What is it about servers?

[Bulls Hit]

I'm looking for a replacement PC to use solely as for recording and mixing. Been checking out tomshardware.com for suitable motherboards. This time I'm staying away from AMD & VIA, and looking at a P4 & Intel chipset.

As an alternative to rolling my own, I was considering just buying an HP or Compaq off the shelf server. These machines seem more dedicated to performance and throughput, more 'scalable' than typical home/office machines.

Anyone had any experience or considered using a server for audio work?

Failing that which P4 motherboard would you recommend for a low-latency high reliability audio workstation?

[christiaan]

Servers are often equipped with chipsets specifically designed for servers which for I'd say obvious reasons more than likely don't get tested with many soundcards on the market.
Secondly servers are built for performance. Which is good of course but it comes at a price: noise.

So compatibility and noise levels. Not a fact but definately a rule.

For a P4 based DAW you're probably best of with a motherboard with the i865 or i875 chipset.

[wheelema]

I bought a Dell server with 2 80GB hard drives. Seemed like a heck of a deal at $300 bucks, and I really can't say I'm sorry, but the motherboard was optimized for server operations, the on-board video was not what I was used to, the drivers for the LAN adapter were effectively impossible to lay my hands on (nobody seemed to know EXACTLY what driver to install.... got tired of trying to deal with Dell, and I couldn't get a sound card to work. Bottom line, I have a copy of the latest and greatest server software and sometime after we move, this puppy is going to become a server. I have a LAN card that works... finally... and I won't care about the crappy video display.

[Sonixx]

If you go with a real server designed machine, you'll be paying for stuff you probably don't need (overkill for your application) such a redundant power supplies and hot switchable drive bays.

Here's the solution I use which I have years of experience with since I also use this technology in my work (Realtime Simulation). DELL Workstations such as a Precision 650 is an awesome machine. I have about 20 of these at work which are used for real-time simulation. These machines run forever. They have built in support for SCSI 320 and two channels of IDE, so your drive combination flexibility is very good. Also, you can order refurbished machines (I have two of these in my studio and five at work) from DELL's WEB site... as good as new... and if you watch and wait, you can get really good deals and a config to fit your purpose. Also, this line supports DUAL CPUs... which I recommend.

[Bulls Hit]

Thanks all for the considered replies. The server option is probably not practical, so looks like I'll be building my own.

Originally posted by christiaan

For a P4 based DAW you're probably best of with a motherboard with the i865 or i875 chipset.

The 865 series is a lot cheaper and within my price range.

Would any one have any preferences/experience with one of

Albatron PX865PE
Asustek P4P8X (865P chipset) or the
Intel D865GBF ?

They're all 800Mhz fsb ( the Asus has to be overclocked), dual channel DDR400 memory.

The Intel is a bit more expensive but has onboard video so I wouldn't need a video card