[Randal Lanning]

Hi all,

I have an interesting situation. My brother has asked me if I could build something akin to a Frankenstein's monster. I'm having trouble locating anything along these lines.

He's wanting a motherboard that will handle two I7 chips (he originally wanted four until he found out the price in chips alone).

Does anyone know where I can find such a thing, if it indeed exists?

Thanks,

Randal

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You want a dual processor board, this is NOT the same as a dual-core. A dual-core is two brains on one chip, a dual-processor system is two physical processors.

They probably do exist as server boards so if that is the case they will NOT be cheap.
I found a board called the Intel 5520SC, but there's no details of it on Intel's website so I know no more about it unfortunately.

Surely the cost of doing this alone makes it kind of pointless? The devaluation on it will be so steep it's untrue.

[Neil Jones]

You want a dual processor board, this is NOT the same as a dual-core. A dual-core is two brains on one chip, a dual-processor system is two physical processors.

They probably do exist as server boards so if that is the case they will NOT be cheap.
I found a board called the Intel 5520SC, but there's no details of it on Intel's website so I know no more about it unfortunately.

Surely the cost of doing this alone makes it kind of pointless? The devaluation on it will be so steep it's untrue.

[Randal Lanning]

Pricing is a part of it. Namely if it is too expensive, I need to tell him that. I understand the difference between dual core and dual processor although I'm not sure he does. I've had a talk with him since I wrote this and I think a dual processor I7 will be more than enough for his needs.

A server board is something I hadn't considered and wow... that will be expensive! I think I need to talk to him again as there is no way this is going to fit within the budget.

Thanks for the help and if you do think of other boards that might work besides the Intel one, let me know.

Also, in case he decides to go the single processor route, what would be a good motherboard? There won't be any overclocking for it. It's for multimedia / video mixing.

Thanks again,

Randal

[rshaffer61]

Here you go guys
NewEgg minimum price for a board is 255.00 USD for a board like you are talking about.
High is almost 600.00 USD

[Randal Lanning]

Thanks RShaffer, we're getting closer.

All of these seem to work with Intel Xeon types however. It's a step in the right direction and that's good. At least they are within the budget.

Randal

[james_8970]

May I ask why he'd want a build with that much processing power? Unless he is running many virtual machines, wanting to make a server to offload CPU intensive tasks or doing video encoding (none of which I'm aware of that can utilize more than 4 cores), this doesn't seem worth while, other than bragging rights. It may be worthwhile to look into other alternatives like seeing if CUDA is possible to offload CPU intensive applications, if this is the reason for such a build. This would be a far more cost effective solution.
James

[Randal Lanning]

Hi James,

He decided to drop it about two days ago. He's got financial concerns so he's not having me build the machine.

I did discuss it with him and it was pretty much to have a fast video making machine. I explained to him that the i7 was a quad core and would be plenty enough to do what he needs with probably several gigabytes of memory and a good graphics card, perhaps two combined via SLI.

He did agree that what he was wanting was overkill. Besides, I couldn't make it within his budget with his initial request and barely made it within my recommendations.

So to sum it up, he doesn't need it that powerful after all but can't afford to do it now anyway. He's looking at getting laid-off just like I have been for over six months now. The recession robbed me of making a few extra bucks it seems. *Sigh*

Randal