[Beowulf] A suitable motherboard for newbie

[Krugger]

I would like to contribute  that going quad core is a really bad idea
at the moment, as linux support for the new boards is not very good at
the moment. Even some Core Duo 2 ready boards have trouble, either it
is the SATA controller or some other new stuff that they put in it. So
before you buy check your hardware against known hardware problems in
google: like some Tyan models that happen to have erratic behavior and
need BIOS upgrades or SATA controller that don't work or RAID boards
that break under heavy load. This is especially true if your are
buying in a small amount and don't have a maintainance contract with a
supplier.

Now to get the most out of your money you should be really considering
how much you get for your money. For example going rack mounted is
only an option if you intent to expand and have a cooled room.

Another thing is not to buy the latest tecnology available but go for
the reliable and cheaper computers. Why? Because you get more
computers which in the end will get you more overall computing power.
For example for 20.000 dolares you can get almost twice as many
opterons if you had dropped the dual core option, which means twice
the total memory, which allows you to run bigger simulations.
Basically you get the same number of tasks, 5(machines) * 2(cpus) *
2(cores) = 10(machines) * 2(cpus), but you get more memory 20Gb RAM
compared to 40Gb. This considering if you had chosen the top of the
line dual core opteron, which costed three times the cost of top of
the line cpu without dual core, which really isn't considered top of
the line.