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Difference Between Server Boards and Regular Boards?

M

maytheus

n00b
Joined
Sep 1, 2005
Messages
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Just like the title says. What is the difference between a server motherboard and a regular motherboard other than the price difference? I know some have dual processor slots but a lot do not. Do they perform better? Are there more utilities?

Reason I am asking is I just built a new desktop rig so I have a P4 2.8 lying around that I want to build a file server around.
 
one major difference would be the ability to accept ECC ram.

other than that...go for it.

I use a desktop board with onboard RAID for my fileserver and it's been running fantastic for 20 months.

You should do great with a 2.8, also. My fileserver is an Athlon Xp 2000+, 256MB ram, it runs server 2003 without a hitch.
 
Typically the 'server' mobo's are supposed to have been manufactured better (*higher standards) than the retail mobo..
Really tho for home server, any quality mobo will be fine...
 
Also server motherboards tend to have more PCI/PCI-X channels, (not PCI slots, but channels) the ability to use high IRQ's and sometimes a hardware monitoring minicomputer that you can talk to for remote management (even when the rest of the server is off)

==>Lazn
 
Server boards tend to accept more RAM as well. The Supermicro I am running at work would work with up to 16GB of RAM. Not going to get that with your DFI board.

As far as file server goes, the motherboard hardly matters imho, you will likely get PCI-X controller cards and a GigE NIC. The CPU overhead for moving files around is fairly low.
 
I built a department file server a coupla years ago using an old Soyo board and a celeron clocked to 900mhz. Two fast SCSI drives on a U160 controller. Has worked flawlessly and fast (shared by 6 machines). As mentioned, a simple file server doesn't require a lot of processor poower.
 
Build quality, memory type, amount of memory, multi-processor socket, (sometimes) hardware monitoring software, PCI-X and a different focus of the feature set. Server boards tend to have built in video, and it's pretty sub par. Rage XL 8MB kind of lame. Of course that suits their typical needs just fine.

Built in SCSI controllers, typically two NICS now. Of course higher end "normal" motherboards are starting to get some of these features.
 
TheBluePill said:
Any Dual 939 Options out there? (Dual X2 would be Sexy...)
Click to expand...

s939 = not dual capable. The HyperTransport channels on s939 are not cache coherant, so it can not be done. (well with a hardware HAL it technically could, but that would make the MB cost more than opteron CPUs on a opteron MB)

And there are dual core opterons, so there is no need for X2 dualy, if you want that, just get the dual core opterons.

==>Lazn
 
Lazn_Work said:
s939 = not dual capable. The HyperTransport channels on s939 are not cache coherant, so it can not be done. (well with a hardware HAL it technically could, but that would make the MB cost more than opteron CPUs on a opteron MB)

And there are dual core opterons, so there is no need for X2 dualy, if you want that, just get the dual core opterons.

==>Lazn
Click to expand...

Good Stuff. Thanks for the Info.
 
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