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Thread: building a workstation-class machine

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Philadelphia
    Beans
    4,076
    Distro
    Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

    building a workstation-class machine

    Hi all,
    hope this is the right place to post - at least it's about hardware
    i am looking to build a workstation-class machine.

    at this point i'm considering the tyan Thunder n3600B (http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=595)

    or tomcat n3400B (http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=613)

    i'm strongly leaning toward the n3600b, since for just an extra $100, i get an extra cpu socket, and quadruple the maximum ram. to start with, i'd stick in a quad-core cpu and 8g of ram, leaving plenty of upgrade room if i need more.

    now, i am not really very familiar with the range of products available in this area, nor with how well ubuntu would play with these, so i'd appreciate some help and input from those "in the know" (it's been about 5 years since i last built a machine from parts, and haven't really kept up with what's out there since then).

    some questions: are there mobo-makers other than tyan that make similar-capacity motherboards, and if so, are they better/cheaper/etc (tyan is really the only one i found...)? would the two-socket mobo work just fine with only one cpu, or does it require both cpus to be present? if it supports registered ecc ram, would it also support unregistered nonecc plain vanilla (and thus, cheap) ram? would ubuntu have any trouble supporting this hardware? would i need to recompile the kernel to have ubuntu grok 8g of ram or more (i recall seeing posts on the forum to this effect at dapper-time, is it still the case now)? i have a bunch of plain old PATA disks - can they be hooked up to the SATA mobo and work without giving me any trouble?

    also, any other thoughts and advice would be appreciated.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Porto / Portugal
    Beans
    94
    Distro
    Ubuntu Studio 10.04 Lucid Lynx

    Re: building a workstation-class machine

    Hi there, I saw the motherboard and it looks great, really. I think yoou will not have a problem working just with 1 CPU, its a good idea to buy double socket, in the future you can expand it. About the HDidks I think you will not have problems with IDE disks, if you have a lot of them, maybe you will need to buy a PCI ide board. About the ram, more than 4 GB on any 32 bit OS is a waste. So you will need to run a 64bit OS (hope it is Ubuntu) this is about the memory addressing capability in 32bits os... well, it is just my 2 cents.
    good luck, and post the results

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Philadelphia
    Beans
    4,076
    Distro
    Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

    Re: building a workstation-class machine

    thanks for your response, rlameiro.
    i'll be sure to post back here with how things went, if/when i get around to building it!

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