Re: Overclockable Server Motherboards

General Schvantzkopf <schvantzkopf@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
What I
care about is compute speed, memory size and stability. Any
recommendations will be appreciated.

Is there any support for overclocking on a server motherboard. There are
a couple of SuperMicro motherboards that look good, the MBD-X7DWA-N with
8 FB-DIMM sockets and the MBD-X7DWA-N+ that has a whopping 16 FB_DIMM
sockets. Can these boards be overclocked?

We have a dual-Xeon 5160 box with 24GB of RAM based on the SuperMicro
X7DBE+ and are happy with it. The only funny thing is that, when we
turn it on, it does not show any sign of working for about one minute.

Concerning RAM, I recommend that you avoid FB-DIMMs if you can:
FB-DIMMs consume much more power (our machine consumes 280W when
idle), and require special cooling (we have a 5300rpm 80mm fan for our
FB-DIMMs, otherwise the machine would not work). Instead, go for
registered DIMMs (e.g. PC5300R instead of PC5300F DIMMs); if you want
to use a dual-Xeon board, that would mean the 5100 chipset.
Supermicro seems to have only a 6-DIMM board (X7DCL-i), whereas Tyan
has an 8-DIMM board in the Tempest i5100X (S5375); you might also want
to look at what Intel has to offer.

Concerning overclocking, there's little demand for that in servers, so
server boards usually do not support it. Looking at the manual of the
X7DBE+, I see no way to overclock the FSB. You can set the
multiplier, but that's probably locked on the CPU. One thing that may
be possible is to get a motherboard with a FSB1600, buy CPUs with
FSB1333, and try to run it at FSB1600. That would overclock a 3GHz
CPU to 3.6GHz. Unfortunately the 5100 chipset I recommended above
seems to be limited to FSB1333, and FSB1600 seems to be limited to the
5400 chipset, which requires FB-DIMMs.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
.

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