Anybody using an xserve as a personal machine?

S

slo

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I had toyed with the idea of using an xserve as a personal machine due to my limited desktop space and desire for having massive amounts of storage in the near future with extra HDs and eventually a RAID.

If anybody is using one, I had a few questions....

1. The cluster node xserve is cheaper and doesn't come with an optical drive.... is it a fairly easy install?..... and could I install a superdrive?

2. Its also doesn't come with a video card, but has two PCI slots. I'm assuming I could install a PCI video card and connect a DVI display (or dual displays!) Can anybody confirm if this is possible?

3. Are there any negatives to doing this? I am a desktop publisher/web designer/dvd creator, that has very little need for specialty cards. I mostly just need a fast processor and massive amounts of storage.

Thanks for any advice,

slo
 
1) An Xserve is NOT small.... far from that. It is thin, not small.
2) The graphic card may be a little bit minimal for your applications.
 
The cluster node model doesn't have the option to add more HDD or Optical drives. plus. the lack of AGP/PCI-Express will limit your choices for video cards. I'd go with a G5 PowerMac (just got mine. love it) and get a desk with somewhere to put the tower off the desk.
 
You only get 2 PCI-X slots with the Xserve, so one would have to be used for your video card. They'll support one card at 133mhz or two cards at 100mhz each.

You could grab an external CD or DVD burner for anywhere from $100 to $250 to cover that need.

The only video card I could find was an 128mb ATI RADEON 9200 PCI card for $129.00 at the Apple store. The one Apple includes in the other Xserves when PCI video is ordered is only a 64mb PCI Raedon. The cluster node doesn't allow you to specify that for an option ($100) when building, so you'd have to buy the 9200 manually from their accessories list or a 3rd party supplier (pretty much same price as Apple). While the 9200 is a bit better than the regular option, it's still not a great card for that system.

I think you should just grab a dual 2.5 then hide it somewhere under your desk or something. You'll get a lot more for less or the same $$$

Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 Xserve
• 512K L2 cache/processor
• 1GHz system bus/processor
• 512MB DDR400 ECC SDRAM
• 80GB Serial ATA drive
• ATI RADEON 9200 128mb PCI addon (+$129)
• No modem
• Mac OS X Server (10 Client)
• Dual Gigabit Ethernet
• CD/DVD external addon (+$200 est.)
• Keyboard & mouse addon ($100 to est.)​
$3428
{add $250 for 1GB RAM extra (2x512), add $650 for 2gb RAM extra (4x512) }


Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5 Tower
• 1.25GHZ system bus/processor
• 512MB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 2x256
• 160GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
• ATI Radeon 9600 XT w/128MB DDR SDRAM
• 56k V.92 modem
• Mac OS X - U.S. English
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 8x SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
• Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English​
$ 2999
{add $150 for 1GB RAM extra (2x512), add $450 for 2gb RAM extra (4x512) }

You should have 1GB of RAM as a minimum for what you plan to use it for, so it would cost $3678 for the Xserve and $3149 for the G5 tower. Use the extra $529 for something else, like even more RAM, an iPod, a digital Camera, a printer, monitor, bluetooth, Airport system, etc.
 
Depends what's important to you.

If you have some rack space free (I think it's a 1U case) but no desktop space, if you really need the reliability of dual power supplies, if the extra noise that comes with two power supply fans (and not designed to be part of a quiet desktop environment) doesn't bother you, that might be reasonable.

The extra cost also gets you things like hot-swappable disks (it would have to be part of a RAID set, presumably). There is a trick to getting your boot disk to be part of a RAID set - normally the disk utility GUI doesn't want to let you... Still, on a desktop machine, it's normally not such a big deal to shut it down when you need to swap out a disk.
 
Since the XServe is long and thin, you could use it for a desktop. There's some cost savings right there. :)
 
Personally, I have some interest in an XServe. A desktop machine is just that, a desktop machine. If you want a server, then you need to use server hardware.

I have used desktop hardware, such as network cards, hard drive controllers, and such, in servers before, and am currently using some now, but the problem is, when I do load tests, for example, ab, the Apache Benchmark, on those machines, the results are not as good as a similar machine.

Plus, the XServer comes OS X server, and 10 clients. Having the OS designed as a server, there will be benificial design features.

Just my $.02
 
That's a great idea Matt - perhaps Apple should market xLegs and an xTablecloth to go with the xServe!
 
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