Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 18:18:11 -0700 From: "Charles Burns" <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> To: jmw__74@hotmail.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: AMD / Heat / Cooling... Message-ID: <F187utplhR1PDGNZzah0000b24f@hotmail.com>
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>Hello all. Hello. >I've been given the chance to build a new server here and have played with >the idea of getting away from Intel and moving towards AMD. However, as >I've never dealt with AMD CPU's or compatible mainboards, I was hoping to >get a comment or two from those who have. "here" being a business or...? >First off, concerning the CPU and mainboard, I've pretty much heard only >good things about Asus mainboards. The one I was considering is the Asus >A7V266-E in conjunction with the AMD Athlon XP 1700+ 1.47GHz Socket-A >processor. Asus is one of many companies that make good quality boards. Asus was lucky enough to earn its reputation back when many motherboards were poorly made leading to unreliable systems. Good companies include: Asus, Abit, Tyan, Microstar (MSI), Supermicro (no AMD boards), and others. I have had the most luck with Asus's dual Athlon board myself. Note that none of these companies except Tyan and Hypermicro manufacture boards that one could call "truely server quality." In fact, such hardware is generally best left attached to Sun, IBM, and HP server class systems. >I've heard, however, that these CPU's, and AMD in general, have heat >'issues'; I.E. drawing a fair amount more power than an Intel counterpart. Not really. When the Athlon was released, it drew quitea bit more power than a comparable Pentium-3. The Athlon draws power within 10% of the range of a Pentium-4 at a given clockspeed, with the P4 drawing less than the Athlon in all cases. It isn't that power draw has been reduced, its that when the Athlon was released, the average system had a very low output power supply and the average CPU heatsink would keep Athlons at disturbingly high temperatures. x86 CPUs today usually draw 50-80W, with the .13 micron Pentium 3's drawing the least and the Athlon Thunderbird chips (an older model) drawing the most. Most modern systems work perfectly. My desktop is a dual Athlon with 3 CD-ROMs, 4 hard drives, a power hungry Geforce 3 video card and other power hogs, and it runs fine on a 300W Antec power supply. >Taking that into consideration, I've attempted to choose a good case and >heatsink/fan combo. I am also concerned with heat in such that this >machine >will be running 24/7 with no downtime. Is this a valid concern? Of course, it always is, unless the system can run with just a passive cooler like older Ultra-SPARC2 chips. First and foremost, I am a big advocate of building my own systems, but if this is going to be storing financial information or something, you really should buy one. I recommend (in the following order:) www.terasolutions.com www.appro.com (great dual Athlon servers) www.sun.com (money to burn? Great servers. Not the best for FreeBSD, though) One other note is that if this server /must/ be up 24/7, Intel VS AMD are the least of concerns. You'll want at least 2 redundant power supplies, a motherboard that supports Chipkill RAM, hot-swappable SCSI drives, a large UPS with a diesel generator for a possible long-term power outage, a good backup system, at least one RAID5 array with several hotswap drives, etc. Now that that's out of the way: >I've read good reviews about the Antec cases and power supplies. I set my >sights on the Antec SX635, which comes with a 350 Watt PS. This case, >coupled with an extra front mounted 80-mm fan would, in my opinion, fit the >bill. However, I wanted to get this newsgroups opinion of these >components. >Does this sound like a good setup? Antec does make great enclosures. I have used at least 8 brands, including overpriced Addtronics (which are crap, despite the reviews, even of the expensive W8500) and PC Power&Cooling, which are fine but horribly expensive. Anyway, if you are going this route for the case, I would recommend the SX1030 or SX1040. They are just a little more expensive, are more expandable, have more room to work inside, and the 5.25" drives can be locked to prevent unauthorized access. They also look cool. :-) While a 300W PS would be more than enough, I would get the 400W as this will be a server; it won't have to work as hard and will be more future proof. >On the heatsink/fan issue, I've also looked at the new "Reference CPU >Cooling System." The URL of the above is >http://www.antec-inc.com/product/fans/f_reference.html. Based on their >specs of this heatsink/fan, it looks like it would fit the bill as well. >However, once again, I was looking for opinions on this. This is one thing that I can claim to be an expert in. PC cooling. First, make sure that whatever motherboard you get has 4 mounting holes on the corners of each CPU (ZIF) socket. These holes will allow you to use the big guns. There are basically 2 good choices for high-end heatsinks. The Alpha PAL8035 and the Swiftech MC462. There are variations of the latter. These will mount permanently into the aforementioned holes on the motherboard, eliminating the risk that they can unclip and fall off (frying the CPUs almost immediately) and they are very good cooling solutions. These are both 80mm heatsinks, so obviously you'll want an 80mm fan. I would recommend anything made by SunOn. They aren't the quietest or most powerful fans, but they last forever. The place that I buy most of my cooling stuff from, 1coolPC.com, guarantees them (and heatsinks) for life. Fan death is one of the biggest killers of components. I can't tell you how many power supplies I've replaced and repaired because of cheap sleave bearing fans being used. You can get these parts either from www.1coolpc.com (my recommendation) or from other coolign companies that are also very good such as www.heatsinkfactory.com, www.plycon.com, etc. Fill all of the fan trays in the case with fans. If one dies, several others will still be there. Other notes: Of course use only registered ECC memory, put anything important on a redundant RAID array, preferably have an air filter in the server room, hae a good UPS, etc. Note again that no non-clustered x86 system should be used in an any mission-critical environment. >The above is what I've pretty much spec'd the system at, and in general, >does this seem like a decent setup for a NetBSD server? Why NetBSD? Of the three BSDs, NetBSD's advantage is that it is available on tons of platforms. FreeBSD or OpenBSD would probably be a better choice for a server on a well supported platform. (x86 is FreeBSD's native platform) Charles Burns _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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