[Noisebridge-discuss] Money for new Stallion (Pony) VM server

[Ben Kochie]

Sorry, I missed a couple of the additional questions.

See below.

-ben

> IMHO better to get i7 / Xeon3500 board rather than the i3/ Xeon3400.
> Otherwise you are buying a design that is already nearly two years old, ie 1 computer generation
> behind.

Yup, I wish it were possible to use registered dimms on 3500. :(

> Also it might help some hackers to have pcix16 for OpenCL / CUDA  practice (AI stuff)

As long as it can fit in the case with a basic riser board.  Unfortunately 
the case has a PCI-X not PCIe riser board right now.

> Thirdly don't you need to add a new harddrive or three for RAID maybe ?

We already have 4x 1.5T drives in RAID


>  And what about the powersupply ? Is the current one high efficiency ? Those can save 40% in
> electric costs.

We already have an 80Plus PSU in the system.  The current machine uses 
about 130W.  I figure we can get that down to 70-80W by upgrading to a 
newer board and CPU, but we have 4 drives, it's not going to get that much 
better.  This won't save that much money tho.  50W is only about 
$6.50/month.  It'd take 8 years for that to pay back just in power.  This 
is one of the reasons why I think it's worth just keeping one server 
around the space.  Mostly I want this upgrade so we can do more with the 
box than just run pony.

I have alread found a replacement 2U case for the machine that will work 
great.  It should have a good quality PSU in it, but I can double check 
the specs some time.

If not, this should probably fit in the case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817377034

I think we should go with the revised intel proposal:

SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL+-F - $180
*  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182262
Intel Xeon E3-1230 Sandy Bridge 3.2GHz - $240
* http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115083
2x Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) - $160
* http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148380
1U CPU cooler - $25
* http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835200064

Total - $605

Not too expensive, and should get us to a power target of ~80W without 
being slow as crap.