Dell Precision 470 Workstation

massahwahl

massahwahl

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A teacher friend of mine offered for me to come raid a collection of old desktops that the school had decommissioned in the last few years today. I went looking for a new mythtv frontend that I could rip apart and mount to my wall behind my living room tv. Anyway, I picked out a small form factor HP from 2006ish and saw this monster Dell sitting in the corner. I opened it up and was surprised to see that it had two processor slots and 8 DIMM DDR2 slots. Found out it is a Dell Precision 470 Workstation/Server PC. I ended up taking it too and was curious what in the world I should do with it. Since I got this thing for free I dont mind putting some money into it if I can find the right size processor for it. From what I have read with both processors and the memory upgraded this thing is supposed to be a beast. So is it worth it to do anything to this and use it is a home server? It came with two 250Gb hard drives which I also want to upgrade to some 1Terrabytes and maybe run them in raid. And upgrade the AGP graphics card to whatever the best card would be. What are your thoughts?
 
AGP slot, huh? Not that good, but at least better than PCI. You could either use it for gaming/video editing machine, or use it as a server. Totally up to you. A storage server wouldn't be a bad idea.
 
The agp is really the biggest downfall here. If I can find tbe right processor somewhere this thing should be a great server. I dont think the graphics card is worth upgrading considering my use but what do I need to get?

Right now I'm looking at least getting
-second processor
-bigger hard drive
-additional memory
-new heatsink

The heatsink on the included processor is a big clunky dell contraption that is loud a can be. How much ram should I get though? It can take 16gb ecc ddr2 ram. How much is sufficient though for a home server? Also anything else that is a must have?
 
Dont know how I looked at this wrong but it I is actually a pcie slot for graphics. It can take two intel 771 3.6Ghz Xeon processors. The memory options on the documentation are really confusing me though, here is the pdf document link: hopefully someone can point me towards what to order lol.
 
As long as its fast I will be happy. I have a4 year old custom build that I dont really use any more, considering parting it out in order to do the upgrades I want to this. I use my laptops or tablet for everything so I dont have much use for my old desktop these days.
 
mx344 said:
I would must definitely use it as a file server.

I wouldn't get more than 4gigs of ram.

EDIT: your looking at getting 3200 DDR2 ram.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134178

Just look inside the computer, and double check if this is right.
Click to expand...

Doesnt it have to be ecc ram? Thats what it says in the documentation but im not entirely sure what ecc ram is exactly... It also says it needs to be single rank memory. Again, this is a grey area for me...
 
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opps, I skipped over that ;P

Yeah, generally servers use that kind of ram, its error correcting code.
hmm, ill look on other sites, newegg doesn't have any...

EDIT: so apparently that ram is kind of rare :P cause the age, how much ram does it have already, cause a 2gig stick of ecc is 45 bucks...
 
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mx344 said:
opps, I skipped over that ;P

Yeah, generally servers use that kind of ram, its error correcting code.
hmm, ill look on other sites, newegg doesn't have any...

EDIT: so apparently that ram is kind of rare :P cause the age, how much ram does it have already, cause a 2gig stick of ecc is 45 bucks...
Click to expand...

I saw this on newegg, would it work? It has 2X512 installed now, so can i mix like a normal pc or do i have to install equal pairs? Ill pull some more exact numbers off of it in the morning too now that I know what im looking for. The documentation also mentioned installing a heat shroud and fan for 4+gigs of ram, is that necessary by todays standards? Seems like sorta overkill for only 4gigs.
 
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According to the info from my dell service tag here I have a 2.6Ghz Xeon Nocona processor installed. I would like to get two 3.6Ghz processors and low and behold ebay has these However im curious if it is the same socket. I assume there can be different socket sizes even though its the same series, is that wrong?
 
wolfeking said:
no. you need the socket 771 version. not the 604. They are not interchangeable.
Click to expand...

Thats what I thought, poo that was a cheap deal for those. With this being the case then, will any LGA771 Xeon work? This whole server business is very confusing on the hardware side of things...
 
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this is the info from Dell
http://www.andovercg.com/datasheets/dell-precision-470-workstation.pdf said:
Up to two 64-bit Intel® Xeon® dual-core or single-core processors with 800MHz front side bus and 2MB L2 cache per core; All Intel® Xeon processors support 64-bit computing with Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology
Click to expand...
So, it seems as long as its a 800 MHZ FSB Socket 771 Xeon processor it will work.
 
I just got off the phone with dell tech support and they told me it will accept any Xeon 771 in these models:
Nocona Xeon. Irwindale Xeon, Paxville Xeon.

Now the hunt begins!

My only other question is do I need to buy a matching set or can I just buy one for now and add it with the single core processor I already have and get the second one later?
 
the processor sets have to match. For example, you couldnt install a 2500 in one socket and a 2100 in the other. They have to match. (sorry for the SB example, its all I could think of)
 
No it makes sense, Im currently winning a bid on a set of dual core 3Ghz 771 4M 1333 processors ebay. If I can get them both for $40 that wont be to bad.
 
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