[conspire] Advice on Building a Computer

[Adrien Lamothe]

The specs on the Tyan web site didn't get too detailed, but it looks like you can use a standard (for the time of the board) power supply, rather than the special type you need when using dual Opteron. I wouldn't put all those hard drives into the system case, I'd put them in one or two external boxes, that have their own power supplies and fans. For the computer, you could probably get by with a 300 watt power supply. A lot of the power supplies coming out of China these days are pretty comparable in quality, the quality has gotten better overall. The safe bet is to go with a name brand, like Enermax, Antec, CoolerMaster. Power supplies were coming down in price; lately they've been climbing back up in price.


Mark Weisler <mark at weisler-saratoga-ca.us> wrote:  Hello,
 This is a request for help in reviewing specifications for a computer I am
 building. It is based on a Tyan 2468 motherboard, also called the K7X.

 The intended use of the computer is as a server and a learning
 environment for me and a couple of other people. The MB is equipped with
 two SCSI channels and I want to put five to seven drives in the
 system to continue learning and experimenting with RAID
 and LVM. I want to use quality components as this computer will be kept for 
quite a while.

 The MB is...

 http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/thunderk7x.html


 Some general information:
 * this is an extended ATX motherboard. It's big and
  intended to be a server. I have the two AMD Athlon processors and
  memory for the system.
 * I have a large case for the system, a Lian Li V1200B Plus II
  that can hold eight or so drives.

 There are two particular areas in which I would appreciate
 your review: drives and power supply.

 Drives
 The motherboard is a model number S2468UGN
 with a UPC of 635872-006449. This has two SCSI interfaces,
 SCSI A and SCSI B and is specified as Ultra 160 SCSI. I
 believe these are 68-pin interfaces rather than 80-pin because
 the 80-pin interface is, as I understand it, more often used
 for hot swappable drives and I don't think I have that in this case. I need   
 to verify that what is on the board is 68-pin.

 I think I want to put two or three drives on each interface. Thus I would
 need two ribbon SCSI interfaces like, I believe, this:

 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200077

 and some number of SCSI drives like this 68-pin one:
 http://www.compuvest.com/Description.jsp?iid=355204

 Does that sound reasonable?

 Power Supply
 This extended ATX motherboard requires an ATXGES power supply.
 There seem to be two ways to do this:
 a) buy an ATXGES power supply with the proper connectors
 b) buy an ATX power supply and obtain (probably via eBay) an adapter cable


 An example an ATXGES PS is http://www.power-on.com/atxges.html at about $80.
 An example of an adapter cable is
 http://search.ebay.com/ATX-GES-cable_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQcatrefZC6QQdfspZ1QQfr
omZR10QQftrtZ1QQftrvZ1QQsabfmtsZ1QQsacatZQ2d1QQsaobfmtsZinsifQQsaprchiZQQsap
rcloZQQssPageNameZRC0021?_trksid=p1638.m120 and these are about $20 plus the 
cost of the power supply.


 So, any thoughts or recommendations would be appreciated.
 To recap: I think I need:
 * power supply and possibly adapter cable
 * drives
 * SCSI ribbon connector for the drives
 ...as I already have:
 * motherboard
 * CPU's and memory
 * case
 I have someone who can help me with the assembly of the computer.
 Thanks for your consideration.

-- 
Mark Weisler 
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our 
people need it sorely on these accounts." ---Mark Twain---
PGP: 0x68E462B6  http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/
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