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Uncle Markie out and about.

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Tue
30
Nov '10

The Damn Thing Is A Monster

I love a day that is jam packed with even some things that pay the bills. Meeting prep in the morning then two meetings in the early afternoon – guess what, added another title to my hat for one of my projects – prototype fabricator. Who knew that being familiar with sewing elastic would come in handy in the business world.

After the eastside meetings it was off to by supplies, pack all the Christmas presents for shipping to New Mexico, then off to the apartment to pick up what is supposed to be the new living room computer.

I guess I didn’t read the SIZE specs on this beast.

The box – compare to water heater in utility room — you should have seen me getting it in the Miata for the trip home:

The machine itself – yes, that is a monitor sitting on top of it:

The damn thing is 28″ long! Not to mention 18″ wide and less than 2″ thick. Gonna be interesting finding a place to mount it short of a rack.

The specs on the machine:

IBM eServer xSeries 336 Dual Xeon 3.0 GHz 1U Server

  • General Features:
  • No Operating System!
  • 1U form factor
  • Two (2) Xeon 3.0 GHz single-core processors
  • 800 MHz FSB speed, 1 MB L2 cache per CPU
  • Intel E7520 chipsetĀ 
  • 5 GB DDR2 ECC RAM (16 GB max)
  • Two (2) 73.4 GB 15,000 RPM U320 SCSI hard drives
  • Slim DVD-ROM drive
  • No floppy drive
  • Integrated ATI Radeon 7000 graphics chipset
  • Integrated dual 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
  • Diagnostic LEDs
  • Integrated RAID 1 supportĀ 
  • One (1) 585-Watt power supply w/redundancy option

Drive bays:

  • Two (2) 3.5-inch drive days (both occupied)
  • Slim drive bay for DVD drive (one occupied)

Expansions Slots:

  • One (1) PCI-X slot
  • Eight (8) 240-pin DIMM slots (six occupied)
  • Two (2) SATA ports

Front I/O Ports:

  • One (1) USB port

Rear I/O Ports:

  • Two (2) PS/2 ports
  • Two (2) USB ports
  • One (1) 9-pin Serial port
  • One (1) 15-pin VGA port
  • One (1) System management port
  • Two (2) RJ-45 Ethernet ports

Power Specifications:

  • 585-Watt power supply (100-240V ~ 50/60HZ 8.3A/4.0A)

But really — $159.99 which included shipping a 43 pound box. Dual processors, 5GB RAM – this thing in lightning fast with Windows 7 Ultimate installed on it. Added Office 2010 and the Adobe Creative Suite 4 which Photoshop loads in record time, might have to move this into the office and turn it into the graphics machine. Guess I’ll have to get Graf over to figure out why the second 80GB drive isn’t being recognized by Windows – shows on boot.

A burrito from the truck at the Shell station for dinner while I configured the new beast and packed for Vegas – would love to see the TSA expression if they open my second checked (both free as MVP Gold) bag… 25# of meat and a full-length beaded gown and shoes.

[229.4]

3 Comments »

3 Responses to “The Damn Thing Is A Monster”

  1. Curt Says:

    Can you squeeze that speed-monster into an ultra-slim, small notebook format for me? I’m guessing that HP doesn’t get near that fast, even on their gaming models.

  2. Daniel Says:

    Wow! That’s a hell of a server for $159.99 with shipping included. Where did you find that deal? I paid almost 2 grand for a similar server less than 18 months ago. And it didn’t have 15K SCSI drives!

  3. markso Says:

    For $219.99 you get 4GB, but the 3.6 dual Xeon chips… and a CDRW/ROM — click on the geeks.com link on the right hand side, go to Desktop Computers, then scroll down to servers… and they have cheaper/slower ones as well.

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