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[lordcooper]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/190709397207?nma=true&si=ZmoMCuSXDpeXctPYR1%2BPUodj0tk%3D&rt=nc&_trksid=p4340.l2557&orig_cvip=true#ht_904wt_1271

I've been offered this with a couple of decent hard drives for £40 (going rate seems to be ~£1500), which seems to be remarkably cheap.  Would the addition of a decent graphics card make this into a mighty gaming machine, or are there likely to be issues I'm ignorant of?  IIRC Win 7 only recognises four CPUs so I'll probably have to resort to some weird server OS.  Is this likely to cause DX11 issues or anything?   If it's all cool, any recommendation for graphics cards?

Eight 3ghz processors.  EIGHT!!!

E: Apparently I'd be limited to PCI-X expansion slots.  Is it worthwhile looking into PCI-X gfx cards, or would it make more sense to grab a PCI-X to PCIe adapter/converter?

[Tellemurius]

PCI-X to PCI-E............ no no no no this is ridiculous, theres a reason why server components and consumers don't mix, one this a bad idea as riser cards only allows speeds up to PCI-E x4 and dont even know if a card will work on it and that power consumption is insane. just save your money and buy a regular computer plz.

[lordcooper]

But...

[Tellemurius]

SERVER...... theres rarely any if at all PCI-X graphics card as everyone switched over to PCI-E as its cheaper, i dunno how old that board has been used but its not worth the pain to convert this over to consumer level.

[foil]

If thats from the Pentium 4 era it wont even have the same cpu power as a 3 ghz Intel i5..

[Sergius]

At 40 (quid?) you could just go ahead and buy it for the lulz. Maybe set it as a web or development server or as a movie prop. (mind the shipping costs tho). There's nothing about it that makes it good for modern gaming tho.

Xeon is... well, it used to be great back in the Pentium 4 days. Also damn expensive. But right now it's just old. You're probably better off with these newfangled i3's, i5's, i7's etc. Those don't cost £40 for a reason.

Integrated ATI RAGE XL Video Controller with 8-MB SDRAM Video Memory

<-- lol

[gimlet]

Xeons can still be pretty damn good, just not currently as high price-performance as non-xeon (but a few are pretty darn close like E3-1270v2), double loss is they're not very overclockable and they're a waste if you're not gonna shell out extra bucks for ECC ram.

And man, that system - 10G of ram but it's  PC133 200MHz SDRAM , holy cow that's old - there's been DDR2 and DDR3 since then.  The fans probably sound like a jet taking off (servers use big noisy fans 'cause hey, they're gonna be in a server room or colo rack so who cares).  And yea you're never ever gonna find a PCI-X video card that's gonna be anywhere near as powerful as a $50 modern card.

There's a reason that thing only got one bid for 10 pounds

[MaximumZero]

Even I'm gonna have to chime in and say "Don't do it." That beasty will never be a gaming machine. Now, if you want to run a dedicated TF2 server, then yes, buy it. Otherwise? You won't have a use for it.

[GlyphGryph]

On the other hand, having a dedicated gaming server IS an awfully nice thing.

[Thief^]

SERVER...... theres rarely any if at all PCI-X graphics card as everyone switched over to PCI-E as its cheaper, i dunno how old that board has been used but its not worth the pain to convert this over to consumer level.

I've never heard of a PCI-X graphics card, I've only ever seen SATA RAID, SCSI RAID, and 1G/10G network cards for PCI-X. Everyone at the time used AGP for graphics.

EDIT: Apparently there were workstation graphics cards for PCI-X, but those aren't for gaming, they're for 3D modelling (they're slower but use double-precision maths).

EDIT2: It wouldn't be much good as a dedicated games server, you'll only use one core per server you run, and it will cost you more in electricity than renting one would... That server will probably draw over 200W continuous even when idle (my old dual Athlon-MP server did) which costs a hell of a lot in electricity. I built a low-power server based around an AMD Fusion CPU to replace mine, which will entirely pay its cost back in energy savings within a year to year and a half.

[lordcooper]

The dream is dead

I'm ordering a new graphics card as a consolation prize, but grabbing this anyway.  I'm sure I'll think of some cool use for it at some point in my life.  Suggestions are welcome.

[Sensei]

Like people are saying, that's probably a decent dedicated server computer, even if the RAM is slow. So, any game you wanted to run a server for? Minecraft? Team Fortress?

[MaximumZero]

Put up a dedicated Bay12Multiplayer games server (TF2, Torchlight 2, ..uh...maybe some other stuff...), and invite us all into your house via the virtual doorway.

[Thief^]

Like people are saying, that's probably a decent dedicated server computer, even if the RAM is slow. So, any game you wanted to run a server for? Minecraft? Team Fortress?

To repeat myself:

It wouldn't be much good as a dedicated games server, you'll only use one core per server you run, and it will cost you more in electricity than renting one would... That server will probably draw over 200W continuous even when idle (my old dual Athlon-MP server did) which costs a hell of a lot in electricity. I built a low-power server based around an AMD Fusion CPU to replace mine, which will entirely pay its cost back in energy savings within a year to year and a half.