Mark,

I don't know if things are much different at your part of world (normaly
better), but I have built few dual Xeon systems (in Australia), and here is
what I feel.

1)Xeon mobo does not fit into any standard case, not even the biggest full
tower case, you must use Xeon cases that usually come with Xeon power
supply.  The case will be very different from our normal cases, you install
the mobo on one side of case, and everything else at other side, there will
be a big 9cm case fan at left hand side of case and you will have to make
sure its air flow directed to air chennal on Xeon heatsink (I should say
make sure you get the heatsink air chennal in right direction) and they are
at same direction.  depending on the mobo, you may either screw the intel
heatsink on the case (on a metal board) or use the heatsink come with mobo
(ASUS does this, it doesn't use Intel holes, so Intel heatsink won't fit).
I didn't work with supermicro mobo, but I had bad experience with one of
Tyan RDRAM board that its design won't allow Intel fan installed (I had to
mod the fan held).  So watch out on this issue.  And from what I've seen,
the heatsink/fan unit come with ASUS mobo doesn't have good quality as boxed
Intel unit (Intel unit uses copper base/fin, and has better fan, ASUS unit
looks very cheap), so I will be worried if you are going to use 2.4G chip.

2) I'd recommend Tyan DDR board rather than ASUS.

3) As I remember, XP should see 4 CPUs, and I'm pretty sure win2k server
should see 4 CPUs (that's what I've done last time).  HT worked pretty well
as far as I can tell.

4) last but not least, the Xeon case is very large and heavy (not tall, but
large), so make sure you have room for it (somewhere on desktop is not a
good idea, you'll see why once you get it).

Jun Qian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Rode" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 3:21 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Dual Xeon Workstation


> I am considering building myself a dual Xeon Workstation. Either a ASUS,
or
> SuperMicro board, Xeon P4 2.4 Ghz chips, Crucial registered DDR.  I know a
> few PCBUILD subscribers have built such a workstation. I would appreciate
> hearing any real world feedback, as to performance, or surprises you had
> after getting up and running, warnings, things you would do different.
What
> operating system you are using, XP Pro, or Win2K Pro or server, and how
has
> Hyperthreading worked out. In XP does the PC see two or four processors?
>

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