[geeks] the biggest, baddest workstation...

[Nadine Miller]

On May 14, 2009, at 4:29 AM, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> On May 13, 2009, at 7:16 PM, "Jonathan J. M. Katz"  
> <jon at jonworld.com> wrote:
>
>> What's the biggest, baddest workstation one can build these days?
>>
>> I figure 16 cores (4x4) in some shade of Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron.  
>> Who sells 'em?
>>
>> Just curious...
>
> I'd second SuperMicro, they sell workstation SuperServers with case,  
> PS, and MB installed, but on an absolute scale of what's possible,  
> they are likely pretty tame.
>
> On a side note, I just downloaded a new BIOS for an older SuperMicro  
> MB, a PDSGE, to handle 8 Gigs of RAM - the update was published in  
> March of this year, but the MB is at least 5 years old. I was  
> plesantly suprised they had a BIOS update so long after the board  
> went off-market...
>
> Truth be told, I think the BIOS has been around for a while, but in  
> beta, until March of this year.
>
> I just breathed new life into a dual-core Intel 930-based system  
> with 8 Giga of RAM ($100), and 4x hot-swap trays with a quiet (to  
> me) power supply/cooling system...
>
> It's really quite nice, and 8 gigs of RAM can make up for it being  
> an older CPU family.

I hear a lot of negative things in the LOPSA irc channel from other  
SA's about SuperMicro's reliability.  Likewise, I have read many  
reports of the quality of their motherboards going downhill in the  
last couple of years.

As far as server mobo's go, I didn't look hard, due to the prices, but  
I think the most I saw was 2 CPU boards available as bare boards.

=Nadine=