Rack mount cases needed

[Martin Siegert]

On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 04:32:57PM -0400, Diego Julian Remolina wrote:
> 
> We are trying to get the parts to build our cluster. The configuration we would like per node is:
> 1 Tyan Thunder K7 (S2462) With SCSI
> 2 Athlon MP 1.2 Ghz (Maybe 1.4 Ghz by the time we order depending on price)
> 4 Corsair RAM 256 MB ECC Registered DDR RAM Modules to add up to 1 GB Total RAM.
> 1 20 GB ATA100 HDD (with the possibility to expand to SCSI later on if needed)

Here is what we are using:

Tyan Thunder K7 (S2462) without SCSI
Athon MP 1.2GHz (I didn't know that a Athon MP 1.4GHz exists, does it?)

> We are planning to start with 12 to 16 nodes.

We start with 70 nodes.

> I have not been able to find 1U or 2U rack mountable cases from different
> places, so I would like to know if anybody has any suggestions.  The main
> problem with the cases is that we need the "FAMOUS" 460 watts power supply
> required by the Tyan motherboard.  The only place I found that has such cases
> is www.einux.com, but they ask $700 to $900 depending if the case has hot
> swappable drives or not.

With respect to the power supply: Zippy makes a ps (P2G-6435P) with a 2U form
factor that it fits into the back of a 2U case. It is not cheap though.

With respect to cases: the biggest problem with a 2U case (I'm not even
considering 1U) is the case/cpu temperature. This basically eliminates
all more expensive cases because all the clutter (speak hot swap this and
that, etc.) restricts the air flow. We ended up taking everything 
out of the case, mounted 5 fans and ended up with 42 C cpu temperature.

I also found that a system builder I deal with locally is able to get cases
cheaper than I am so that it actually pays to let those guys do it.
(I didn't really want to assemble 70 cases either). If you want I'll
can give you the contact address.

Martin

========================================================================
Martin Siegert
Academic Computing Services                        phone: (604) 291-4691
Simon Fraser University                            fax:   (604) 291-4242
Burnaby, British Columbia                          email: siegert at sfu.ca
Canada  V5A 1S6
========================================================================