Four PCIe 16x slots, but there is more
WITH THE LAUNCH of the Socket F Opterons, it is inevitable that there would be a slew of motherboards to follow. Tyan is contributing to said slew with not one or two, but 18 products to use those new chips. Some are pretty ordinary, some look really sweet.
The first one that caught my eye is the
Thunder n3600B, a nice server/workstation board in an ATX form factor. It supports 2 CPUs, 8 DIMMs, and depending on which variant you pick, either integrated graphics or sound and Firewire. The ATX form factor makes it really nice because it fits in standard cases.
If the form factor is not a problem, and you want everything, and we mean
everything a board can deliver, then look no further than the
n6650W. It has six SATA, eight SAS, Firewire, four USB, and two GigE ports. It supports the usual two sockets and eight DIMMs. Before you start yawning, this one also includes a PCI slot, yawn, and two PCI-X slots. OK, that part is interesting, PCI-X on a workstation board, kind of cool. The killer bit on this board is it has no less than 4 PCIe 16x slots. Yes, four, not two. Two of them are 8x, but still, you can easily plug in 4 GPUs directly, and that is before you start looking at dual boards. This mobo lacks nothing.
If you still want more, well, you can always go to the
n4250QE, it is really a server board, and has the requisite 4 CPUs to back that up, and of course 16 DIMMs. It has 4 PCIe 16x slots, but two are wired as 4x only, so it doesn't have the raw graphics power of the n6650W. Other notable bits are two HTX connectors so you can stack these boards to support eight CPUs and no less than 8 PCIe 16x slots.
If you still want more, well tough, it doesn't exist. If you want different, then check out the
TA26, a storage server with up to eight hot plug SATA2 or SAS drives. This isn't a fire breathing multi-multi PCIe slotted beast, but it is a sensible 2S storage server that comes pretty much complete. Add in your CPUs, RAM and drives and off you go.
Whatever the case, pun intended, Tyan has some awfully compelling products this time around. The n6650W looks like it could end up being the killer gaming rig of the moment if someone out there is inclined to build one based off it. There is a lot of potential in these boards. Most of that come from the new NV chipset that they won't talk to us about, ah well. These Tyan boards are the first ones I have seen to use those chipsets in the way they were meant to be used, basically to chain functionality. I have a feeling we will see some cool stuff based on these products in the near future, someone will do it, just wait.
The INQuirer
Hybrid Mode
