dual p3 question

[weebroonieuk]

thinking of building a dual p3 file server , just wondering what sort of power they consume anyone got one and got a watt meter

do you reckong it is a good platform for a cheap server using windows xp pro?

[Nox]

you may find some mobo's of that era are not overly keen on Windows XP. Make sure you update the BIOS! I speak from experience! and that only got me as far as 2k/2kserver.

Nox

[herulach]

For a file server? Dual is pretty pointles imo, unless youre serving up hundreds of gigs of stuff. More important is decent disks (you wont find sata on a dual p3 board for a start, and scsi != cheap) and a good network card.

How cheap is cheap?

LN11814 AMD Sempron 64Bit 2600+ S754 (1.6Ghz) 90nm 256K L2 Cache OEM £34.16 £40.14
LN12524 Asrock K8NF4G S754 SATAII USB2 Lan Audio £30.49 £35.83
LN11237 512Mb Corsair Value Select PC3200 non-ECC 184 DIMM unbuffered CL2.5 Lifetime Warranty £24.75 £29.08

thats 105 quid from scan, and add sata disks to your own requirements, together with an intel network card and youre golden.

[weebroonieuk]

hmm well i could always install 2000 but i dont think its as easy to to network with my xp pc's is it ? and how about my xbox 360 will it be able to connect to it or is it only xp that can run xp connect

and will my media center pc be able to connect to it as that is where all my music and films will be stored ?

[weebroonieuk]

well on ebay you can pick up working ones for 50 or 60 quid thought that was ok

[[GSV]Trig]

I've got a Gigabyte GA6BXDS board laying about if u need a board.
£20

[herulach]

or theres this, from the bargain forum (note ive nver heard of the site before):
http://www.itauctions.co.uk/ViewLot....0&LotId=261950

[weebroonieuk]

that ones a bit expensive me thinks i dont need 5 drives i will be adding my own massive drives ide drives into it

and i can get a complete base unit from ebay or the likes for much cheapness , does your gigabyte board allow overclocking of the boards

and again does anyone have a watt meter they can tell me how much they suck through the power supply ?

[5lab]

i used to run dual p3s off a 400w psu - the most powerful i could find at a reasonable price (this was back in 99, running 2 p3 800s). was stable as a rock, i doubt you even need a 350 thinking back - those old chips use so little power..

[DanceswithUnix]

Dual P3 seems a bit exotic for a cheap fileserver.

I used to use a P3 based Celeron 566 board in my home server and that was fine for just moving files around (though I was running Linux on it).

[weebroonieuk]

a bit exotic ? you can pick em up for buttons so why not have a dable with it i thought

[GFiSH]

I got server 2003 running on an old Gateway dual P3 server at my last job, installed a Raid 5 sata card and 3 200GB drives ran with no problems.

[Nox]

hmm well i could always install 2000 but i dont think its as easy to to network with my xp pc's is it ?

I have no idea why you think this. We have thousands of computers across a few sites, running everything from XP, 2k, NT, even windows 98/95 and EVEN a DOS machine, and vmware networked clients, linked into Vax, unix, windows, you name it servers.

We don't have probs. Its just the XP/2k machines are easiest to troubleshoot, then it just gets more difficult...

Can't comment on the xbox tho...

Nox

[joshwa]

www.Mini-ITX.com ? very cheap boards on ebay, very low power consumption (20watts for the whole board), quiet-ish depending on version, modern IDE connectors supporting ATA133/100 and large hard drives (whereas a lot of the older slot 1 P3 and below systems may be be limited to <137gb?). Any bog standard ATX power supply will do leaving lots of power for hard drives... plus numerous small cases available...

[weebroonieuk]

i was wondering about the 137 gb limit but couldnt remember if that was os or mobo limited

[aidanjt]

the 137Gb limit was a WinXP thing I belive, Microsoft fixed it with SP1. Oddly it doesn't effect SCSI interfaces.