Hi, I have been looking at the ASUS P5M2/SAS, it is supposed to be a great platform for a whitebox ESX host. However, frankly I am not very enthousiastic about this board. The onboard SAS controller is useable by ESX (detected as SCSI), but it is a crippled version (less cache etc). Why not buy an "affordable" mainboard, and plug in the real thing? Anyway, I am looking to spend the amount of an P5M2/SAS for the entire system (excl. storage), so it is far over budget for me. I have been looking at something like:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 EE 4200+
Asus M2NPV-MX
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 or E4500 (VT?)
Asus P5L-VM 1394
Both setups would get 4GB of memory, and external SCSI storage (using Adaptec 29160 cards). I should be able to build these with case and power supplies for about 400 a piece.
The big question is off course, WILL they run ESX? (and without wanting to start a flame war.... Which setup would be faster)
Message was edited by:
Erik Zandboer (E4500 might be the smarter choice)