A motherboard like this one might work for you: http://supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/3200/X7SBL-LN2.cfm You can use ECC memory or not, and it takes standard C2D processors (ECC is a function of the north bridge, unlike the i7). It has an on-board video chip (though I don't know it) an...

I am actually planning on having some transcoding on the fly out to the PS3, so a bit of grunt is necessary. That's different. A low-end Athlon or C2D would be useful then. Connecting the server to a monitor and keyboard during boot won't be a problem, I have both nearby if necessary; I only refer ...

Personally I think this is *way* overkill. You just don't need much grunt for a file server unless you want it to do transcoding on the fly. I'd also do it a bit differently. There are a few things you should consider, like ECC memory and a means to connect to the computer during boot. ssh won't be ...

I've never seen a consumer CRT larger than 24". There may have been some bigger IBMs -- I don't recall -- but those were in the multiple thousands of dollars.

My 24" one cost $80, well-used of course, but fine otherwise.

Wide screen CRTs certainly do exist: I have one -- 24", runs at 1600x1024. It works fine at 1900x1200, but it is less clear. Yes, it uses a Sony tube, though it wears a Compaq label.

Try ImageMagick. It is the standard "Swiss Army Knife" of format conversions, and you do use it from the command line to process files in batches.

The issue with the TRUE is not its height (the Solo is fine for that) but rather tipping the MB with attached heatsink into the case and getting the back connectors aligned properly. It is rather snug.

The Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme fits just fine without any case modifications using the IP35 Pro in a Solo. It takes a bit of fiddling to get it in the case, but it does fit.

At that price, it is worth buying instead a factory second from the Antec web site and not having to deal with the infernal rebates. The seconds are nearly perfect, fwiw.

The Tyan EATX board is neat except the FB-DIMM part. While I've not worked with FB-DIMMS (yet) my understanding is that they run a bit hot and sometimes need some air flow. That's about it. The Supermicro 5100 board is *very* tempting although the inability to underclock will probably rule it out. ...

For the most part, they are dev servers for my web development clients... During client reviews, one or two VM's may get relatively busy for a few days... Main reason for upgrading is to get more memory and more cores so I don't have to shuffle which VM's are currently running. Interesting applicat...

The server is going to run a bunch of 24x7 VM's. Well, what do these VMs do? Will it be a bare-metal virtualization, or something higher-level? Do they run different OSs, or are they like BSD jails or Solaris zones? What OS? What is their expected load? I find that people often way overspecify serv...

Why do you wish to use an X38 or X48 for a server? These are desktop boards for overclockers; the system requirements for a good server are almost opposite. Why not go with one of the Intel 5x00 series chipsets? The server-oriented boards all have on-board video, some sort of remote management board...

Well I'll be d*mned. The X38 does indeed support ECC memory, though only with DDR2 memory (namely, not if you use DDR3 memory, if the board supports it). Not registered (or buffered), so no more than 4 slots, but still ECC is a big deal for me too. The following claim to support ECC memory; there ma...

I don't think either chipset supports ECC memory, or if it claims it does, that it is actually used. I'd *love* to be proven wrong, but ECC/Reg, more than 8GB, SAS, and that sort of stuff is why Intel wants you to buy Xeons (real real ones, not the re-badged Q6600).

I'd think we are looking at up to 1500 for hardware. That is plenty as long as you use existing monitors and are a bit areful with the disk drives. No "real" RAID, though. If we were to shell out for a single Velociraptor as the system disk (with external backup instead of RAID1) would it make a no...

If cost is a concern, what is the budget? If you are going with a 775 CPU, I'd stick with a P35 motherboard with an ICH9R southbridge. The -R means that you have an on-board RAID controller. You gain nothing from the X38 or X48 for these applications, and I've had much better results from Intel chip...

All the commodity motherboard mfgs have their issues. Gigabyte too has terrible support -- I sent their support email a request in early February, and I still have not heard back from them. They have lousy BIOS fan controls, and no ability to prevent memory reallocation in the BIOS. The latter is a ...

badkarma wrote:Not standard Windows? Which part are you talking about?

Only that it is not part of Windows OS as it is distributed, and nothing more. From your posts it also sounds recent. None of this is intended to be negative.

What's the latency with local drives? I thought they're usually in the several millisecond range. My network latency on my LAN is always <1ms. Well, you are adding Ethernet servicing on both ends of the transfer in addition to the data retrieval from the disk. That has to add latency; whether it is...

Not limited to *nix OS'es ether. Spent the last week getting an XP install booting via AoE (ATA over Ethernet). Using gigabit ethernet (without jumbo frames) my "drive" speeds are excellent, 50MBps which is not much slower than the actual drive in the AoE server. I figured that there should be a wa...

No local mass storage whatsoever is possible. In linux, that is... I already did it 5 years ago, my file server was in a storage room, and the PC in my room had _no_ _mass_ _storage_ _whatsoever_. No floppy, no optical, no flash, no hard drive, nothing! That's what I meant. It is not limited to Lin...

Just curious, but is no one considering a diskless computer that boots using PXE and load applications from a server? Latencies might be a bit of an issue, but Ethernet speeds are pretty good these days (even for swapping). I ran my Sun workstation like that back in the day (even with 10Base-T netwo...

Sure you can do all of that with Linux if you were so inclined but I want a lower maintenance solution. I agree, with one caveat. It is hard in Linux to have the equivalent of the ability to restore a backup when your hard drive crashes by inserting a single CD. I set up WHS server in the main hous...

Nstarz: You're in luck, I do have a Solo. I'll let you know how it goes (tomorrow, hopefully) and if it's a tight fit I'll take a few pictures. I don't expect it to cause any problems, though - to hit the cooling fan it would have to extend above the card rather than beneath it. It does fit fine, t...

With respect, again, is this a general characteristic of this PS? If I replace it through an RMA and get one that sounds the same, then I have not gained anything, have I? My wife cannot hear the whine, but I certainly do. It is certainly true that assessing subjective failings without measurements ...

It is still not clear to me if what I hear is to be expected with this power supply, or if it is defective. How do manufacturers treat these sorts of issues? I know that speaking with an Antec representative is authoritative, but now I am curious.

Consider m0n0wall. It is FreeBSD-based, and certainly handles ipv6. You won't even need your hard drive if you don't want to use it.

http://m0n0.ch/wall/

Another one is pfSense: http://pfsense.com/index.php?id=26 , which is a fork of m0n0wall.

The PS noise does indeed change with load: it decreases as load increases. The whine is present and can be noticed easily when the computer idles (and throttles down to 2GHz); fully loading all four cores with StressCPU eliminates the noise.

That's a new one for me.

Thanks for the reply. To your questions, the vibration does not stop when the PS is held firmly. It is mounted tightly (namely, no decoupling); I did tighten the screws earlier to see if loose mounting might be the issue. It was not. I noticed no change in noise with load, or at least very little. T...