771 motherboard

EnglishDude · 4 Jul 2012 at 00:56

Hi all,

Looking to build a cheap video editing workstation with a £34 Socket 771 server motherboard (such as this one) and a pair of L5420 Xeons, £25 each. I know I will have to get a pair of Socket 771 heatsinks along with EEC RAM. Passmark claims that the CPU Mark for those 2 CPUs will be 8010.

Would I come across any problems with using such a server motherboard? How different is it to a desktop motherboard? Is it mountable in an ATX case? Is it possible to use a standard ATX PSU? Any other pitfalls I'm not aware of?

Passmark claims an i5 2400 gets a CPU Mark of 6153 and it costs £99 just for the CPU, plus £25 for the motherboard. How accurate is the comparison? Would this be a better option?

Many thanks!

ace-rimmer · 4 Jul 2012 at 10:18

going by the fact its a dell its unlikely that it will fit in a normal atx case, the picture im sure is how the mobo would go into the case and as u can see its all backwards and upside down, dell like to have the cooling at the front of the case and blow through sorta like btx did.

if you want that mobo your better off buying a dell 490 as there not that expensive and performance should be quite good still, its also a workstation class pc so built for what you need.

EnglishDude · 4 Jul 2012 at 10:31

You're right. After a bit more research, I came to the same conclusions as you did, have brought an XW6600 without CPU/RAM/HDD, will add in the CPUs and RAM and move over the rest that I already have.

Many thanks for advice!

PistolPete · 4 Jul 2012 at 10:32

EnglishDude said:
Would I come across any problems with using such a server motherboard?

First thing that spring to mind is that ECC ram is expensive as hell.

EnglishDude said:
Is it mountable in an ATX case?

The one you linked to looks to be larger than ATX so you may stuggle case wise.

EnglishDude said:
Is it possible to use a standard ATX PSU?

Dell used to have a nasty habit of using modified PSUs with different pinouts so you could only go to them from replacements. Probably best to Google to find out if anyone else is using the same setup

EnglishDude said:
Passmark claims an i5 2400 gets a CPU Mark of 6153 and it costs £99 just for the CPU, plus £25 for the motherboard. How accurate is the comparison? Would this be a better option?

Personally I'd stick with the desktop route. The CPU is slower (than 2x Xeons), but RAM is much cheaper, it'll definately go in an ATX case using a regular ATX PSU and you are likely to find more people with the same setup.