hi all, ok, i'm trying to decide what exactly to put into my 1U rackmount case and thought i'd ask for some advice as i just can't make a decision. firstly, for reference purposes, this box is going to be to running several vmware virtual machines, so whatever i end up with needs to be able to cope with that.
my main problem is trying to decide what processor to use. of course, this is partially down to what heatsink/fan i get. so far i've found two that should be suitable, the "AKASA AK-350 1U Copper Cooler" and the "ALPHA PAL153U 1U cooler". now the Akasa apparently supports up to AthlonXP 2000+, Celeron 1.3GHz or P3 1.4GHz, but i've not been able to find any reviews to see how good it really is. I can't find any data on the processors supported by the Alpha, but i have found a review for it (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1571&p=6). In this review, however they tested by simulating the typical power usage of a 1GHz AMD Athlon MP (Palomino). since i can find AthlonXP's of 1700+ and 1800+ just either side of the cost of a Celeron 1.3GHz, i think it comes down to one of those chips. I imagine the AthlonXP's would be better than the Celeron, but would like confirmation on that from someone else. And if i do go for one of the Athlon's, is it really going to be cooled enough? I don't particularly want to lose a chip on this. So, anyone got any advice that could help me make a decision? Jody
