[geeks] Replacing a Mac Pro 2006

[Lionel Peterson]

Well, hold on a minute - the HP microserver has a low-power CPU, shoving a
quad-core Xeon or i7 that isn't a hobbled mobile/ULV version would require
serious cooling and a much beefier PS than the HP packs. Also, the
(essentially) miniDTX form-factor doesn't leave any space on the board for
discrete graphics, you'd have to go with an add-in graphics card, and it would
have to be half-height and short, and the HP doesn't have room for a PCI-E 16x
slot connector (as I recall). Also, an add- in graphics card would drive up
power requirements which would also drive up cooling issues...

The HP microserver is a large collection of compromises:

- low-power CPU
- two memory sockets
- limited expansion capability (2 slots, one PCI, one PCI-E x4, both
low-profile & short
- one NIC
- weak graphics
- limited on- board RAID
- OPTIONAL management card

The machine has it's purposes, but it is not a micro-powerhouse, and it isn't
a simple CPU-swap away from becoming one.

I found a great MB for my chenbro SR30169 chassis - it takes an LGA1155 CPU,
has 4x SATA (2x 6.0 Gb/s ports, 2x 3.0 Gb/sec), dual NICs, Wi-Fi on-board,
HDMI and DVI video ports and can take 16 Gig of RAM, but that machine is twice
as large as the HP microserver. I can add a PCI-E x16 video card if desired.
It is the GA-Z77N-WiFi

I wonder if it is 'Hackintosh-able'? Appears so:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/tags/gaz77nwifi.html

Lionel

On Dec 2, 2012, at 2:30 PM, Mark Benson <md.benson at gmail.com> wrote:

> If HP can pack a 4-drive carrier, motherboard and 2 PCIe slots
> into the Microserver Apple should have no probblem scaling that down a bit
to
> 1 PCIe slots (for Gfx), plus 2 RAM slots (for up to 32GB), a mini-itx size
> mainboard with a i5 or i7 on and a couple of hard drive/SSD bays. It'd be
> little and cute compared to a DELL and be gut wrenchingly quick..