Im pretty stoked, I'll get to reading and let you know what I find  
out. Now that the prices have dropped, the i7s look pretty swell. . .  
but I haven't read too much on them since before the summer.

Also, I managed to get some Sun Servers (three of em, big ones!) for  
our cluster project, anyone feel like helping me get them up to the lab?

enjoy the waning days of summer,
tucci

On Aug 18, 2009, at 12:30 PM, Andrew Guertin wrote:

> Hey guys. We should be thinking again about parts for the server  
> we're getting.
>
> I've been reading up on parts, and I think we should look for the  
> following:
>
> RAM:
> Probably 16GB.
> Type and speed look like they'll matter some, but not too horribly  
> much. DDR3 is currently ~$120 per 4GB compared to DDR2's ~$80, which  
> means it's probably at the price where it doesn't matter: we can  
> choose our processor/motherboard based on other things and get  
> whichever DDR version it requires.
>
> CPU:
> Prices on more recent processors have come down a lot over the  
> summer, some of the AMD Phenom II processors are under $200, and one  
> of the Intel Core i7s is under $300. I'm liking the looks of the  
> Phenom II X4 945, with its new release lowering the voltage from  
> 125W to 95W.
>
> Motherboard:
> Haven't really looked into this. One thing I'd like is to avoid  
> nvidia chipsets/graphics, because nvidia has horrible linux support.  
> Another thing it looks like we'll have to be wary of is ram support:  
> server ram, in addition to being slightly slower and much cheaper,  
> is usually of the "registered" or "fully buffered" type, and has  
> ECC. It seems that either some CPUs or some motherboards don't have  
> support for some of those ram types. Manufacturer's websites weren't  
> fully clear, finding out for sure will probably require phone calls  
> about specific boards.
>
> Hard drives:
> I think 4x750GB, raided to give 1.5TB of space was what we decided  
> on, and it still sounds good to me. Should run us around $300 for  
> these. Might be worth looking into particular brands; I haven't yet.
>
> PSU/Case/CD/DVD/other:
> Haven't thought about these.
>
> --Andrew