[geeks] AMD 8120 Box built

[microcode at zoho.com]

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:18:40 -0400
Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> A couple folks asked me to provide feedback on my mentioned AMD FX
> 8120 home VM server build - well, I built up the box this morning.
> 
> My build roughly looks like this:
> 
> AMD FX 8120 eight-core CPU - $149
> BIOSTAR TA970XE MB (bundle with CPU) - $50 (5x SATA3 ports)
> Zotac 8400GS video card - $10 (after $20 rebate)
> DVD-R/W drive - $15
> 4x 8 Gig DDR3 Kit - $159 (after $30 rebate)
> 2x Seagate 2 TB SATA3 drives - $109/each
> Antec 300 Chassis & Antec 550 Watt HE PS - $100 (aprox., had on-hand
> already)
> 
> Eight cores, 32 Gig RAM, 2/4 TB storage (depending on how you want to
> "RAID" the drives) for just under $700.

Very nice build! Thanks for the update.

> And it's very quiet.

Icing on the cake...but does it air condition your house ;-)

> Went together in under 2 hours, currently wrapping up OS install
> (Windows Server 2008 Enterprise), thinking about ways to stress test
> the system so I can provide feedback for those folks interested, but
> how should I test it?

Given you're running Windows it's safe to look on the overclocking sites to
see what benchmarks they use. Personally I think the 8120/8150 would be
great for Solaris.

> I can toss a bunch of small, idle VMs on the box but that is not much
> of a stress test - anyone got a better suite to stress the hardware?
> I'd prefer not to wipe Windows Server, but I am happy to toss other OS
> VMs or install application/test software on the box.
> 
> Any suggestions?

I would start looking on overclock.net. They have a benchmarking forum and
the guys are pretty helpful as long as you don't mention UNIX, Linux, etc.