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DIY 16 core workstation part 1: The motherboard


TYAN S4980G2NR Quad 1207(F) NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 Extended ATX Server Motherboard

TYAN S4980G2NR

I love virtual machines. Unfortunately running lots of them on one server can get very expensive. A 16-core Dell PowerEdge R905 for example, will set you back about 12 grand (without OS).  So I set out to try and build my own system for less – and I’ve succeeded!

About a month ago I was doing random motherboard searches on NewEgg and I found exactly ONE quad socket motherboard for sale:  the TYAN S4980G2NR Quad 1207(F) NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 Extended ATX Server Motherboard.

The only catch (for me) was that this motherboard used AMD Opteron cpus,  and I knew nothing about them.  But there are no Xeon quad socket motherboards readily available, so AMD it is.  Theres alot of backstory on the Opteron / Xeon battle for market domination, but really it doesn’t matter if you can’t find quad socket Intel Xeon motherboards.  So AMD wins the 16 core workstation battle for now.

Anyways… The Tyan S4980 sells for around $400. Tyan has a good reputation, and they have all of the manuals online. Also I can vouch for this motherboard, since I’ve built my 16 core workstation with it.

16 CPUs in Task Manager

16 CPUs in Task Manager

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009, 9:07 pm and is filed under Computer Builds. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  1. #1 by khayes - April 22nd, 2009 at 19:11

    What OS did you run?

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  2. #2 by admin - May 16th, 2009 at 21:13

    I’m running Hyper-V server 2008 R2

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  3. #3 by dpacheco1 - August 6th, 2009 at 22:20

    Hello,

    Congrats on your build! I’m actually right in the middle of mine, I went with the ASUS KFN5-Q/SAS board since the S4980 is EOL. As for the CPU’s I got qty 4 8354 2.2 GHz cpu’s. My only snag is finding the ideal case for this board and setup. What do you recommend? I was thinking of the ABS 695 or Khaos Case, but I’m still doing some research. HELP!

    Thanks,
    Danny

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  4. #4 by admin - August 7th, 2009 at 06:27

    Thanks Danny,

    You’ve asked the exact question that my part 4 article discusses — the case.

    For my build I used the Antec 650 Titan, but it wasn’t my first choice. I’ll explain in more detail when I write my full blog entry, but the short reason is that it was the only server case that let the power supply connectors reach the motherboard.

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  5. #5 by dpacheco1 - August 7th, 2009 at 11:40

    Thanks,

    I tried looking at that case but since my board is SSI MEB 13 x 16 it’s making so difficult to find a nice case for it. I hate to go rackmount for home use. Any help is appreciated…

    Danny

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