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  1. #1
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    Question Need comment on Dell PowerEdge SC1420 server

    they have PowerEdge SC1420 server for only $499 with free shipping.

    i like the spec. Intel Xeon 2.8ghz, 512mb DDR2, 80gb SATA. is this a fair price for it? how's Dell's server? i like to buy it to dual boot Win2003 and CentOS.

    does Dell server have any problem with CentOS?

  2. #2
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    Wow, nice price. Does anyone know how many of those can you fit into a 42U cabinet?

  3. #3
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    Where do they have that price? :b

  4. #4
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    Can't find that price anywhere, did you get a special offer?
    Steve

  5. #5
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    Go under small business. It's the promotion on the front page. It's only a single Xeon, though.

    We have quite a few of them and they are high quality. You can't go wrong.
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  6. #6
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    Oh right, I got it confused with the SC1425 which you won't find for $499!
    Steve

  7. #7
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    Originally posted by Vortex-Steve
    Oh right, I got it confused with the SC1425 which you won't find for $499!
    http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...1420sapp&s=bsd

    the price is not bad even for a single Xeon. it can also make a beefy game machine if it come with AGP or PCIe port.

    does anyone know if it come with AGP or PCIe port?

  8. #8
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    Originally posted by QuickPacket
    Go under small business. It's the promotion on the front page. It's only a single Xeon, though.

    We have quite a few of them and they are high quality. You can't go wrong.
    do you know who's memory chip they use and if it come with AGP or PCIe port? where can i score another 512mb DDR2 to bump the total ram up to 1gb? their price to bump up the ram is a bit expensive.

  9. #9
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    It's only an extra $100 to go to 1GB of ram, which is very very resonable for an additional 512MB of DDR2 Reg ECC, in fact it's below cost.
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  10. #10
    Its $100 due to the double ram promotion, adding another 1GB for 2GB total is +$600. It would be way cheaper to add the 2nd GIG from Crucial.

    But that is one hella deal. $988 for Dual Xeon 2.8 1GB 80GB SATA

    I might get one for my desktop if its PCIe capable.

  11. #11
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    I got one of these around Christmas to use at home. Overall it's a nice box at a very good price, but there are a few idiosyncracies. I don't really need a high end graphics board, but it's obvious Dell did some things to this machine to cripple it for gaming/workstation usage. It's not hard to see why if you go price a similarly configured high end Dimension or Precision workstation--this machine offers more power for less money.

    There is no AGP slot, and the PCI-Express slot is oddly configured. Basically the main PCI-E slot is a 16x length slot with pins for a 8x, and it has a plastic divider in the middle so only 8x boards fit. What this means is that you can't use any PCI-E graphics board (which are all 16x length) without modding the slot and removing the divider. You can find forum discussions on this topic if you search Google. Apparently the newer SC1420 machines have two plastic dividers, making it even more difficult to mod. So unless you mod the PCI-Express slot, you're stuck using an outdated PCI video card. I don't play games or do any heavy graphics/AV work, so that works out fine for me.

  12. #12
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    Originally posted by Jay Suds
    It's only an extra $100 to go to 1GB of ram, which is very very resonable for an additional 512MB of DDR2 Reg ECC, in fact it's below cost.
    are we looking at the same configure? it stated $300

  13. #13
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    Originally posted by lockbull
    I got one of these around Christmas to use at home. Overall it's a nice box at a very good price, but there are a few idiosyncracies. I don't really need a high end graphics board, but it's obvious Dell did some things to this machine to cripple it for gaming/workstation usage. It's not hard to see why if you go price a similarly configured high end Dimension or Precision workstation--this machine offers more power for less money.

    There is no AGP slot, and the PCI-Express slot is oddly configured. Basically the main PCI-E slot is a 16x length slot with pins for a 8x, and it has a plastic divider in the middle so only 8x boards fit. What this means is that you can't use any PCI-E graphics board (which are all 16x length) without modding the slot and removing the divider. You can find forum discussions on this topic if you search Google. Apparently the newer SC1420 machines have two plastic dividers, making it even more difficult to mod. So unless you mod the PCI-Express slot, you're stuck using an outdated PCI video card. I don't play games or do any heavy graphics/AV work, so that works out fine for me.
    kool. thank for the info. is it possible for you to attach a pic of the motherboard? i want to know the layout of motherboard.

  14. #14
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    I never brought a Dell server before. Are you allow to add aditionall CPU, ram and hdd yourself. They addon is rather expensive.

  15. #15
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    The Dell 1420 is a nice unit, technically you can add the items yourself.

    CPU can be purchased from online souces for $100-$150 less than dell charges for an additional, but teh heatsink on the dell isa different size. You might be able to just change the retention brackets and move on.

    RAM is DDRII (not the ddr 2, not standard DDR) Registered ECC, and the motherboard requires that. And the Dell hard drives currently are Seagate Cheetah 7200 RPM SATA's, not bad at all, but for the prices they charge you can get a WD Raptor or 16MB cache Maxtor drive.
    The board has a SATA softRAID Adaptec CERC 2s chip built in, it works fine with windows, but not linux (you can use linux soft raid), you can also purchase a true RAID card from Dell.

    I am uploading a gallery of photos with comments in the photos, it will be up shortly.

  16. #16
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    Link to 1420 photo gallery

    As far as how many you could get in a rack, 7-8. They are quiet large units.

  17. #17
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    Originally posted by JodoHost(Stephen)
    Link to 1420 photo gallery

    As far as how many you could get in a rack, 7-8. They are quiet large units.
    thank dude. picture is alway better than word

    is it a dual motherboard?

  18. #18
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    it look sweet! i want to order one. is it worth the money to bump the RAM up to 1gb from Dell for $100 or buy it from other?

  19. #19
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    They are dual capable

    1GB of RAM for $100 is a steal
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  20. #20
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    I would buy the memory from them, the DDRII REG ECC is $116 for 512MB (and you have to used matched pairs)

  21. #21
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    Here's a thread on modding the PCI-Express slot to accept 16x video cards (it applies to both the 420 & 1420). I never did it, but there apparently are some who have successfully:

    http://www.aaltonen.us/forums/viewto...er=asc&start=0

    A friend of mine also ordered a SC1420, and he found it was cheaper to order two of these and gut the second machine instead of buying the components on the aftermarket. I dunno if that's still the case (prices on retail Intel Xeon CPUs seem to have come done a fair amount since early January when I last looked), but you might want to check that out if you're planning on going with dual CPUs.

  22. #22
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    ohhh. Nice little units. Thanks for the heads up.


    Wow huge heatsink!

  23. #23
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    There are a couple of forums for the sc400/420/1420 if you do some searching. I got a sc420 and as lockbull says, the pcie slot is 'crippled' (this can be remedied with a dremel or other more inventive manner) and depending on which model there are a few other quirks.

    Having said that with a PCI nvidia something or another (I almost never play games, but cant live without dual monitors) I was able to get all the hardware working under XP with the 2003 drivers, threw in a burner to replace the cdrom drive, an SATA maxtor and I am quite happy with my $353 purchase. The ram seems to vary between crucial and samsung, and HD's may vary as well. But again for the price the only thing im looking for at the moment is more ram which I intend on picking up this week. It makes either a nice (pretty quiet) workstation or a nice entry level server to boot.

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