Introduction Continued

We have previously extensively covered Intel's S5520SC mainboard and the target market remains within the same boundaries.  As many of our readers now know  Supermicro  supply out to many famous Tier 1 and Tier 2 OEM's to enhance their solutions.  You will be very surprised at just who some of the Tier 1 suppliers really are.  Therefore it goes to show just how much exceptional research and development truly goes into each part listed on Supermicro's website.   If the infamous Tier 1 users are supplying out equipment of this magnitude then we know from day 1 the product is to be exceptional.  So to reiterate. There are many points of focus that the suppliers can push this system mainboard into, though primarily it’s as we said in the onset a good workstation board that can be used in just about ever scenario you can possibly think of.   Which in turn means the corporate user, many small offices would benefit greatly and of course the high-end SoHo user that just needs a good all in one board that they can safely surf the net, play a video and of course most importantly safely produce those high-end drawings or scenes needed for the clients. Extremely functional.   Moving up a gear (and like today) used as a superb high-end workstation mainboard for the Studio’s looking for “ultimate crunch” functionality.    As we see below from our humble build

The self build corporate and studio users maintain the philosophy to utilise one mainboard which provides them with an effective cost performance solution.  Time is money as too are extra peripherals needed to supplement a mainboard.  Once the board has reached end of life in the usage it was built, mainboards of this nature then find them stripped down and placed into a  2U chassis as a dedicated server or render node.  One point of note is that we have just retired two older X5 mainboard systems after 7 years of painstaking daily work.   Therefore the life span of these Mainboards and supporting CPU’s is extremely good, which brings us back once more to exceptional value for monies.  Deviating slightly the server capabilities of the board are very good with so many added value features that have been listed, therefore whilst we have covered this board heavily in a workstation scenario it must not be forgot that the implementation of a server will be very good indeed.

Our array of "in house" test systems is quite spectacular.   We always try to improve upon these and as was noted back in August many of you will have seen the appearance of the Noctua U9DX EP Heatsink Fans.  These are quite exceptional parts indeed and for those in the know have good interchangeable fan speed headers depending on the environment that the system has been tasked for.  The chassis is very good indeed from Coolermaster giving you plenty of optional upgrade paths to follow with storage.  Though we must look briefly at the cream of the crop from Supermicro.  Firstly their SuperChassis 747TQ-R1400B.  This most certainly is a piece of superb engineering.  Or Supermicro's SuperWorkstation 7046A-T Whisper Quiet Workstation (28dB) with High-end Graphics Support.  Yes both chassis are expensive, though on mission critical outings of today one cannot cut corners in this important part of the build.  Another day to cover these excellent parts.

Therefore we move over the page to our current build

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Introduction Continued
Page 3 - System Build, Set-Up and Software Used
Page 4 - Sandra 2009 SP4 Part 1
Page 5 - Sandra 2009 SP4 - Part 2
Page 6 - Hard Disc Tests
Page 7 - PCMark 2005 Advanced
Page 8 - Bentley MicroStation Graphics Benchmark and POV Ray 3.74 Beta
Page 9 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ and MAXON Cinebench 10
Page 10 - SPECviewperf® 10.0 – 64-bit
Page 11 - Conclusions and Award