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What motherboard for a number crunching PC?

T

tonyel

Junior Member
Looking to have up to 2 quad core processors, probably Xeon E5430/40/50, depending on how budget negotiations turn out.
Must be able to use XP 64bit OS
I'm intending to start with 8GB of RAM, and sneak more in as money allows
I have no need at all of fast graphics

Can anyone help me choose a motherboard? I was looking at a Skulltrail one, but it seems that I'd be paying through the nose for fast graphics support that I don't need. I'm not sure of the various merits of the 5000 and 5400 chipsets. Do either of them allow overclocking in conjunction with the Xeons listed above? It would be nice to pay for a E 5440 and run it at the speed of a 5450.

 
Hum.. other than a Skulltrail it seems that this one is the only other one that you can O/C:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131272

But you are going to have to be extremely careful if you are going to be doing number crunching and you'll need to test it extremely well. I would not recommend O/Cing a machine for something like that.

Also the board has mixed reviews and seems some what limited since it only a workstation board.
 
Thanks for the reply. A supplier recommended a server board (Supermicro X7DAE) which used the Intel 5000X northbridge, as opposed to the 5400 used on the Asus you recommend and the Skulltrail. Any idea of the difference/advantages/disadvantages of these two chipsets? I read a rather disparaging review of skulltrail on tomshardware, but I haven't seen any reviews of these other ones. So I'm a bit stuck for info on which to base a decision.
 
I'm really not sure about the chipsets myself. It's sad that there are not many review sites for server hardware(at least from what I've seen), but what I assume is most companies that need it just go to Dell, HP, etc. to buy their hardware rather that building the systems themselves. So they just use whatever they've got and what they say is the best.
 
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