Server suggestions

[Admiral Huddy]

Is there any disadvantage of having components such as q6600 and P35 motherboards over a quad-core Xeon 5300 with FB-DIMM memory support?

Server to host 10 users with Windows 2003.

cheers

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Not at that load level. The Xeons are the same thing essentially. The FB-DIMMs come into their own when using a whole lot of modules because they offload some of the memory controller's work. If you're using less than 8-16 GiB RAM you'll probably get better performance from unbuffered DDR2 due to quicker latencies.

 

[Admiral Huddy]

Cheers Billy.

Isn't most DDR2 unbuffered anyway?

Buffered RAM is normally a lot more expensive.

I'm also thinking of RAID 10 as well. Some of the P35 boards support this. It seems like a cheap solutions but need to see if it's viable.

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Yep, the cheap stuff most people have in their desktops is unbuffered. Expensive FB-DIMM DDR2 is found in big fancy servers and workstations like the Mac Pro. You probably don't need big and fancy.

 

[Admiral Huddy]

Cheers mate