Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/982
AMD Athlon MP 2200+ Server Roundup - September 2002
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 5, 2002 3:04 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
As AMD's most successful desktop microprocessor ever, the Athlon has enjoyed an incredibly number of victories in the consumer market. Somewhat ironically, one of the Athlon's major strengths is in an area where it has not fared nearly as well - the enterprise market.
The Athlon's powerful execution units, very large L1 cache and short pipeline make it an excellent CPU for servers. The multiprocessor architecture of the Athlon MP including its point-to-point bus protocol also lends itself quite well to a high performance database or web serving environment.
Even before we were able to put our Athlon performance theories to the test, we took a risk and migrated our Pentium III Xeon web servers to single processor Thunderbird solutions. Approximately one year later, AMD released the 760MP chipset and truly unleashed the power of the Athlon CPU as a server solution.
Despite the Athlon MP's earth-shattering performance in web and database server applications, the CPU saw disappointing adoption by the market. None of the tier 1 OEMs touched AMD's first 2P (two processor) solution thus forcing the Austin based company to turn to much smaller manufacturers to push their new platform.
The Athlon's excellent performance in FPU-heavy scientific applications have given AMD more marketshare than even Intel in a number of niche distributed computing cluter environments. The scholarly and scientific community quickly realized that the amount of performance you can get out of a 1U 2P Athlon MP server easily eclipsed anything in the price range, thus becoming one of the few areas of success for the platform.
With corporate budgets being cut as a result of the current economy and IT departments feeling more comfortable with the Athlon MP platform now that it has been around for well over a year, more and more businesses feel comfortable considering AMD. All of the talk surrounding AMD's Hammer as a server solution has also brought AMD's current server line some positive press, as it portrays AMD as a capable server-CPU manufacturer.
And where there is a demand, supply is sure to follow; when we first looked at the Athlon MP, Appro was the only server manufacturer that was able to deliver a first-class 1U system based on the platform. Today, there are over 11 manufacturers that had solutions ready for AMD's launch of the Athlon MP 2200+ last month.
We've already looked at the 2200+ when it made its desktop debut over two months ago, and with no more than a 66MHz increase in clock speed it didn't make sense for us to waste time benchmarking the new processor. Instead, we looked up some of the manufacturers of Athlon MP server solutions and decided to assemble a little roundup of their MP 2200+ offerings.
Currently all our web servers are Athlon MP based and we're migrating all of our database servers to AMD's platform as well, so as far as we're concerned the Athlon MP has proved its performance and reliability to us in a mission-critical server environment. The only question that remains is which manufacturer builds the best Athlon MP server, and that's exactly what we're here today to answer.
Athlon MP 2200+
As you can probably guess, the Athlon MP 2200+ is the first and currently the only Athlon MP processor based on AMD's 0.13-micron Thoroughbred core. The current samples of the Athlon MP are built on the original Thoroughbred-A core as the Thoroughbred-B production is currently devoted to the higher volume desktop market. AMD will eventually transition the Athlon MPs to the new Thoroughbred-B core but that will be a few months down the road, closer to the release of the Athlon MP 2400+ and 2600+.
Click to Enlarge - Athlon XP left, Athlon MP right
The Athlon MP 2200+ is virtually identical to the Athlon XP 2200+ with a couple of minor exceptions:
1) The "golden-bridges" on the surface of the CPU's substrate are not cut with trenches and thus are easier to unlock. AMD doesn't really have to worry about server manufacturers attempting to unlock and overclock these CPUs as reliability is a major selling point and sacrificing that is a definite turn-off. For those end users that wish to purchase Athlon MP parts to unlock and overclock them, the CPUs carry a pretty hefty price premium over their XP counterpart which outweighs any performance benefit you'd gain from overclocking.
2) The Athlon MP must go through AMD's 2P validation processes which also contributes to the delayed release after its desktop counterparts.
The architecture of the Athlon MP 2200+ is identical to its desktop and server predecessors; we'll spare you the details but if you aren't already intimately familiar with it here are some of our previous articles covering the various facets of the Athlon MP CPU and platform architecture:
The Motherboards
Although Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers began producing 760MPX based solutions for the server and workstation markets towards the end of last year, there's really only one manufacturer that is consistently chosen for most Athlon MP server designs - Tyan.
Tyan's success in the Athlon MP market comes from their extensive experience manufacturing high-end server and workstation boards, primarily for Intel platforms. Just as the Intel name is more trusted when it comes to server CPUs, the Tyan brand garners more respect when it comes to server motherboards. Tyan is also one of the only manufacturers to offer a 1U compliant 760MP solution which, as you can tell by the number of 1U servers in this roundup, is a very important characteristic.
There are currently two motherboards in Tyan's 760MPX lineup - the Thunder K7X and the Tiger MPX.
The Thunder K7X is by far the most popular in 1U and 2U server solutions because of the fact that it is optimized for low-profile environments. The motherboard's DIMM slots are mounted on the PCB at a 45 degree angle to allow stacked DIMMs to be installed while still being able to fit in a 1U form factor.
The board also features dual on-board Ethernet controllers, on-board SCSI (optional) and on-board video; because of its highly integrated nature, the Thunder K7X can function in most environments without any additional add-in cards. With most 1U cases only offering room for 0 or 1 expansion slots, the Thunder K7X fits the bill perfectly.
The obvious downside to the Thunder K7X is its extremely high price tag; while it doesn't retail for anywhere near the original $600 price tag, you can expect the motherboard to contribute around $350 - $450 to the price of a server.
Tyan's Tiger MPX is the entry-level 760MPX solution, designed to offer basic 2P functionality but without the frills of the Thunder K7X. The DIMM slots on the Tiger MPX are not angled so stacked DIMMs will not work in a 1U solution, although low-profile DIMMs will still be able to fit. The board has no on-board video or Ethernet so a riser will be necessary in 1U/2U solutions; this is why you'll rarely see the Tiger MPX used in anything below a 4U chassis since there are usually not enough expansion slots offered in 1U/2U cases to accommodate a video card, Ethernet and SCSI controller(s).
The benefit to the Tiger MPX's stripped down nature is a vastly reduced price tag, only contributing between $100 - $200 to the overall price of a server.
Because the vast majority of server manufacturers will standardize on one of these two motherboards (mostly the Thunder K7X), the basic feature set of these servers will be virtually identical from one solution to the next.
Tyan also provides their own System Monitor program that will monitor the temperatures and voltages of CPUs, memory and voltage regulators along with the rotation speed of fans. Should anything drop below acceptable margins you can tell Tyan's System Monitor to automatically shutdown or reboot the server or simply trigger an alarm.
The remote management features provided by Tyan's boards are not nearly as comprehensive as what Intel's Enterprise Platform Solutions Division (EPSD) can deliver in their solutions; but as is often the case, you get what you pay for and these Athlon MP servers are much more affordable than similar performing Intel offerings.
The Cases
For this roundup we focused on four specific chassis sizes - 1U, 2U and 4U. For those of you that aren't familiar with the terminology, rackmount chassis are measured according to their height - or the number of height units consumed in a rack.
A 1U chassis is about 1.75" tall, a 2U measures around 3" and as you can guess a 4U chassis is approximately 7" high. The benefit of going to a larger case is obviously that you get more options for expansion, the downside is that it takes up more room and thus ends up costing more in a colocation facility.
Racks can vary in size with a good sized rack usually around 40U tall; you can easily see the benefits of going to a smaller chassis when you divide that 40U rack by the number of 1U, 2U and 4U servers you can put in there. Being able to squeeze 40 1U servers is much more appealing than the measly 10 you would be able to accommodate with only 4U boxes. Colocation customers are usually billed a base fee depending on how much rackspace they use, so the denser you can get the better.
For a good comparison here are the three very common sizes stacked on top of one another:
From
top to bottom - 1U, 2U & 4U
Click to Enlarge
From top to bottom - 1U, 2U & 4U
Performance
We've already mentioned that the majority of Athlon MP servers are based on Tyan motherboards and thus they all offer relatively similar performance, especially when configured with the same CPUs (Athlon MP 2200+ processors in this case). The only other real performance characteristics are Network and Disk I/O performance which can vary from one server to the next depending on how you decide to configure it. Since virtually any server can be upgraded to a SCSI RAID setup or a faster network controller, evaluating these servers based on those performance characteristics isn't valid either.
Instead we decided to focus mainly on what the individual manufacturer contributes to the total package; we evaluated the "performance" of these servers based on chassis design, build quality, expansion potential, ease of repair/replacement of hardware, price, cooling and other such factors. After all, we're not evaluating Seagate's hard drives here, we're comparing servers.
For more information on how the Athlon MP processor performs, take a look at our most recent server tests.
APPRO 1124S - 1U
Appro's 1124 is a very familiar sight to us at AnandTech, mainly because all of our webservers are running off of an earlier version of the Appro 1124 platform. The 1124 is a 1U server, thus limiting its use to web serving, distributed computing farms, and entry-level database serving applications.
The front of the chassis features two switches - one to reset the system and one to power it on/off; both switches are recessed so they cannot be accidentally hit while fumbling around in a rack. There are a total of six LEDs on the front of the chassis to the right of the power and reset switches; there's a single disk activity light, two network activity lights, two error lights and a single blue power LED.
Just under the row of switches and LEDs are the four 3.5" drive bays that the 1124 provides for expansion. Our sample had a 3.5" floppy drive installed in the leftmost bay however you can request that the floppy drive be left out in favor of another removable hard drive bay.
Unless otherwise specified, the four expansion bays are populated with removable hard drive carriers. Our particular server was the SCSI version (1124S) and thus the backplane is setup to work with 80-pin SCA SCSI drives; the IDE version (1124i) also allows for removable drives.
A single lever allows you to remove the drive bays, and the process is relatively painless. The drives are mounted in the removable bays using up to three screws on each side.
In addition to the four 3.5" bays, Appro includes a slim CD-ROM drive on every 1124 setup.
Gaining access to the inside of the 1124 is a very easy task; the top of the case is split up into three sections, two of which are accessible without the use of a screwdriver. The rearmost section covers the motherboard, the middle section covers the cooling fans and the front section covers the drives.
In order to get to the motherboard you simply unscrew the two thumbscrews at the rear of the chassis and slide the cover off. Underneath you'll see a small portion of the Tyan Thunder K7X exposed but mostly a large black duct that helps channel air from the blowers over the CPUs.
The plastic duct can be lifted up to reveal the two Athlon MP 2200+ CPUs covered by low-profile heatsinks designed specifically for the 1124. The duct channels air from the three blowholes that separate the motherboard from the center of the chassis. A fourth blowhole can't be seen but it sends air through the power supply adjacent to the motherboard. The plastic duct is a much more elegant solution than Appro's original setup which featured cardboard cutouts to channel air across the CPUs' heatsinsks.
Being a 1U solution, it's not surprising that there's only room for one PCI expansion card. The 1124 comes with a PCI riser card that allows you to install one PCI card in the system; with dual LAN, SCSI and video on-board the only real use for the expansion slot is for a RAID card.
Upgrading memory is a simple process; after removing the large duct you have full access to the DIMM slots. It's a bit difficult to get to the bank closest to the CPUs if a heatsink is installed but that's more of an issue with the Tyan layout than anything else. In general, access to the motherboard is made extremely simple due to the screwless design of the primary panel of the 1124.
The biggest maintenance downside to the design of the 1124 is that there is no provision for a redundant power supply nor is the built in power supply removable without tools.
The center panel is removed using two buttons that are depressed, allowing the panel to slide back and out. Underneath the panel lie the four blowers that take care of cooling the 1124; as we mentioned before, three cool the CPUs and motherboard area with one dedicated to cooling the PSU.
Replacing the blowers is fairly simple and they are the garden variety that you can find almost anywhere so getting replacements isn't much of an issue. Since the blowers just lift up and out you don't need any tools to replace them either.
The final panel is the only one that requires a screwdriver to access, which isn't such a bad thing as you'll rarely need access to it. Underneath the front-most panel are all the drivebays and the CD-ROM drive.
CCSI RC0103 - 1U
Computer & Control Solutions, Inc. (CCSI) is the company behind DualAthlonServers.com, a provider of dual Athlon servers as the name implies. Currently their rackmount line only consists of the 1U and 2U solutions present in this roundup but there are also plans to offer 3U and 4U solutions as well.
The RC0103 is CCSI's 1U dual Athlon solution and just by looking at it you can already see some differences between it an Appro's 1124. The front of the chassis has a lockable faceplate which is very useful if you don't want someone sharing your rack to have the ability to turn off or reset your server. If the added security is more of a burden however, you can simply leave the faceplate off and that problem is solved.
Behind the lockable faceplate you'll find two removable power supplies, power and reset switches, three status LEDs and two removable drive bays.
Because of the lockable faceplate the power and reset switches aren't recessed, the theory being that with the faceplate in position there's no way you could accidentally hit the switches so there's no point in making them difficult to use when you need to use them. The LEDs can be seen through the slits in the faceplate but it would've been nice to have actual cutouts for the LEDs on the faceplate itself so you could just glance at the system and be sure of its status.
As we mentioned before, the RC0103 has two removable power supplies each rated at 300W. The power supplies are redundant, meaning that if one fails the system will continue to operate as normal. Each power supply has its own status LED that glows green when operational, red when not operational or turned off and remains blank when unplugged. Unfortunately there's no warning alarm if one of the power supplies doesn't function meaning that you'll need to visually check to make sure that they're both in operation.
Removing the power supplies is fairly simple and only requires the aid of a Phillips head screwdriver to remove the single screw holding each unit in place. After that one screw is removed you simply pull on the handle and the power supply slides right out.
Because of the two front-mounted power supplies (the power cable still plugs into the rear of the chassis), there is only room for two removable 3.5" drive bays. The system we received was configured for use with SCSI drives but you can order an IDE version of the server as well. You can also configure the server to only have a single power supply which grants you an internal 3.5" drive bay for a hard drive if the two external bays don't cut it.
The removable drive bays are not incredibly user friendly as the metal handles tend to cut into your skin if you're not too careful.
Once the drive bay is out you can install a 80-pin SCA SCSI drive or regular IDE drive (provided you have the IDE version of the server) by mounting it in the bay using up to three screws on each side. As was the case with Appro's 1124, there's a slimline CD-ROM drive above the two drive bays.
Gaining access to the internals of the RC0103 is accomplished by removing the single panel that covers the chassis; a total of 8 screws hold the cover in place, 7 on the top of the cover and one on its hinge.
We would've much rather seen a semi-screwless design akin to Appro's 1124 which makes upgrades and repairs much easier.
Removing the cover reveals everything about the cooling of the RC0103; the CPUs are cooled using two blowers that pull air from the side and front of the chassis and blow it over the CPUs. To prevent heat from getting trapped between the heatsinks and the top of the low-profile chassis, CCSI employs plastic flaps that act as ducts to channel the air across the surface of the heatsinks. The ducts also prevent the hot air from rising and getting trapped above the heatsinks.
The blowers also help pull cool air across the surface of the hard drives; finally, set of two small fans act as exhausts for removing the hot air out of the case itself. Since the power supplies have their own fans, the blowers and exhaust fans mounted inside the case don't have to deal with cooling the PSUs.
Cables are carefully routed around the motherboard to the hard drives while still leaving access to the memory banks open. As is the case with all 1U solutions that use the Tyan Thunder K7X motherboard, the RC0103 only provides enough room for one PCI card to be installed.
Unlike Appro's solution, CCSI has outfitted their chassis with a movable retention bracket for accommodating long PCI cards. A retention bracket is necessary to prevent the movement of very long PCI cards, especially during shipping.
Because the power supplies are at the front of the case, the CCSI engineers had to develop some clever routing to keep the power cables out of the way of airflow. The end result is a little section between the motherboard and power supplies that's reserved primarily for cable routing.
Towards the front of the chassis you can access the CD-ROM drive and also see the PC speaker that's screwed onto the drive cage.
Racksaver UltraThin RS-1100 - 1U
The final 1U server in this roundup comes from a company called Racksaver with their RS-1100. The RS-1100 takes a somewhat different approach to the 1U 2P Athlon MP solution by focusing more on the ISP market.
The first thing you notice about the RS-1100 is that the chassis is noticeably shorter than Appro's 1124 and even CCSI's 1U offering. Looking at the front of the chassis you'll see that there are no removable drive bays, only a floppy drive, slimline CD-ROM drive, two fans and a combination power/reset switch.
There are only two LEDs on the front of the chassis; one for power and one for disk activity. The two LEDs are located directly above the combination power/reset switch. If you push the upper portion of the switch that turns the system on/off, if you push the lower half then you'll reset the server. Unfortunately there's no protection if someone accidentally bumps into the switch so you'll want to keep those racks locked up tight.
Unlike the previous two 1U systems we looked at, virtually the entire cooling system of the RS-1100 is visible from the outside. There are the two fans at the front of the chassis that take in cool air, and if you rotate the system 90 degrees you'll see another three fans; two exhaust and one smaller intake fan.
The rear of the case is fairly plain like the other two 1U systems; the presence of two Ethernet ports on the rear hint at the Thunder K7X residing on the inside.
Getting inside the RS-1100 is a simple task of unscrewing the numerous screws that hold the cover in place; after doing so, the cover lifts off exposing the internals of the server.
The RS-1100 is surprisingly empty on the inside, but when you think about the fact that there are no removable drive bays and no redundant power supplies then it's not too shocking that there's barely anything inside the system.
A single power cable runs from the rear of the chassis to the front-mounted power supply, which has its own cooling fan as well. A switch on the inside of the case can turn on/off the power supply which can be useful during testing/debugging but don't forget to turn it back on before you reassemble the system.
A single IDE hard drive was mounted next to the power supply in our evaluation system; Racksaver decided to go with the extremely fast Western Digital 120GB Special Edition drive with a very large 8MB buffer, which is pretty much the fastest you can get in the IDE realm. There is room for another two internal drives but our system only shipped with a single unit. The cooling fans at the front of the case handle the task of cooling the internal drives.
A SCSI version of the server is available but if you order an IDE version it will ship without the on-board SCSI controller on the Thunder K7X motherboard. Racksaver also failed to ship the system with any sort of PCI riser which was fairly disappointing since PCI risers are usually not things you can pick up just anywhere.
The CPUs are covered with low profile heatsink & fan units and thus don't rely on any sort of blower system to cool the Athlon MP processors. The CPUs are directly next to the three fans on the side of the case that help get rid of the warm air. The two fans at the front help bring in cool air.
Because of the relatively open nature of the system, access to the memory banks is as easy as possible. It would have been much nicer had Racksaver gone to a screwless design for the RS-1100 as it would definitely capitalize on the ease of accessibility once the cover is off.
The CD-ROM and floppy drives occupy the front part of the chassis, with their cables cleanly routed away from paths of airflow.
CCSI RC0222 - 2U
Computer & Control Solutions, Inc. (CCSI) provided another system for this roundup - the RC0222, a 2U solution. The benefit of going to a 2U form factor is that you get much better expansion options in terms of drive bays as well as the ability to accommodate at least two PCI cards (usually 3).
Just by looking at the outside of the RC0222 you can get an idea for some of the improved expansion that comes with the 2U form factor. From the front you can see a total of six removable drive bays, up from a meager two bays on the 1U version. The added space also allowed CCSI to outfit the server with a full-sized CD-ROM drive as well as a floppy drive.
The system comes with a removable front panel similar to the one on CCSI's 1U platform, but as you can tell from the picture above we didn't have it mounted on our test system. The reason being that the system was slightly damaged during shipping, which is unfortunately a very common occurrence when shipping these servers through any of the major carriers; we've had this happen to a few of our own servers when using UPS or FedEx as well.
Here's what the handle is supposed to look like:
Here's what ended up being delivered:
Note that we are looking at some very sturdy metal being bent here; don't you just love the delivery companies?
The damage here occurred on the left handle where it was clearly bent out of place. The only real prevention is to ship the systems with the handles removed which isn't always possible. The damage was definitely not the fault of CCSI as the system was packed properly but it does serve as a warning to those that are looking to ship via any of the major carriers, this sort of thing can happen. The damage here is not nearly as bad as we've seen before, there have been situations we've seen where cases can no longer be rack-mounted because of damage sustained during shipping.
The drive bays come out just like those in CCSI's 1U system; the metal handles are a bit difficult to get out at first but as your technique improves you'll find that they are manageable.
Unlike the 1U system, the redundant power supplies are located at the rear of the case instead of the front. To deal with the numerous potential configurations, the RC0222 is outfitted with redundant 400W power supplies; should one fail, the other can take over the load completely while the bad unit is swapped out.
As you can tell by looking at the rear of the system, there is room for a total of three expansion cards. Let's have a look inside to see exactly what can be done.
A handful of screws hold the top cover in place, and removing it reveals very little actually. A large black piece of plastic labeled "CCSI Wind Tunnel" covers the CPU and memory area of the motherboard; lifting it up reveals exactly how CCSI has adapted their cooling system to work in the 2U chassis.
The Windtunnel pulls in air from the front of the case through this hole
The Wind Tunnel is essentially a plastic duct that also houses the two blowers that cool the Athlon MP processors. The entire piece sits over the CPU and memory area, takes air from the front of the case and blows it across the surface of the heatsinks. The air then escapes through vents in the side of the case.
Because of the presence of the Wind Tunnel, there's another set of screws that must be undone before you can gain access to the memory banks.
On one side of the Wind Tunnel lay the two power supplies, but on the other side you'll find the partition that houses the 3-card PCI riser. Only one of the three possible PCI slots were populated, in the slot was a 3Ware IDE RAID adapter.
As you can guess, this version of the RC0222 supports IDE drives while the system is also available in a SCSI version as well. With virtually everything integrated onto the Tyan Thunder K7X motherboard, there's little need for the other two PCI slots but it doesn't hurt to have them. Just as was the case with CCSI's 1U solution, the RC0222 has retention brackets at the end of every PCI slot; you can adjust the position of the brackets by undoing a screw.
We
weren't too happy with the build quality on the RC0222 as we found a screw that
had already been stripped on the inside of the chassis. We would expect much
higher quality control when dealing with any sort of server-class product.
Towards the front of the case you'll see connectors for the front panel as well as fan power connectors. The built in 3.5" floppy drive can be swapped out for another hard drive, potentially a boot drive to move the OS off of the RAID setup.
The use of IDE RAID in a server environment is a very interesting proposition; granted you don't get the performance levels that SCSI RAID offers but the cost savings are tangible not to mention the ability to find replacement drives more easily. While we wouldn't recommend IDE RAID for any serious database serving environments, in heavily cached web environments you may be able to get away with an IDE RAID setup. We'll be investigating the feasibility of such a setup in future articles in the Behind AnandTech series of server upgrades.
Elite PC 2U
When AMD launched the Athlon MP processor Elite PC was one of the first companies to make a high-end server/workstation available based on the platform; the only downside was that unlike Appro, Elite PC's solution was only available in a conventional tower and not in a rackmountable case.
Elite PC finally began offering rackmountable solutions and for this roundup they supplied their 2U platform. We've already discussed the benefits of a 2U system and some potential usage environments when talking about CCSI's solution, but now let's see how Elite PC's differs.
First and foremost, the Elite PC solution has a much more elegant front panel cover. The cover is lockable but it does not completely detach from the system; instead it will fold down, granting access to the drives and switches and fold back up when you're done. The cover also has all six LEDs visible with the cover closed, a small but important improvement over other designs.
Unlocking the front panel and unfolding the cover reveals, as was the case with CCSI's 2U platform, 6 removable drive bays. The drive bays are much more user friendly with plastic handles that are noticeably easier to remove and slide out. You cannot purchase this 2U system with anything other than removable SCSI drive bays.
In addition to the 6 removable bays, there are two more 3.5" bays; one is occupied by a floppy drive and another remains empty for use with an IDE boot drive or another SCSI device should the need arise. This is one more 3.5" bay than is offered in CCSI's solution and it's made possible by the use of a slim, notebook form factor CD-ROM drive instead of a full-sized 5.25" drive.
Gaining
access to the Tyan Thunder K7X beneath the hood is once again accomplished with
the use of a screwdriver, it seems like very few manufacturers will follow in
the footsteps of Appro and introduce toolless designs. Beneath the hood you'll
see two AMD retail heatsink/fans covering the Athlon MP processors, with the
rest of the system neatly hidden from sight.
Between the CPUs and the drive bays is a panel that two blowers hang from; the blowers move cooler air over the CPUs' heatsinks and help circulate air around the case as well. Because of this panel, it's somewhat of a challenge to access all of the memory banks without unscrewing and removing the panel.
We would've liked to have seen a screwless removable blower module used here instead; it would make upgrades much easier and thus minimize any potential downtime.
We did notice a design flaw with Elite PC's system, in particular their blower module. The system shipped in such a way that the blower module was actually cutting into the wires coming out of the power supply. The pictures below will give you a better idea of what sort of damage was done by the time we opened up the system.
A quick and dirty fix was to use some electrical tape on the open wires and to push them out of the way of the blower module, but we'd expect better care from the manufacturer to ensure this potentially dangerous situation would not arise in the field.
The three PCI expansion slots are located within a PCI riser module; in order to gain access to them you have to unscrew the module and pull up on it, doing so will reveal the three PCI slots you have for expansion. Just like CCSI, Elite PC used only one of the three PCI slots and populated it with a RAID card - in this case a single-channel Adaptec SCSI RAID adapter. The PCI riser module isn't the easiest to remove but it does make installing multiple cards at once much easier.
Towards the front of the case there are two fans that move cool air over the surface of the hard drives. Gaining access to the additional 3.5" bay at the front of the case is a bit difficult with the CD-ROM drive in the way, not to mention that you're working in a very cramped area but it can be done.
Monarch Computer Systems Enterprise G - 4U
Monarch Computer Systems provided the only 4U system for this roundup, but it does provide a good contrast to the 1U and 2U setups we've just finished covering. The obvious benefits of a 4U system over 2U and 1U solutions, once again, relate to greater expansion options. A side benefit of most 4U systems is that you are able to use a standard ATX power supply, meaning that finding a replacement is worlds easier than getting a proprietary PSU for a 1U or 2U chassis. Note that not all 4U systems will use standard ATX power supplies but the Enterprise G from Monarch Computer Systems does just that.
Click to Enlarge (Monarch's system is on the bottom)
Much like Elite PC's 2U solution, the Enterprise G has a folding front cover that protects the power and reset switches from accidentally being hit while mounted in a rack. Also like Elite PC's solution, the Enterprise G has all of the LED indicators on the front panel as well.
A single locking mechanism will allow the front panel to unfold revealing a total of nine 5.25" bays, a significant number more than any of the other solutions we've seen thus far. The only issue with having this many 5.25" drive bays is that, for the most part, you'll only need 3.5" bays and thus a lot of space is wasted with these 5.25" bays; you could theoretically fit more 3.5" bays in the same space.
Of the nine 5.25" bays, three of them are mounted horizontally; two of those come populated with a CD-ROM drive and a temperature monitor. The temperature monitor gives you an estimate of the CPU and HDD temperatures, even when the system is off. The keyword here is estimate and we'll explain exactly why the figures are not entirely accurate when we dive into the case itself.
The remaining six drive bays are vertically mounted, with our test system having a total of three occupied initially. The two hard drives and floppy drive are all mounted in brackets to adapt them for use in the 5.25" bays. None of the drive bays are removable and the two bays occupied with hard drives had no faceplates, which is actually not out of the ordinary for these types of systems. Removable drive bays would have been nice but not having them helps to keep the cost of this 4U system down to levels competitive with 2U solutions.
Much to our surprise, the Enterprise G's case can be opened without any tools through the magic of thumbscrews. Other than Appro, Monarch is the only other company to opt for this extremely useful design although we should probably be thanking Enlight as it is their 4U chassis.
Removing the top cover reveals an interior that's very much like that of a standard ATX case. Because of the 4U form factor of the chassis, you can populate any of the 6 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot on the Tyan Tiger MPX motherboard without the use of any riser cards. This reiterates one of the major benefits of a 4U solution, greater expansion capabilities. Monarch outfitted our server with two Ethernet cards, a LSI Logic SCSI controller and a basic AGP card for 2D output. The need for all of these add-in components is there because of Monarch's decision to go with the relatively bare Tiger MPX motherboard as opposed to the Thunder K7X. The benefit of the Tiger MPX is its lower cost and the fact that it will work with standard ATX power supplies, in this case a Sparkle unit was provided with the server.
With the amount of room that's available inside a 4U chassis it's no surprise that the server relies on AMD's retail heatsinks/fans to cool the Athlon MP processors. Two large fans sit at the rear of the case to help circulate air throughout the system but that's the extent of the cooling.
If you look closely at the first CPU socket you'll see a blue cable running underneath the heatsink; this blue cable is actually a thermistor that drives the CPU temperature display on the front of the case. The thermistor is simply placed close to the core of the CPU and thus doesn't give an accurate report on the core temperature, in fact without good surface contact with the heatsink the front-mounted temperature gauge could provide a false sense of security in the event of a fan failure. Only one of the two processors are connected to the temperature gauge; a similar method is employed to get the hard drive temperature, in this case a thermistor is taped onto the surface of one of the two SCSI drives that shipped with the system.
Monarch made no effort to route the IDE or SCSI cables along the base or edges of the chassis but with the amount of open area in the 4U case nothing bad came of it.
Cooling Performance Comparison
Tyan offers a System Monitor utility for use with their Tiger and Thunder series of motherboards that allows you to monitor temperatures at six particular places on the motherboard itself.
Both CPUs are monitored, the area around the memory banks, the AGP slot and the area around the voltage regulators are also monitored for their temperature. Because Monarch's solution used a Tiger MPX instead of the Thunder K7X we could not compare its temperatures to the rest of the solutions, so this comparison will serve more as a battle between the 1U and 2U offerings.
These are the locations (labeled in red) that we measured the temperature of.
We ran two sets of temperature tests, one with the system at idle and another after the system had been running CPU/memory intensive tasks (Prime95) for 45 minutes. The reason we focused on CPU/memory intensive tests to drive the heat up is to keep from dealing with the variable of hard drive heat since each of the servers used different drives.
|
Idle Cooling Performance |
|||||||
|
Server
|
CPU1
|
CPU2
|
VRM1
|
VRM2
|
DDR
|
AGP
|
|
| Appro (1U) |
44C
|
50C
|
40C
|
56C
|
37C
|
40C
|
|
| CCSI (1U) |
46C
|
46C
|
51C
|
37C
|
42C
|
45C
|
|
| Racksaver (1U) |
54C
|
56C
|
47C
|
51C
|
43C
|
48C
|
|
| CCSI (2U) |
48C
|
50C
|
52C
|
45C
|
44C
|
45C
|
|
| Elite PC (2U) |
48C
|
56C
|
43C
|
46C
|
38C
|
40C
|
|
The most important areas to look at here are the CPU temperatures and the DIMM/VRM temps as well. In terms of CPU cooling both Appro and CCSI seem to have the best overall setup, although it is obvious that the second CPU doesn't get cooled as well as the first in a lot of the setups (e.g. Appro/Elite PC). Appro offered by far the best overall cooling although the second VRM was somewhat neglected in their cooling solution.
Racksaver provides the perfect example of why the blowers that Appro and CCSI used are much better than conventional fans as their 1U solution reached the highest CPU temperatures we recorded during the idle tests alone.
|
Cooling Performance under Load |
|||||||
|
Server
|
CPU1
|
CPU2
|
VRM1
|
VRM2
|
DDR
|
AGP
|
|
| Appro (1U) |
50C
|
57C
|
41C
|
66C
|
37C
|
40C
|
|
| CCSI (1U) |
54C
|
52C
|
56C
|
41C
|
47C
|
49C
|
|
| Racksaver (1U) |
61C
|
64C
|
50C
|
57C
|
43C
|
49C
|
|
| CCSI (2U) |
50C
|
52C
|
56C
|
47C
|
49C
|
53C
|
|
| Elite PC (2U) |
56C
|
66C
|
50C
|
52C
|
44C
|
46C
|
|
Under load the situation doesn't change too much; Appro continues to lead in a number of cooling categories, but for the most part the leaders and worst performing solutions don't change.
Final Words
Although this is by no means a conclusive roundup of Athlon MP servers, the fact that there are many more available than the six compared here today does speak highly for the adoption of the Athlon MP platform. Unfortunately the success of the Athlon MP has been limited to the smaller manufacturers as you won't find any tier-one OEMs using the platform. Kudos to the manufacturers included in this roundup as well as the others that have seen the potential of the Athlon MP and have already adopted it into their solutions, however it may end up being Hammer that is the first real success on the server end for AMD. With a processor and platform that are clearly designed for the server market, it will be even more difficult for manufacturers to resist the temptation of Hammer provided that it can deliver as expected.
As far as purchasing a server today, the Athlon MP is as viable of a solution as it was when we first made the switch. We've been running Athlon CPUs as servers ever since the Thunderbird core was released and the platform has given us nothing to complain about. Now with Tyan making dedicated motherboards, there's even less of a reason avoid adopting AMD's Athlon MP. The price-to-performance ratio that AMD currently offers is quite impressive as we've already made clear in our performance investigations in the past.
In terms of choosing a 1U or 2U Athlon MP solution, the decision ultimately comes down to your particular needs. We didn't have enough solutions present in this roundup to bestow our Editors Choice award upon any of these servers, but we can provide some pointers.
Racksaver's 1U solution is perfect for a very niche segment where the focus is on low-cost clustering rather than features such as removable drive bays and expansion. Appro's 1124 has been improved since we first adopted the platform and emerges as one of the strongest 1U Athlon MP solutions we've encountered to date, with its ease of accessibility being a key advantage over the competition.
In the 2U realm Elite PC held the slight advantage over CCSI's system although the redundant power supplies of CCSI's solution are very attractive for mission critical environments where there is no server-level redundancy (e.g. multiple redundant servers handling the same task with failover support).
With only one 4U system present in the roundup we can't make any real conclusions about the 4U Athlon MP market, although you can expect most 4U solutions to very closely mirror Monarch's offering in design and implementation.
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