StarDestroyer.Net BBS

The MB on this server appears to be dying. The forum server shut itself off last night, and it took four attempts just to get it to recognize the IDE drives and boot up.

So ... can anyone recommend a solid replacement MB/CPU combo? Reliability is paramount, not squeezing the last few percentage points of performance out. No "tweakers' boards" please.

The old board is a socket939/DDR1 board, which is pretty outdated, so I recognize that I'm probably looking at new MB/CPU/RAM.

939's pretty recent, any chance it's still under warranty? Who's the manufacturer?

Beyond that, I'd recommend a straight Intel setup. Good reliability, and if you get it from somebody local who does enough business with intel, they should be able to get you next-morning replacements if anything goes bad within three years. The caveat, of course, is that I don't know if that applies in Imperial Canadia.

Intel have regained their dominant position since the last time the forum server was upgraded, and their own motherboards are some of the most reliable ones I have ever used, so I would go with one of their P35 DDR2 motherboards. There's no real advantage to DDR3 yet, so take advantage of the currently low DDR2 prices and stock up.

As for processor, I don't know whether or not the board software would benefit from a quad-core processor, so if it does, your best choice would probably be a Core 2 Quad Q6600. If not, then a Core 2 Duo E8200 might be a good bet, as it runs nice and cool, doesn't use too much power, and still has a relatively good clockspeed (2.66GHz).

Straight Intel. Integrated graphics are probably your friend, so G31/G35 are probably your best bet. RAM is currently quite cheap, so you should probably stick 4 GB in. How much processing power does the server use?

Beowulf wrote:Straight Intel. Integrated graphics are probably your friend, so G31/G35 are probably your best bet. RAM is currently quite cheap, so you should probably stick 4 GB in. How much processing power does the server use?

The server currently uses an Athlon64 3800+ X2. Not too powerful by modern standards. Generally speaking, the biggest limitation is not CPU power; it is RAM and HD performance. The forum uses up around 4GB of disk space, and the table indexes alone are over 1.5GB, which is bad because for optimal performance, mysql likes to load the entire table index into memory.

You can easily find an intel P35 DDR2 motherboard which can handle upto 8gb of ram for not much more than the versions which can only accept 4gb. And at this stage, ddr2 sticks are dirt cheap even in 2gb modules.

This will however leave almost no room for growth of the hardware, but with 8gb of physical ram and a 64bit OS the SQL server will have a lot of growth room. And by the time you can get more than 8gb of physical ram into a comercial motherboard at affordable prices, it probably isnt going to matter.

Why bother with a P-series? Go for a G with integrated video, keep the costs down; it's not as if this thing's going to need a 8800GTX or anything silly like that.

I haven't really kept up with the latest tech news. With these new 1333MHz FSB CPUs, what speed of memory do you need? And does it actually make any difference?

Beowulf wrote:Straight Intel. Integrated graphics are probably your friend, so G31/G35 are probably your best bet. RAM is currently quite cheap, so you should probably stick 4 GB in. How much processing power does the server use?

Integrated graphics are exactly what you don't want in a server - they steal some memory to use as the framebuffer, and lower overall memory and I/O performance. Besides, the current server has a GeForce 6200, which I'm guessing will find its way into any new server.

Darth Wong wrote:The server currently uses an Athlon64 3800+ X2. Not too powerful by modern standards. Generally speaking, the biggest limitation is not CPU power; it is RAM and HD performance. The forum uses up around 4GB of disk space, and the table indexes alone are over 1.5GB, which is bad because for optimal performance, mysql likes to load the entire table index into memory.

In that case, we can probably rule out a quad-core CPU. What you want is a dual-core CPU with a large cache (which will help memory performance). I'd say that gives you the choices of aforementioned E8200, or the older E6750, which is clocked the same and has a bit less cache, but is also cheaper and easier to get hold of.

As for motherboards, this particular Intel one looks good; it has a decent amount of SATA ports (albeit only one PATA port), supports up to 8GB of memory and seems to be pretty well-priced by UK standards - having said that, I don't actually know any Canadian hardware sites off the top of my head, so it might be different over there.

I haven't really kept up with the latest tech news. With these new 1333MHz FSB CPUs, what speed of memory do you need? And does it actually make any difference?

With memory performance it generally does. The 1333MHz ones also seem to be a bit cheaper than their 1066MHz counterparts for some reason, so you might as well go with one. You need at least DDR-2 667 memory for those chips, but most of the stuff you can buy now is DDR-2 800 anyway

As for motherboards, this particular Intel one looks good; it has a decent amount of SATA ports (albeit only one PATA port), supports up to 8GB of memory and seems to be pretty well-priced by UK standards - having said that, I don't actually know any Canadian hardware sites off the top of my head, so it might be different over there.

I have a DP35DP board, and I can tell you it's rock-solid. It's been the best board I've had in a while, no hardware conflict issues, and no lockups. Haven't had any heat issues, I have a 1333mhz FSB cpu in it, but just run 800mhz DDR2. The ICH9-R chip is also fully AHCI compliant, you won't find any overclocking options though.

That sounds good. I just checked with a local store and I can pick up an Intel E6750 retail box for $200, an Intel DP35DPM motherboard for $129, and four OCZ 4GB PC6400 DDR2 sticks for $105.

Is that a typo or are you seriously buying 16GB of RAM for $105?

This is awesome in its own right, but remember that the motherboard listed there only supports up to 8GB.

Oops, you are correct; that's a typo. Those are 2GB sticks.

You'll probably wish to read up on tuning MySQL for large memory sizes.

InnoDB shines because it can cache indexes and data at once where as MyISM caches just indexes. InnoDB also handles load better as well. Only disadvantage is no full-text search(and a bunch of random other issues), but you can mix & match table types in the same database.

One advantage with InnoDB for everything is you can do consistant backups while the site is running without blocking anything. Simply have a call to mysqldump while using the "--single-transaction" flag. More info on MySQL rather crappy website.

Something to note is that most of the newer boards don't have many PATA ports. So if you've got PATA drives, you might need to either get a new SATA drive, and copy all the data over, or get an additional PATA interface card.

Small SATA drives are also stupidly cheap. $55 AUS for an 80gb, and you can probably get it cheaper in Canada/USA

Darth Wong wrote:That sounds good. I just checked with a local store and I can pick up an Intel E6750 retail box for $200, an Intel DP35DPM motherboard for $129, and four OCZ 4GB PC6400 DDR2 sticks for $105.

You might want to see if you can get a Core 2 E8400/Xeon E3110 (3GHz Penryn) instead of the E6750, if prices are similar.

Darth Wong wrote:I haven't really kept up with the latest tech news. With these new 1333MHz FSB CPUs, what speed of memory do you need? And does it actually make any difference?

1333MHz QDR FSB = 333MHz base rate, which means you'd need at least DDR2 667 RAM for it. In practice, it doesn't matter all that much.

I recently bought a Quad-Core AMD Phenom 'black edition' for $220 Australian. With its unlocked multiplier I've got it running at 2.8Ghz over the standard 2.3Ghz with stock cooling. Add a 790-chipset motherboard (gigabyte I think) and it runs awesome as a cheap server machine.

phongn wrote:You might want to see if you can get a Core 2 E8400/Xeon E3110 (3GHz Penryn) instead of the E6750, if prices are similar.

Going by our prices, the E8400 is about £50 more expensive than the E6750, and harder to get hold of as well. There would be some benefits from the larger cache and lower power consumption, but I don't think they'd be that huge, to be honest (and if you wanted them, the E8200 would probably be a more sensible alternative).

atg wrote:I recently bought a Quad-Core AMD Phenom 'black edition' for $220 Australian. With its unlocked multiplier I've got it running at 2.8Ghz over the standard 2.3Ghz with stock cooling. Add a 790-chipset motherboard (gigabyte I think) and it runs awesome as a cheap server machine.

It doesn't sound like there's really any benefit to a quad-core CPU for the board server, and even if there were, the Q6600 would probably be a better choice with regard to price, performance, power consumption and motherboard quality.

DaveJB wrote:Going by our prices, the E8400 is about £50 more expensive than the E6750, and harder to get hold of as well. There would be some benefits from the larger cache and lower power consumption, but I don't think they'd be that huge, to be honest (and if you wanted them, the E8200 would probably be a more sensible alternative).

£50?! It's something like a US$10-20 premium here.

atg wrote:I recently bought a Quad-Core AMD Phenom 'black edition' for $220 Australian. With its unlocked multiplier I've got it running at 2.8Ghz over the standard 2.3Ghz with stock cooling. Add a 790-chipset motherboard (gigabyte I think) and it runs awesome as a cheap server machine.

Mike isn't going to be overclocking a production server, and the 790-chipset isn't as good as the P35.

atg wrote:I recently bought a Quad-Core AMD Phenom 'black edition' for $220 Australian. With its unlocked multiplier I've got it running at 2.8Ghz over the standard 2.3Ghz with stock cooling. Add a 790-chipset motherboard (gigabyte I think) and it runs awesome as a cheap server machine.

This is for the forum server, not a TF2 not a Call of Duty 4 server not your own personal World of Warcraft server for you and your closest 10,00 friends, this is a server to host a phpbb board reliability trumps power any day of the week.

phongn wrote:
£50?! It's something like a US$10-20 premium here.

Huh, you're right; dead on $20 difference at NewEgg. I suppose that whoever sets Intel's UK prices must just be an idiot, as right now that makes it more expensive than a Q6600.

Having checked on Shopbot.ca, it seems like the boxed E8400 is generally priced at about $240, compared to the $200 that Mike was quoted for an E6750. It's not that much more expensive, and might well pay the difference back over time due to its lower power consumption (although the E6750 isn't exactly a power hog mind), but I don't know whether or not it'd really be worth it. There's also a chance that the DP35DP might need its BIOS flashed to work with a 45nm chip, whereas an E6750 will work out of the box, no matter what the BIOS revision.

DaveJB wrote:Having checked on Shopbot.ca, it seems like the boxed E8400 is generally priced at about $240, compared to the $200 that Mike was quoted for an E6750. It's not that much more expensive, and might well pay the difference back over time due to its lower power consumption (although the E6750 isn't exactly a power hog mind), but I don't know whether or not it'd really be worth it. There's also a chance that the DP35DP might need its BIOS flashed to work with a 45nm chip, whereas an E6750 will work out of the box, no matter what the BIOS revision.

For a CAD$40 premium, probably not worth it then, and I doubt the lower power consumption will save all that much money over its lifetime.

Mr Bean wrote:

atg wrote:I recently bought a Quad-Core AMD Phenom 'black edition' for $220 Australian. With its unlocked multiplier I've got it running at 2.8Ghz over the standard 2.3Ghz with stock cooling. Add a 790-chipset motherboard (gigabyte I think) and it runs awesome as a cheap server machine.

This is for the forum server, not a TF2 not a Call of Duty 4 server not your own personal World of Warcraft server for you and your closest 10,00 friends, this is a server to host a phpbb board reliability trumps power any day of the week.

I wasn't trying to imply that the forum server should run on an over-clocked cpu, merely stating my personal experience with regard to that processor and motherboard combo. In terms of reliability, the 'Black Edition' AMD processors, like the 'Extreme Edition' Intel parts, are essentially the best chips from the wafer. So they tend to run extremely stable at default frequencies.

IIRC the phenom's currently offer the best price/performance ratio, thought the rumoured US$40 price cut for the Q6600 will alter that.

A Xeon board will give you better reliability (including the board itself and the registered fully buffered memory it uses). However, for this (non-mission-critical) application the extra cost probably isn't worth it. That said you can get a nice 2.5 GHz Xeon quad-core that consumes only 50 watts max (the L5420), whereas AFAIK all the desktop versions have a TDP of 90 watts or more. The low-voltage Xeon will save you money on electricity in the long run (though some of the gain will be eaten up by the power draw of the FB-DIMMs).

Spending money on decent SATA hard drives (e.g. a couple of WD7500s in RAID 1) is likely to make more of a performance difference than anything else.