Hey guys,

I finally received enough cash as a bonus to do a bit of upgrading.
My current rig is:

Gigabyte AM3 mobo
Phenom II X3 720BE
4 x 4GB DDR3 1333
Sapphire HD4890 1GB Vapor-X
2 x 640GB WD Caviar Black

What I am upgrading as we speak, all parts have arrived and I will be assembling this weekend, is:

Motherboard:

http://usa.asus.com/Server_Workstation/Server_Motherboards/KCMAD8/#specifications

CPU:(1x)

http://products.amd.com/en-us/OpteronCPUDetail.aspx?id=684&f1=AMD+Opteron%E2%84%A2+4100+Series+Processor&f2=&f3=Yes&f4=&f5=512&f6=C32&f7=&f8=45nm+SOI&f9=&f10=6400&f11=&;

SSD's: (2x)

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT064M4SSD2

Controller: Rocketraid 644

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr600.htm

I have bought only 1 Opteron 4130, to haul me over till december, when the Valencia cores are released to the public, of which I will get 2.
Ram I have max at the moment, cause of the 4 ram slots per cpu, will get another 16GB when Valencia's arrive.
I will also then get an HD6970 2GB card, or an HD7xxx, depending on my patience.

My Western Digital drives will act as data drives, the SSD's will be running hardware raid 0, all important data will be on the Caviars, so no biggy if raid volume fails.

I will be doing a lotta VM'ing, gaming, video editing etc etc.

Anyone have any suggestions, comments etc etc?? Please lemme know.

Cheers

Pim

**UPDATE**

I came home today from work, ofcourse wanting to build the system immediately.  ;D
I took the cpu, installed it and installed the cooler.
What I love about this board is that it also takes unregistered ram, so no need to buy reg ram just yet.

I put in 2 x 2GB kingston valueram and hooked up a PSU and there she went. Started up just fine, had a look in the bios, a bit spartan, but a lotta options in regards to server stuff ofcourse(duhh).

This was just to check if it would indeed work with unregistered ram. Now that I know for sure, I will be dismantling my current rig somewhere tommorrow and then place this mobo/cpu/ssd combo in the case.

Dare I ask...price list for each item? :o

BTW - that's gonna kick some SERIOUS A$$ when it's finished - kudos matey! 8-)

well, for the stuff I bought, it was as follows:

Motherboard: 285 euro
CPU: 125 euro
cooler: 18 euro
SSD's: 85 a piece
controller: 130 euro

So 750 euros approx so far. Will be adding about 230 a  piece for the Valencias, then approx 300 for the videocard, another 16GB will cost 150 approx since I will want 8GB modules for max what mobo can take.

This is the 1st time I spent so much on a rig, will cost around 2000 when I'm finished, but will last me VERY long, as in more then 5 years, and upgradebility is better, C32 socket will go a long way.

**UPDATE**

Rig is up and running, installed W7 Ultimate x64, installing SP1 and antivirus/firewall now :)
Runs like a charm, nice and fast, but as expected....no overclocking :(

OOF! just thrown a suitcase full of cash at it then! :o

BTW - I don't think you'll need O.C.-ing for quite a while there... ;)

yeah I know I won't really be NEEDING to do any overclocking for what I'm gonna do, more cores will add a lot more power. :)
Maybe I'll have a go at ramdisk stuff when I have 32GB, I wonder what would be faster....a ramdisk built on dual channel DDR 1333 or Raid 0 on SATA600 discs. Not that I can use the ramdisc as bootdisc, but still :)

Yeah, I know it's expensive, but it'll save me in the long run. Spend now to save later.....it's like the economy. LOL

I took a look at the new HD7xxx series which should be released in februari, or so they expect, if so, I will be getting the HD7970, which will replace the HD6970.

hey guys,

I took a picture of my case when the setup was built, just not with the hdd controller yet, to see how it would go on SATA300 with a SATA600 hdd, pretty fast, but limited ofcourse.

Just to show a bit about my cable management. :)

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/40/p1010019bf.jpg/

And here is a phote of my "rack" with at the bottom 2 workstations, above that my win2k3 books, above that my test setup screen and keyboard, currently connected to the 2 workstations.
Above that my win2k8 books, for which I'm currently studying, and above that my Cisco 3548XL managed switch, my Linksys router and a 3Com 24port unmanaged switch.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/836/p1010018pf.jpg/

well, I kinda bummed out yesterday.

I was really excited about getting the valencias, but the more reviews I read, the more it shows that the 41xx series opterons is faster then the upcoming 42xx series.

A 6 core 4100 series opteron beats an 8 core 4200 series in a lotta benchmarks, so I'm kinda stumped.
Should I still get the valencia's an dhope the new windows versions will make better use of it, or just go for another 4130 for now and hope the next release of opterons will be better??

It finally happened, my new cpu's are on the way :)

2 x Opteron 4280's for 160 euro a piece.

I went for a Radeon 6950 card instead of the 7000 series, since those are pretty expensive.

I went for the new opteron instead of the older series, because I have 8 x 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz and the new ones support that spoeed, the old ones don't go higher then 1333 support.

So my rig now is as follows:

Asus KCMA-D8
1 x AMD Opteron 4280
4 x 4GB DDR3 1600 CAS9
1 x AMD Radeon 6950 1GB
2 x Crucial M4 64GB on JBOD
1 x 640GB WD Caviar Black
1 x Seagate Baracuda ES 1TB
1 x LG 10x Bluray burner

Soon to follow:

1 x opteron 4280 (the other 16GB I already have, so will be 32GB in total)
Asus Pike 2008 SATA600 controller

Then a reinstallation to put the 2 SSD's on JBOD on the SATA600 controller, should be a lot faster.

Now finally my Asus Pike2008 controller has arrived, so time for some benchmarks :)

3DMARK Vantage + Passmark scores

http://www.abload.de/thumb/3dmarkpassmarkx2fel.jpg

Always nice to see a nice dual CPU system up and running. This rig is somewhat really cool. May you have a lot of fun with the system.