[Beowulf] Intro question

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 02:35:26PM -0800, Greg Lindahl wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 05:12:09PM -0500, Robert G. Brown wrote:
> 
> > The usual rule is that 1U nodes will cost a bit more than equivalently
> > equipped desktops, primarily because the 1U cases cost more and because
> > one has to work a bit harder to ensure that e.g. the CPUs stay cool and
> > so on.

Our staple box is the SunFire X2100 M2, which sells for about 400 EUR
sans VAT (kit has 1.8 GHz dual-core Opteron, 512 MByte DDR2, no disk).
I've measured 115 W at idle with 2x TByte SATA disk and 8 GByte DDR2 RAM
which is even better than what Sun says
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/M2calc/index.jsp#calc
 
> The single-socket 2U nodes that I buy cost the same as our developer
> desktops, which have a somewhat expensive case in order to be quiet.
> Since he's putting these into a hosting facility, it's likely that
> having 1U boxes doesn't gain him anything... the limit is generally
> power, not space. And 2U boxes are quieter and more reliable.