The cost of building a multi-core Opteron system exposed

AFTER PLENTY of delays, I have a working dual-CPU AMD Opteron system built with my bare hands. The Bill of Materials is surprisingly not as expensive as I anticipated.

First things first: this new system which will be the new reviews testbed at the INQ's LatAm HQ would never have been without the help of Asus UK, AMD Argentina, and Wintec, which provided the Mobo, CPU and memory to be used in our LatAm HQ. I'm particularly impressed by the Asus board, it has enough SATA ports to run a datacenter with it, dual Gigabit Ethernet on board, onboard 5.1 audio, and enough AMI BIOS tweaking settings to make the average Fudo drool.

Dual-Core Socket F Opteron 2216

Second, this exercise was a good opportunity to realise how much you can expect to spend to build a powerful "home workstation/server" with a pair of Socket-F Opteron CPUs, each of them, of course, multi-core. While I built this with a single dual core CPU, this configuration should give you -and me- plenty of room for future expansion: just snap an additional multi core "Socket F" CPU when need arises.

Disclaimer: the sample bill of materials below applies to my system configuration, using prices taken from some popular web retailers that I use like Amazon, or the direct sale price in the case of ECC/Registered DDR2 memory at CL5 speed from Wintec. The result as you will see below is one powerful server/workstation configuration in a case that looks like a gamer's PC. Total cost for the single dual-core CPU is around 1300 greenbacks.

Two gigabytes of ECC/Registered RAM

In case I wanted to fit two dual core CPUs from the start, the end price would be slightly over $1700. Not bad compared to brand-name server pricing, indeed. Of course, in the Do-it-Yourself approach, tech support is... yourself. I'm also assuming you have a CD/DVD reader, monitor and keyboard kicking around. In any case, the cost of such items and other optionals like a memory card reader are negligible.

Opteron Dual core 2216 Socket F (retail boxed): $411
ASUS KFN5-D dual-CPU Socket-F motherboard, $300
Antec TruePower 550W EPS12V Power Supply: $94
Clear Acrylic case with two LED fans $44
2GB of Wintec ECC/REG CL5 memory four 512MB DIMMs ($62/piece) $248
Connect3D Radeon X1600 Pro 256MB $99
Socket-F cooler (Retail dual core Opterons do not include heatsink): $28.84

Finally let's add a 160GB SATAII (sorry, SATA-300) hard disk... $64

Here's how the figures looks put into a spreadsheet, in case you don't believe in my math abilities to add simple numbers:

And here the dual-CPU configuration:

The total? $1288 greenbacks for single-CPU configuration, and $1728 (rounded) for two dual cores. A spreadsheet -OpenDocument format- with prices translated at today's exchange rate to EUR and Pounds Sterling can be found here. Of course, "your mileage might vary", specially if you're reading this from the UK or continental Euroland. I'm sure there's lower prices elsewhere for several of the components -for instance, OEM CPUs instead of boxed ones- and cheaper alternatives for some. In case you're wondering about my choice of the acrylic "clear case" the answer is obvious: it makes it easier for me to take pictures for articles, without having to tear apart the system or put the camera in awkward positions.

System working. Not too visually appealing, just transparent :)

Just for kicks I went to this page offering real-time pricing of servers, and a similar system with almost identical components -only with a Seagate HD instead of WD- was priced at around $2293 plus shipping. Finally over here you can compare it with a fully assembled previous-generation Socket-940 Opteron server.

I hope this sample configuration helps those of you thinking about building your own dual Opteron home workstation to have an idea of the costs of it. The "do it yourself" approach of course has a pricing advantage, with the anxiety downside of waiting for all the parts to arrive. In case you want to flame me for my choice of components, I'm all ears. Now with both Linux and XP already installed and running, the fun begins: testing the system. Stay tuned. µ

L'INQS
AMD Opteron 2216, Dual-Core Socket F
ASUS KFN5-D
Wintec
ATI X1600

See Also
Before going dual blimey Opteron, first find a cooler for it
The birth of Santa Rosa