http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...3NR-RS&cat=MBB
Tyan S3892 server board, retail box, Dual Opteron S940, 16 DDR DIMM slots, Volterra high speed switching VRM chip modules for all major VRM functionality, Dual gigabit + 10/100 NIC.
Basically for my current VM box i've got an AMD Phenom with 8G of RAM, in 4 DIMM slots.. Pretty easy and cheap nowadays.. But if you want more than 8Gigs, it gets spendy really quick, for either desktop or server grade DDR2. But you can pick up old 1 and 2 gig Reg ECC DDR DIMMs fairly inexpensivly on ebay, etc. Meaning on this Tyan server board, you can get 16G to 32G of reliable server grade ECC RAM. Having all 8 DIMM slots for a CPU means you can only run PC2100, which is fine, as that's the cheapest anyway..
For $50 + shipping for the board, it's a good deal, provided you have a case and PSU for it. Picking up a pair of matched dualcore Opteron's on ebay is pretty cheap nowadays too. I've got a matched Pair of Opteron 280's on the way for this one..
Edit, almost forgot, it does have a pair of x8 pci-E slots,, but it says on tyan's website that video cards are not supported in them.. Whether that means that 8800GTX's are not supported, or more practical cards like the 9400 GT might be, i'm not sure, but don't buy this board expecting it to be a gaming box..
For VM type stuff having more memory is somthing you can never have enough of..
Tyan S3892 server board, retail box, Dual Opteron S940, 16 DDR DIMM slots, Volterra high speed switching VRM chip modules for all major VRM functionality, Dual gigabit + 10/100 NIC.
Basically for my current VM box i've got an AMD Phenom with 8G of RAM, in 4 DIMM slots.. Pretty easy and cheap nowadays.. But if you want more than 8Gigs, it gets spendy really quick, for either desktop or server grade DDR2. But you can pick up old 1 and 2 gig Reg ECC DDR DIMMs fairly inexpensivly on ebay, etc. Meaning on this Tyan server board, you can get 16G to 32G of reliable server grade ECC RAM. Having all 8 DIMM slots for a CPU means you can only run PC2100, which is fine, as that's the cheapest anyway..
For $50 + shipping for the board, it's a good deal, provided you have a case and PSU for it. Picking up a pair of matched dualcore Opteron's on ebay is pretty cheap nowadays too. I've got a matched Pair of Opteron 280's on the way for this one..
Edit, almost forgot, it does have a pair of x8 pci-E slots,, but it says on tyan's website that video cards are not supported in them.. Whether that means that 8800GTX's are not supported, or more practical cards like the 9400 GT might be, i'm not sure, but don't buy this board expecting it to be a gaming box..
For VM type stuff having more memory is somthing you can never have enough of..
