Franklin> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:39:37AM -0400, Clint Moyer wrote:
To the point, the original request was:
"I want to build a compute/file server. I do a lot of heavy duty software development using the Eclipse IDE and the Java and C++ Development tools. Also, I need to store a lot of data - mostly images."
Not especially high-end requirements, beyond perhaps CPU and memory.
Franklin> I responded mostly because of the recent talk about Franklin> being bewildered by the wide variety of hardware selections Franklin> and conversations like this help set/spread rules of thumb. Franklin> While the OP probably won't *need* a very high performance Franklin> anything (Eclipse is a big boy but it doesn't require top of Franklin> the line), the place to find it is in discrete components. Franklin> Which is why I ended with "Start with onboard components if Franklin> it doesn't cost you of your requirements (and doesn't cost Franklin> too much) and plan on using discrete components to get Franklin> higher performance at the start and as your later upgrade Franklin> path." I'll agree 100% here with Frank, start with onboard and then goto discrete if you need more performance. One thing to think about though is motherboard which put most of the PCIe lanes into one or possibly two slots, because they're targetting graphics (read games). For a more server oriented board, you'd like to have more slots with more lanes, but since various chipsets are limited to how many lanes they can support, it might make sense to have something like 4 1x slots, 2 4x slots 1 8x slot plus some PCI legacy slots. Of course you'll never find this type of board outside a server only type board, which typically costs lots of bucks. And of course you'll not fit into standard cases either. Franklin> (Oh, and, if you've got the money to spare, those new fancy Franklin> vidcards can do more than just video... VDPAU, OpenCL, and Franklin> so on seem like very cool things to check out to me!) It does look interesting, but I'm also concerned about power/noise issues for a home system. I'd like to get things quieter and use less energy if I can.