How many of you guys out there recycle old servers (or whatever else) as desktops? The hardware quality is miles ahead of most consumer-grade desktops, but when you use something for a purpose that it wasn't intended, it can be a rocky road to travel. But the results can be very interesting.
I have my own IT consulting/PC repair/anything it takes to make money in a small town, business, and I had been searching for a good all-purpose rig for my shop. I needed a machine that does everything imaginable, a sort of PC Swiss-Army-Knife if you will, I got to thinking, and this is what I did...
Dell PowerEdge 2900 gen-2
2x 3.2ghz Xeon dual-cores, basically Pentium-D Extremes labeled as Xeons
12gb of DDR2 RAM
4x 500gb 7200rpm SATA drives in RAID 1+0 (1tb capacity) on a PERC 5i controller
an old Creative X-FI "Fatality" edition sound card (has to fix a PCI-X slot)
a nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS video card that I cut to fit an 8x pci-e slot (really works)
dual gigabit ethernet ports (bridged)
Windows 7 Pro 64 (with a FreeBSD VM in VirtualBox of course)
lots of spliced wires to power all this stuff
I literally cut the connector on the video card down to half its length to fit in an 8x/4x slot, and it works perfectly (at 8x of course.) I also found that my sound card choices were limited because of the faster PCI slots that servers use. I used a USB sound card at first.
I also realized that I had to splice a lot of wires to power the video and sound card, as servers aren't exactly bristling with Molex connectors.
The disks are standard 500gb 7200 SATA drives, available anywhere. RAID 10 is awesome but expensive. I never have to worry about losing data though. I can always add two more pares of them when they fill up.
Sometimes I get some weird errors once in a while, but it always works itself out.
All of the drivers for Server 2008 R2 work fine for Windows 7.
It's not without its drawbacks however. This thing makes my shop quite warm, and it sounds like a jet airplane taking off as well, so I wouldn't recommend this for your house.
But it will handle anything I throw at it. It even plays most newer games well. The 8800 GTS is an older video card, but it still rocks. I just couldn't bring myself to cut up a brand new $300 video card.
I have 2 cpus, so I can dedicate an entire cpu to my FreeBSD VM!!!
Hopefully the pair of Harpertown quad-cores I ordered off eBay will be here soon. That should be a big improvement. However even with the two dual-cores my Windows 7 cpu score is a 7.0! My old Phenom X4 desktop has the same score.
I just wanted to put this out there for everyone as this is a cheap and easy solution for those of us that need a reliable development machine or even a gaming rig. It's rather hot and loud. But the reliability is far greater than a typical desktop.
On an ending note I also have and old SunFire v880 (2x 750 UltraSparc IIIs) running FreeBSD that is basically a novelty (as well as an very expensive space-heater and a very heavy table.) It's fun to play with every once in a while. But I can barely talk over it when it's running, so I don't fire it up much nowadays except to show people. Maybe some day I will find a better use for it. FreeBSD works great on older Sparcs, I even have X on it.
I have also made servers out of desktops too, but with nowhere near as good of results.
Before the flaming and trolling starts, I am very aware that this isn't necessarily a good idea (specific hardware is designed for a specific purpose and driver and BIOS issues are going to occur.)
I will also add that FreeBSD is a Swiss-Army-Knife of an OS, an the possibilities are only limited to ones imagination.
So I have started this thread for other people to share their Frankenstein creations.
Happy modding.
I have my own IT consulting/PC repair/anything it takes to make money in a small town, business, and I had been searching for a good all-purpose rig for my shop. I needed a machine that does everything imaginable, a sort of PC Swiss-Army-Knife if you will, I got to thinking, and this is what I did...
Dell PowerEdge 2900 gen-2
2x 3.2ghz Xeon dual-cores, basically Pentium-D Extremes labeled as Xeons
12gb of DDR2 RAM
4x 500gb 7200rpm SATA drives in RAID 1+0 (1tb capacity) on a PERC 5i controller
an old Creative X-FI "Fatality" edition sound card (has to fix a PCI-X slot)
a nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS video card that I cut to fit an 8x pci-e slot (really works)
dual gigabit ethernet ports (bridged)
Windows 7 Pro 64 (with a FreeBSD VM in VirtualBox of course)
lots of spliced wires to power all this stuff
I literally cut the connector on the video card down to half its length to fit in an 8x/4x slot, and it works perfectly (at 8x of course.) I also found that my sound card choices were limited because of the faster PCI slots that servers use. I used a USB sound card at first.
I also realized that I had to splice a lot of wires to power the video and sound card, as servers aren't exactly bristling with Molex connectors.
The disks are standard 500gb 7200 SATA drives, available anywhere. RAID 10 is awesome but expensive. I never have to worry about losing data though. I can always add two more pares of them when they fill up.
Sometimes I get some weird errors once in a while, but it always works itself out.
All of the drivers for Server 2008 R2 work fine for Windows 7.
It's not without its drawbacks however. This thing makes my shop quite warm, and it sounds like a jet airplane taking off as well, so I wouldn't recommend this for your house.
But it will handle anything I throw at it. It even plays most newer games well. The 8800 GTS is an older video card, but it still rocks. I just couldn't bring myself to cut up a brand new $300 video card.
I have 2 cpus, so I can dedicate an entire cpu to my FreeBSD VM!!!
Hopefully the pair of Harpertown quad-cores I ordered off eBay will be here soon. That should be a big improvement. However even with the two dual-cores my Windows 7 cpu score is a 7.0! My old Phenom X4 desktop has the same score.
I just wanted to put this out there for everyone as this is a cheap and easy solution for those of us that need a reliable development machine or even a gaming rig. It's rather hot and loud. But the reliability is far greater than a typical desktop.
On an ending note I also have and old SunFire v880 (2x 750 UltraSparc IIIs) running FreeBSD that is basically a novelty (as well as an very expensive space-heater and a very heavy table.) It's fun to play with every once in a while. But I can barely talk over it when it's running, so I don't fire it up much nowadays except to show people. Maybe some day I will find a better use for it. FreeBSD works great on older Sparcs, I even have X on it.
I have also made servers out of desktops too, but with nowhere near as good of results.
Before the flaming and trolling starts, I am very aware that this isn't necessarily a good idea (specific hardware is designed for a specific purpose and driver and BIOS issues are going to occur.)
I will also add that FreeBSD is a Swiss-Army-Knife of an OS, an the possibilities are only limited to ones imagination.
So I have started this thread for other people to share their Frankenstein creations.
Happy modding.