ok, so i bought a dell 2950 for $50. it have 8gb of ram, dual quad core 2.66mhz processors, power supplies, etc. only thing missing is harddrives and video card (though i dont think it needs one). i would like to upgrade the ammount and speed of the ram, and of course get a video card and harddrive or 2. it has 8 ram slots, so the more the merrier i say for ram, though i am tryin to keep this cheap as possible. would an ssd (or 2 lol) work and be good for this system? can i just throw windows 7 ultimate 64 bit on the harddrive and run or is there any hitches?
I'm pretty sure you can just throw windows on it and have it run fine, though bear in mind that windows 7 home basic and premium will only recognize one physical processor.
ill be running windows 7 ultimate 64 bit. does this board just use regular sata connections though, or is it some weird special harddrive connector? i have been getting mixed answers. what about the ram? that im pretty sure takes a different ddr2 ram than standard. i would like to run at least 32gb, but 64gb would be awesome (at 800mhz or higher if possible).
2950s Do not have any issues with using win 7. Most of the hardware drivers is within the windows install disk.
The Backplane for the HDDs is SAS, although SATA drives can connect directly into it with no operation issues. However you are limited to only using 750GB disks. (That is what is officially supported anyways, I do not know if higher capacities will work)
The System takes DDR2 ECC RAM and only support 533MHz and 600MHz RAM speeds. The system will only take 32GB RAM using 4GB DIMMs.
You are going to face issues getting a GPU into this system. Only single slot cards will work if you are connecting to the 8x PCI-e bridge. The Riser cards will require modification, as they are all 8x physical. Cutting away the end (providing you do not damage the pins) will allow you to get 16x cards in. Putting a Dual slot card in will force you to use the 4x PCI-e connector. Plus you have issues with providing axillary power if the GPU requires it.
Servers are not meant to be used as desktop machines and you will want to play with the BMC to prevent the fans from rapidly ramping up under any load, unless you like the idea of going deaf.