GalwayLAN Server Specs

po0k

www.komplett.ie
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SKU 109639
MSI K7D Master-L Mainboard Socket A, MP
AMD760MPX, Dual, ATA100, ATX 266MHz FSB
Euro 191 Inc VAT

SKU 114111
Sapphire Radeon 7000 64MB DDR
AGP, ATI 7000, DVI, TV-Out, Retail
Euro 38.72 Inc VAT*

SKU 119922
Chieftec Matrix Big Tower w/door blue
Case w/360W MA-01BL-D P4 / AMD (UK)
Euro 113 Inc VAT

SKU 109593
Western Digital Caviar 120GB IDE 7200RPM
Special Edition 8MB cache WD1200JB
Eur 101 Inc VAT **

SKU 117468
Samsung CD-burner IDE 52x/24x/52x/16x
Bulk,SM-352BEAB ,Combo, Black design
Euro 71 Inc VAT

4x SKU 107185
EKL PAPST case fan 80x80x25mm
with 5,25" power plug
Euro 50.68 Inc VAT****

2x SKU 107186
EKL PAPST case fan 120x120x25mm
with 5,25" power plug
Euro 33.56 Inc VAT****

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www.overclockers.co.uk
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2x AMD Athlon "Thoroughbred" XP 2400+
(Socket A) OEM (CP-029-AM)
Euro 153 Inc VAT

2x Akasa AK824cu Copper Base CPU Cooler
Blue LED (Socket A) (HS-004-AK)
Euro 42.33 Inc VAT***

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www.crucial.com
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Crucial 1024Meg PC2100 ECC Reg DIMM
Euro 270 Inc VAT

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*Dunno if I'll get this card or not, might be able to just pop in my GF2 Pro.
The only reason I'm even considering it is because for Eur50 we can have two displays running off her, which could be useful for some of the stuff I'm planning....
** The 160Gig models are only €4 dearer now, but I'm not sure if the controller of the MSI board (AMD Chipset) will support drives over 127Gigs
*** Don't acutually know if these HSFs will fit snugly without any modification, or indeed, if they'll actually be able to cool the two 2Ghz cpus.
They should have Red/Blue/White/Green LEDs on them aswell.
**** might be getting 5 80mms and 1 120mm, or 5 80mms and 1 92mm isntead, depending on what I can do to the case.
Ideally I'd like them to be LED fans, but that's not terribly important right now.

Was thinking of getting some blue lit/UV reactive rounded cables aswell, but they can come later.

Anyways, total cost is now running at about Eur1070
By about June/July I hope to be able to buy an Adaptec/3Ware/LSI 4 or 8 channel RAID5 SATA card (probably going to be SATA1.0, maybe 2.0 though) and 4 160Gig 7200rpm 8meg cache drives (maybe 200Gig if they're cheap).
Which will cost about 600-700 Euro and give us at least a half-terrabyte of RAID5 storage for stuff.

Will also be popping one of those Adaptec 4-port 100Mbit cards on the 32-bit PCi bus (will take up 100MBytes of the 132MBytes available at full tilt), with the RAID5 card taking up the PCI64-bit/66Mhz bus.

po0k

I'm considering spraying the internal chassis to complement the blue case exterior.
I will be getting a pre-fabbed window-mod door for the case aswell at a later date.
The motherboard is Red, dunno what colour the graphics card is.
The LAN card will be standard green
The RAID card (when we get the money for it) will probably be green too.
The HSFs will be either copper or aluminium.

1) Anyone know if the top covers on Chieftec Matrix towers can be removed easily or are they rivetted on?

2) Which would look best:
Blue Exterior
Yellow interior
Blue LED fans on the cpus
Blue UV reactive rounded cables
UV reactive nail varnish/paint along the edges of the cards

Red Exterior
Yellow interior chassis
Blue LED fans on the cpus
Red UV reactive rounded cables
UV reactive nail varnish/paint along the edges of the cards

Blue Exterior
Red interior to match mobo
Blue LED fans on the cpus
Blue UV reactive rounded cables
UV reactive nail varnish/paint along the edges of the cards

some other colour combination.


Is it possible to to spraypaint expansion cards (Obviously removing HSFs and putting tape over the slugs etc) using standard acrylic/vinyl (car) spraypaints?

KinSlayer

why go for a single chip for the ram?
2 x 512 cas 2.5 costs about 150
2 x 512 cas 2 costs about 170

po0k

Originally posted by KinSlayer
why go for a single chip for the ram?
2 x 512 cas 2.5 costs about 150
2 x 512 cas 2 costs about 170

It has to be Reg ECC and the board has 4 slots, and will take up to 4Gigs of ram.
I'm doing it this way so that the upgrade potential is maximised.

Ronan|Raven

33 euro for case fan's oh the misapropiation of funds my lord!

No longer will skittles be the colour of the rainbow! Behold the galwaylan sunburst!

po0k

I'll be getting 2 Thermalright SLK900A heatsinks instead, so will have to get another 2 80 or 92mm case fans.

strat

nice specs but i think you'll need a pair of athlon MP's for it, unless you break out the soldering iron

po0k

Waaay ahead of you man
Scrape off a little bit of plastic coating over the L5 bridge pins, carefully plonk a bit of silver trace repair pen along the joint to connect em, leave it to dry and test the chips.
Could even unlock them / hard-set the multiplier.

Alternatively, I could do the socket pin mod instead, little bit fiddly, but easily reversible.

strat

good stuff

po0k

Now considering getting 1024meg of CAS2.5 PC2700 Corsair ECC Reg off komplett.ie for €284 instead of the crucial because:
a) I've heard bad reports about the crucial and the AMD 760MPX chipset
b) I can get PC2700 for cheap from komplett along with the other stuff instead of having to order from the states and having virtually no come-back and extra shipping costs.

Anyone want to let me pass ~a grand through their business account with komplett and Overclockers.co.uk just drop me a PM.

Considering putting an Antec TruPower 550W PSU on the order to Overclockers aswell...not sure though, could leave it till later.

Fobia

what happened to the terabyte harddrive?

po0k

That won't be bought for about 6 months, as currently there are no cards that support the features I want (Tagged Command Queuing, 8-channels, Hardware XOR engine, high-performance bug-free Linux support, array migration, native SATA support) so I'm going to have to wait till ~Sept 2004, which means by that time I should be able to start off with a Terrabyte and eventually get it up to 2TB of RAID5.

In the mean time I'm going to buy a second 120Gig hard drive.

po0k

Also, the server will look something like this (same case, mobo and roughly same hdd arrangement), but without the watercooling setup.

Fobia

fair jesus that's cool, I've GOT to learn how to build computers

electrofelix

Originally posted by SyxPak
Waaay ahead of you man
Scrape off a little bit of plastic coating over the L5 bridge pins, carefully plonk a bit of silver trace repair pen along the joint to connect em, leave it to dry and test the chips.
Could even unlock them / hard-set the multiplier.

Alternatively, I could do the socket pin mod instead, little bit fiddly, but easily reversible.

Last time I checked the "Thoroughbred" core could have its bridges connected using the old pencil trick which was valid with the original Athlon core, which can be removed with an eraser. Its just the Palmino core that required better conductive material for the connection due to its lower internal resistances.

Unless I'm mistaken?

Caliden

whats the progress on this syxpak?

is there any chance it will be ready for Glix?

po0k

There's a slim chance, but I've got my exams starting in 2 weeks, so the server might get built, but having something running on it might be stretching my time limit a bit

Asok

tbh just point me at stuff while im sleeping in various places around the house and i'll install/config what ever im able to.

tman

Originally posted by SyxPak
The motherboard is Red, dunno what colour the graphics card is.

should be green judging by the pics of sapphire radeons i've seen so far...
ugly looking cards tbh

po0k

Might not be getting that card after all

po0k

specs have been finalised, will hopefully be ordering shortly.

Komplett.ie shopping list

zAbbo

Let me know how this goes, might be building one myself soon, oh and a 5k budget

the pickles will eat me for sure

po0k

bastard

Get a big stomping RAID array for the drives anyways.
With €5K dual 64-bit Xeon or Opterons would be nice accessible, with a few gigs of ram and a nice gigE nic.

zAbbo

Alas, where to source such equipment. For a mission critical server which will be running 24/7 365days, Its quite hard to get the right kit, and even then to match prebuilt servers. While it would be huge hassle.

I`m hoping to put a decent enough server together for around 2.5k or less and free up assets for something else.

I havent looked into the Disk Array properly yet, but maybe sata raid with some of those Raptors.

po0k

Tbh, if you have 4+ 7200rpm sata drives in a hardware RAID5 or even 0+1 array you're going to get more I/O throughput than a GigE card can handle, so Raptors aint essential, unless the 5 year warranty appeals to you, in which case i'd still suggest the 7200rpm disks (with 3 year warranty) and buy a few as hot-swap/redundant online (as in allready running and in the machine, but not yet part of the array) replacements which would cut down on downtime compared to RMA'ing one of the raptors or give you far more capacity.
It depends what your needs are and what they will be 18months from now.

Also, as regards the actual RAID card, LSI hav e alovely 8-channel sata hardware RAID5 model coming out in June/July. You'd be looking at ~€500-600 ex-VAT, but it would be quality and expandable.

How soon do you need the machine built for?

zAbbo

We`re going down the Citrix/Terminal Services route at work, and its either buy a server at 4-5k which would be generic to our requirements, or I`ll build one for half that and get some 9800xt`s for the lads

Yeah I was looking at sata controllers on komplett, but all are 4 channel, apart from this

I reckon i`ll have to hold off to after exams(june time)

Good luck with yours tho, when is she due?

po0k

I'll have to wait a short while longer till I can purcahse it, but it will be ready for the next LAN after GL9.

RE: Purchasing the RAID card.
Can you get stuff ex-VAT?
Look at some of the suppliers around Ireland, or try Europe.

3Ware, Adaptec or LSI are good makes, all are bootable afaik and all have linux/UNIX drivers.

Stay the hell away from Promise, unless you want your array running slower than a PIO2 540meg hdd.

zAbbo

We buy it plus Vat and claim it back(if bought in Ireland)

I got some quotes for Servers, which are coming in at the 4-5k range, this is from the software vendor whose applications we need to run, so im sorta tied as to what they reccommend. But im gonna put together a spec, show them and see what happens

As per this thread , we are being advised to purchase this

Which i think is overkill, and if i can cut that price in half(we got quoted £2917 STG / €4,335.46 EUR) it would be great.

Also backup is an issue, I`d rather stay away from tapes, possibly an externel HDD

po0k

RAID50

po0k

http://www.compsoc.nuigalway.ie/~syxpak/galwaylan/shopping%20list.html
This what we're looking at right now.
-Minus the motherboard and the fans.
The graphics card (backup frame buffer really) is a pos nVidia GF2 MX 200 32meg.
Doesn't need a fan

The fans will probably have to be bought off Farnell or Radionics, unless Peats are willing to cut a deal

Fobia

Nice, is that speed processor really necessary tho?

Asok

Yes.

po0k

Yes.
In fact, faster would be nicer.
And another Gig or 3 of ram wouldn't hurt either.
Do you realise the resources running 8 Q3 servers for the first round of a tourny uses up on a single machine?
Not to mention FTP access, running other servers concurrently (BF/DC, CS, UT etc.).

Caliden

thats going to be running the CS server as well?
would you mind if i brought my other comp again for hosting? was dead handy

elexes

would this machine allow uploads so that ppl that have the most wanted linux iso's could leave them there and have ppl leach them from the server ? naturaly there would have to be a limit to the speeds ?

po0k

Caliden: It would be running whatever people want it to run. If you have your own server you're more than welcome to bring it along, network and power access permitting.
Elexes: Maybe

Caliden

how many network slots are going to be available?

po0k

at the moment (3x 24 ports) - (2x2 trunk pairs) = 64
Servers:
SMP - ordering bulk of the stuff just now, ordering the mobo and optical drive tomorrow
Xeon
Blackle
Wireless Access Point
So that's 4 down straight away.
If you have a 4 or 8-port switch yourself feel free.
I might be able to blag a nice switch off work for the weekend aswell though.

Caliden

ok nice 1, seems to be alot of interest in this, was talking to people in work i never knew were interested in computers and they heard off their friends friend friend about a lan in galway and just mentioned it during lunch one day.

things are looking good

po0k

I have plans for next year

Asok

Originally posted by SyxPak
I have plans for next year

I dont care how much you pay me im not getting into that outfit.

po0k

But you'd look fabulous daahling!

Fobia

Originally posted by SyxPak
Yes.
In fact, faster would be nicer.
And another Gig or 3 of ram wouldn't hurt either.
Do you realise the resources running 8 Q3 servers for the first round of a tourny uses up on a single machine?
Not to mention FTP access, running other servers concurrently (BF/DC, CS, UT etc.).

Running 8 servers at once for a q3 tourni, why, that's like running 8 qw servers on a single standard machine on different ports....HMM. What's wrong with running 1 server on 8 different good ram/processor/card machines?

Or even not having every match playing at once, some people like to spectate as well as compete, just look at the big q3 tourni's, eurocup etc, they rarely have more then 1 match going at a time.

Just an idea.........

Asok

/me bangs head against the wall why lord why!!! what child in a wheelchair did I flip off to deserve this!!!

Caliden

quetzal, we had 5 QW servers running off my 900mhz with 512ram without any bother, QW doesnt require as much ram as a proper game like Q3

po0k

Originally posted by Fobia
Running 8 servers at once for a q3 tourni, why, that's like running 8 qw servers on a single standard machine on different ports....HMM. What's wrong with running 1 server on 8 different good ram/processor/card machines?

Don't take this the wrong way, but where the fuck would we get "8 different good ram/processor/card machines" from?
I'm pretty sure my ass aint big enough to hold that many.
/me looks in mirror
Yeah, it deffinately aint that big.

Or even not having every match playing at once, some people like to spectate as well as compete, just look at the big q3 tourni's, eurocup etc, they rarely have more then 1 match going at a time.

Just an idea.........

Aye, but it would be 8 duels, and I was exaggerating a wee bit to prove a point.
The reason to have all 8 runing at once (whether on one machine or multiple) is so that we can get through the first round of a 32-player Q3 knockout tournament fast enough to actually finish the thing in 2-3 hours.
Not to mention running a few CS matches at the same time also....and then there's Far Cry, Unreal2K4, BF etc.

Asok; meself and JP just shat ourselves.
Apparently I've to clean it up.
Thanks a bunch.

po0k

Right so ted.

*just* confirmed the order for dabs.
Got the very very last K7D MasterL they had left, and this board is EoL now aswell so they won't be making any more.

Caliden

syxpak, any chance of painkiller comp at next lan? played a demo and looks pretty frickin cool, like an upgraded version of QW except with better gameplay graphics and a storyline

po0k

If enough people have the beast of a machine required to play it and it has a freely available Linux dedicated server, I'll run one, otherwise sort yerselves out

po0k

Right, I got the case, hdd, both CPUs, floppy drive and the gig of ram today.

Still sorting out shitty payment details with dabs.
They don't seem to want to accept Rory's credit card.