Elyograg.org System Hardware

[[Elyograg.org_System_Hardware_History|Historical Hardware]]

I never needed much in the way of hardware for my server until recently.  It was always a pretty lean system, with not a lot of memory or CPU power.  Unfortunately, when the time came that I needed to add a remotely accessible GUI and a new application to the mix, it became too much for the hardware.  There was a fair amount of new disk I/O, but mostly the CPU just couldn't keep up.

The new application needed a fair amount of disk space, and the only storage I had that was big enough was an external USB drive, which only adds to the resource requirements.  Click the link below to see information on my previous servers.

Thanks to some generous donations from friends who rely on me to host their Internet presence, I obtained some new hardware and have built a new server, which has been named frodo.  Here is what I've got:

* Old 2U rackmount case with 460W PSU
* ASRock M3A785GXH/128M motherboard
* AMD Phenom II X3 705e processor
* 2x2GB DDR3-1600 RAM
* two 1TB SATA2 drives, mirrored

The motherboard has everything required for a server, including onboard video, a strict requirement in this case.  The existing riser card for the 2U case is incompatible with the new board, which means I cannot use expansion cards without buying a new case and power supply.

Internally, the CPU is a full quad-core Phenom II, but sold as a triple-core.  The X3 CPU models allow AMD to sell chips with a few bad components that would otherwise just get junked.  Not all of the chips are actually bad, though - some of them are perfectly functional chips that have just been sold to a lower market segment.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that as many as 70% of them are fully functional.  The motherboard BIOS has the ability to re-enable these cores.  In addition to doing this, I have overclocked the CPU from 2.5 to 3.0Ghz.  Before overclocking, the CPU was running at about 29 degrees centigrade, so I feel comfortable with it.  The server lives in my basement, which is cool even in the middle of summer.