Brag: Intel® Xeon® Processor X5660 is my poison!

One lazy day (yesterday), I was forced to have longer time to stay in the office. Not that I like it, nor do I have an option but more so because I need to. Wifey's got to attend an event and I can choose to spend my time going with her but I rather let her enjoy her time with her friends since it's a company event. Then there's also an option for me to just go at to the movie theater while waiting for her. Or I could do some loitering around the malls. None of them really interest me, so I told wifey that I'll just stay in the office and play with the hardware.



So now I got some time. My friend have his server stuff laying here and there and he needs help "keeping them tidy" i.e. I can assemble them parts instead of having it scattered all over the lab.

I received two Intel® Xeon® Processor X5660, sporting 6cores each, and with HT, it means 12threads. And since these babies are tru-blu server cpu (DP part) that means I got 24threads of pure awesomeness in front of me waiting to be unleashed.

So after wiping off the drool, I quickly grab a chassis here and a motherboard there, and a RAM here and PSU there and a couple of hard drives. After having complete failure, mostly because I don't know much about server hardware, I manage to install Windows 7. Yeah, I know it's a server but I can't have my Win2k8 work on this machine since Win2k8 has been bugging me to have it activated because the license expired. Bah, at least Win7 allowed me to install even without any CD-KEY.

Anyway, I got it installed and Win7 looks crap with the integrated graphics. I settled for an nVidia 7600 because I can't add any good video card since the PCIe slot doesn't allow for high-end graphics card because of many tall components and how some VRM heatsinks are installed.

Another problem I ran into is that despite me having many RAM modules, it's waste since I can only install 32bit OS. And while I know there are ways to circumvent it, time is not on my side. I just need the darn thing running, and looking good, and at least, usable (i.e. browse internet and view some videos). Unfortunately, the server board does not come with audio chipset (makes sense) so I never got to play any media. But hey, it works and I can do Facebook games. I was not able to do any benchmark though.

All in all, before I went home yesterday, I manage to bring the baby up and running (which is quite a feat for me). I am not able to do anything beyond basic browsing and flash game, but I guess that would be schedule for the next time I got some free time on my hands....