Dual P2 Xeon in 4U Rackmount Chassis, Possible ?

[richardparry]

Okies, I have been offered a brand new Tyan Thunder-X Dual P2/P3 Xeon motherboard (extended ATX) and 2x compatible P3 500MHz Xeon (1Mb cache each CPU !!), however I need to purchase a rackmount chassis to use with this kit.....

Would I be able to fit these cpu's into a 4U chassis ? The CPU's will have the mounting posts fitted and the handles, adding about 3/4" onto the total CPU height (when fitted onto the motherboard, in the chassis)....

Also, this is my first experience with the SLOT type Xeon's, so I am unsure as to how much heat they give off, the chassis I am looking at has a 120mm high CFM (high noise too) intake fan at the front, 80mm exhaust (by the CPU block) and a 60mm next to that fan..... the 2x cpu's I have been offered both have heatsinks, but I am about to order active cooling (from PC Power & Cooling)

Also, one final question, what would be the recommended PSU wattage for a dual Xeon system with the above spec's ? I have been advised that a good quality 300W PSU would be plenty to power it, HD's are in an external array, so would you have thought a good quality (for example Antec) 350W PSU would do the job ? Since this server is to be used as an entry level DB server (MySQL), I will be looking at high redundancy, hence I will be buying a Dual 300W PSU (redundant, hot-swap)

 

[Lynx516]

A 4U chassis is about the same size a a midi tower case so it should b ok .

 

[richardparry]

yeah, the height of a 4U chassis is 7"... the height of a Xeon CPU, without the motherboard, mounting brackets for the CPU, motherboard standoff's or the 1/4" for the mobo mounting plate, comes to 4 1/2", add the other bits and it comes to about 6"

I may well need to remove the expansion card bracket that are included in the chassis, only really needed for helping to position the PCI/ISA cards etc incase they pop out when the case is in transit....

the only thing what worries me is why AnandTech used 5U chassis for the P2 Xeon's they used to use, I remember in one of the IT Articles they said they used 4U chassis for standard Athlon webservers and 5U chassis for the Xeon's..... AnandTech were using the same mobo as what I will be getting, the Tyan Thunder-X (S1952), the CPU handle in one of the pics looks different to the one I am being offered tho, mine is a little higher)

 

[richardparry]

^ bump

 

[cleverhandle]

Certainly it's possible - Xeons are server CPU's, so there are plenty of rack chassis that can fit them. As stated above, a 4U case is like a regular tower, which takes full height PCI cards. You're not going to have height problems. Just make sure the chassis is spec'ed for an EATX board. You may be able to get slightly better airflow with a bigger (5U, 6U) case, but without any drives in there I doubt you'll have problems.

As for the power supply, you'd really have to spec it out. Figure out the power consumption of each component (P=IV) on each rail, and check it against the specs of the PSU. Personally, I would think a 300W supply is low for a dualie, even an old one. But it's really hard to guess at PSU requirements without doing the math.