'm going to go with that.
The only question that remains is sourcing the mainboard.
If I buy 2 XP2400s off Komplett, I wonder if I can ba guaranteed they'll be from the same stepping?

Also, if I don't manage to get the XP->MP mod done, can XPs still run in SMP mode? I doubt it.
Where can I source the conductive paint and varnish?

po0k

Also, hard drive reccomendations:
120Gig 7200rpm ATA100 in RAID0 is the sweet-spot, I just want 2 drives that won't fail, and have a decent performance/heat&noise ratio.

I ahve 2 120gig WDs myself, wary of Maxtor and IBMs (though I've used a 30gig Maxtor for 3 years and an 80Gig Maxtor for ~1.5years without problems).
What's the word on Samsung drives?
I heard seagate were pretty quiet.

po0k

CHAINTECH 7KDD AMD Server Motherboard 762+768 ATX RETAIL
Specifications:
Socket: Dual AMD® Socket-A Athlon MP
Chipset: AMD® 762 + 768
Frontside Bus: 200/266MHz
Memory:(4) Register DDR SDRAM DIMMs (4GB)
IDE Bus: (2) Ultra DMA-66/100 connectors
IDE RAID: (2) Ultra DMA-100/133 connectors
Ports: 1xCOM,1xLPT,2xPS2,6xUSB2.0(Rear 2/Front 4) and Audio ports
Slots: 1xAGP Pro(2x/4x),Three 32-bit PCI,Two 64-bit/66MHz PCI
Onboard AC'97 CODEC
Onboard Raid: Promise PDC20265R IDE RAID controller


$181 (tax? Del?)

Seems to ahve everything, means I can put storage ont eh raid controller and use the 2 "ordinary" ide channels for the system disk and the CDR drive.

When they say "Registered" dimms, is that ECC or buffered, as I'm under the impression that these are two seperate types of ram aside from unregistered DDR SDRAM.

Matt Simis

Unfortuantely finding US suppliers willing to ship here and then the customs troubles warrants its own thread, so I wont comment on that.

In regards XP - MPs: The ones Ive tried were from different batches (months apart, different colour dies even!) and they had no problems, even overclocked. If you cannot do the mod then worst case you wrecked the cpus or best case, they work fine in single mode.

Get the Conductive ink from Maplin or Peats. Making XP-MPs it simpler than changing multipliers btw. If you do need to change multipliers, look up ways of doing it without the Ink or cutting of bridges (wire wrap).

Seagate HDDs probably fit you needs best (quiet, fast etc). To answer your memory question fully would require more time and research, but from the top of my head ECC and Registered and not synonymous. You can get unregistered ECC ram for instance. Usually ECC ram is registered as the performance hit from ECC doesnt get effected by adding the registering process.



Matt

po0k

an MP board + 2 XPs works out at just shy of 400, if I could source a dual opteron system for about 650euros it'd be worth the increase for future-proofing and the increased performance.

I reckon it's possbly to get a 36Gig 10K rpm U320 80-wire scsi sub-system for ~23oeuros including 64-bit PCI controller.

btw, just in case you know, what's the difference between 80-wire and 68-wire U320 scsi? the 80-wire LVD?

Matt Simis

80 Wire models are hot swapable (feature power on the cable too). Most controllers and cables are 68pin, meaning youll need to buy 80-68pin Adapters (around €15 a pop).

If you can get an Opteron for that price, go for it, but I think the current prices in Europe (from Komplett at least) are quite bad.



Matt

po0k

I won't actually have the cold hard cash for this till after the next lan (23rd-25th January), so hopefully by then yields will have gone up an I can pick up a pair of 242s or 244s for cheap.