My Dream Machine (I hope this is possible)
 

After running a few more beta tests on the software I need to host, I ran into a problem. It's insanely slow. I got it down from 35 hours to about 12 for phase one. Phase two (it hasn't completed yet) is looking to run at about 48 hours. I did some loop-unrolling and multi-threading on it to help with the processing time, but the test machine isn't a dual core/processor machine.

My original idea what to go with a dual processor. Then all I could find was dual core processors. I finally came across the Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/A8R32-MVP) which supports two Athlon 64 X2s. This would be great for the server that runs the programs as they are multi-threaded. Would running two dual core CPUs with CentOS be a reasonable set up for a processor-intensive system? Throw in some Crucial PC3200 RAM and a couple SATA hard drives, would I be good to go in a 2U case?

Two Athlon X2's would mean 4 way processing. That machine would be monster. :) I am sure it would handle the most processor intense applications. How much ram do you plan on using? Are you planing to run Raid 1,5, or 10? Or are you just planning on running 1 hard drive and then a backup drive? As long as everything fits in a 2u case I don't see a problem. ;)

NOOOOOOOOO! It's not a dual cpu board, it's a dual PCI boards...that apparently makes it acceptable to list in the dual mobo section of PriceWatch. The best it can do is a dual core Athlon. It look impossible (unless I go with Opteron) to get dual core dual CPUs.

Sorry DomainerZone, I miss read what you said. :o My wife was talking to me and I was in a hurry. Athlon dual cores are the closest thing you can get to two processors. Your setup should handle anything you can throw at it. I am thinking about buying a dual core myself. :)

Is dual core good enough? I will spring for the dual core-dual Opterons, if I have too. The thing that sucks about that is the memory I need for the mobo. That crap is expensive, too.

That would be a nice machine, but the downfall is, it will take you a load of money to get it running. Anyways goodluck.

Well I do not know what type of websites you plan on running. But probably 50%+ of the web servers out there are single processor (single core) servers. This server is just a single core P4 3.0GHZ with Hyper Threading. But it has 2gigs of ram. It should handle 300+ users on the forum with ease. I would say ram is probably one of the most important things in a server. If this server had 512mb of ram it may only hold 100 users on the forum. The more ram a server has the better MySQL is going to run.

Depending on what you plan to do I would start out with a dual core processor and at least 2GB of ram and no more than 4GB of ram. Depending if your going to use a desktop motherboard or not ram should be cheap. 2GB of DDR 400 ram cost me about $180, money well spent!

The website is going to serve information, but it has to do several hundreds of thousandsd of calculations to come up with the info. Running on it my computer now (AMD Athlon XP 1900+, 1GB pc3200 Kingston ram), it takes over 24 hours to complete. The problem is that in 24 hours, the set of calculations changes and it has to start over. If it can't finish in 24 hours, it's screwed.