First post, by feipoa
- Rank
- l33t++
A local web-based company in town was getting rid of some old computer hardware and I ended up taking the whole lot of computers, servers, hubs/switches, etc.
I kept all the motherboards, CD-ROMs, PSUs, RAM, LAN cards, CPUs, HDDs, etc. I now have about 4 dozen motherboards. The only item I am really interested in are the dual PIII-Tualatin IBM rackmount servers, the eserver xseries 330. I have 7 of them. They all seem to function, but I am waiting for the C2T cable to arrive. They have 2 PCI-X slots which can accompany the 2 expansion cards, even in a 1U chassis. I am curious to see the memory performance of these IBM servers and hope that my Matrox Parhelia PCI-X card works with Windows drivers. The other PCI-X slot would be for a sound card.
I am wondering if the P4 motherboards/CPUs are worth holding into for another 20 years in hopes of selling them for some value. Do you think 20 years is enough? 30 years? Or was the P4 era so expansive that there will always be hardware from this period kicking around?
My list of motherboards is as follows,
Aopen MX46-800N (4 units)
Intel D845GEBV2 (8 units)
Gigabyte GA-8IG1000MK (1 unit)
Gigabyte GA-8PE800 (1 unit)
Gigabyte GA-8S661FXM-775 (1 unit)
Asus P5S800-VM (1 unit)
Gigabyte GA-7VM400AM (1 unit)
Unknown 8S661FXMTIU (1 unit)
Gigabyte GA-7VKMP (1 unit)
Elitegroup K7VMM+ (1 unit)
Intel E210882 (1 unit)
Gigabyte 8I915AE (1 unit)
Asus P5GL-MX (1 unit)
Intel Entry Server S845WD1-E (8 units)
Intel Entry Server S875WP1-E (1 unit)
List of rack mount servers as follows,
SuperMicro SuperServer 5013C-m [motherboard: P4SCI] (2 units)
Dell PowerEdge 750 (1 unit)
IBM eServer xSeries 306m – dual P4 HT (2 units)
IBM eServer xSeries 336 – dual Xeon - U320 RAID (1 unit)
IBM eServer xSeries 330 – dual PIII-1.4 - U160 SCSI (7 units)
The problem with 1U rack mount servers was that they are loud because they don't have the luxury of fans with large diameters. To make up for that, they used several 1" tall fans at high RPMs. The dual PIII are quieter because they require less cooling.
My next question is, if I were to select 2 motherboards to build systems around (for web browsing), which two would you select? I kept 2 of the least ugly black desktop cases. These are the first black-coloured desktop cases I have ever owned.
Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.