[geeks] Cheap Octocore

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: "Jonathan C. Patschke" <jp at celestrion.net>
>Date: 2007/10/23 Tue PM 01:42:01 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Cheap Octocore

>On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Mark wrote:
>
>> Funny, I went through the configurator and couldn't get it any lower
>> than $1427 with 8-core and 1GB RAM, 80GB hard drive and jack-all
>> else. Another one of Dell's 'the price looks so good how could you
>> not, even thought it's actually double that' offers?
>
>Did you go through the "small business" portal?
>
>I got it configured in the $800 range, and I'm honestly tempted.  I
>could stick a box like that at a friend's place for some more
>high-efficiency crunching.

Here's a link to the system:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=bscwfk1&s=bsd

then selecting the Xeon 5310 CPU as the first CPU ($0 upgrade) and then select the matching second CPU Xeon 5310 (again, a $0 upgrade) and you are good to go.

I built one, went with 8 cores, 1 Gig RAM, 80 Gig HD, and in NJ the total came out to just under $801.00 ($19 shipping and sales tax).

Then I went to Newegg.com and bought a 4 Gig RAM kit for $260 + S/H & taxes, so my box will have 5 Gigs of RAM - I'm tempted to drop another 4 Gig kit in soon, and thus my factory supplied 2x 512 Meg DIMMs will be available if anyone is interested...

I'm loking forward to getting it in-house, but I decided that since I'll have to wait days for system to be built, why spring for the extra $8 and get overnight shipment (Guaranteed next-day delivery was $27 here in NJ)...

My motivation? Well, I've got a 3Ware PCI Express x4 RAID card on the shelf in search of a system to run in, and this is the first machine I've seen in a while that lists x4 slots (and, you know, 8 cores, etc...). I was going to build a beater box with a $50 MB and Core 2 Duo CPU to test/use the RAID card, but this is a much better use IMHO. I may make the card available if anyone is interested, it is an 8 port 3Ware 9590SE x4 PCI Express card - overkill in a 4 drive chassis to be sure...

Lionel