Mark77

Why don't they just install a big busbar for the power supply +Vss, and Gnd? Instead of that crazy pin count, most of which are just going to be for power? Or just ground one side of the case, and have only power pins on the other? Any electronics gurus here want to speculate?

Xeon E3's and the 4/8 core (HT) i7's are identical chips except for feature enablement/disablement. And microcode. Intel has reportedly disabled the ability to use Xeon E3s on the consumer i7 platforms as of Skylake. For marketing reasons. Generally the E3's have minimal to no overclockability. They're like the non-k chips. Some don't even have embedded video. So shop accordingly.

If you've already bought the machine, then not a lot of point in worrying about it until you need to upgrade. If you haven't bought the machine, well, you need to ask whether 64gb (ie: Skylake/Kabylake) is good enough. Or if you need to escalate to a LGA2011 platform.

Yeah Linux is pretty much where its at, if you can handle Unix. Good learning experience as well.

Build your server up on junk hardware, and migrate it to good hardware when you're satisfied with what you're doing. I used old junk hardware for my server for many years until I finally broke down and bought a nice board, hot-swap backplane, etc.

1) Servers can run higher-reliability software and high reliability software such as Linux/FreeNAS/etc., and higher reliability hardware such as RAID, multiple hard drives, etc. 2) Many people (if not most) use mobile devices these days, whether a phone, laptop, or whatever, while a server is a permanent "presence". Thus you can run applications on a server that require persistence. Like, say, a Bittorrent client, or a web or ftp server. Or a Minecraft server. Etc. 3) Servers facilitate sharing of files through protocols such as NFS and Samba. 4) Physical and logical security is much easier with a server than a desktop typically. 5) With your own server, there's no question over the ownership of your data. While if you upload your files, to say, a cloud account, or use an online email service like "gmail", it is quite possible that others will be able to access your information without your knowledge. The downsides are that you have to pay for the server, its air conditioning, and whatever power it uses. This is why using an old board might not be that good of an idea.

Have the root of your samba share correspond to the root directory of your mounted drive. It will report the 'correct' disk space then. For example, create 2 shares, e: "bigdriveA" and "bigdriveB". and mount them, ie: folderA/bigDriveA, folderA/bigdriveB. It works correctly on my Samba server. You're going to need to deviate from the 'defaults' to get it working properly.

In this case, there's a pretty good argument to be made that 'competition' caused the infrastructure owners to stop investing/upgrading. Except in the areas for which there was a solid business case to abandon the old networks and install fiber optic connections for their exclusive use (with no competitive access!).

Basically what happened is they told the telecoms, which used to charge a small fortune for long distance, that they had to open up all their facilities to 3rd parties. As a result of being forced to open their facilities up, telecoms reduced their investment in such facilities to the lowest levels possible. After all, why would the telecoms build nice infrastructure in order to "help" 3rd party competitors? So in light of such, investment in infrastructure slowed to a crawl as a result of this artificial 'competition'. The only respite has been in fiber optic investment, where the 3rd parties do not have access to the infrastructure. Verizon and others thus invested with the knowledge that 3rd parties would be precluded from using their infrastructure. Most people don't realize how much "wired" (or fibered) telecom infrastructure costs to build. Figures of $5000 to $10,000 per house passed are typically thrown out there. Most of the expense being in 'civil' infrastructure, trenching, etc. As telecoms increasingly run against limits of copper 'wires', prices will need to rise enough to justify investment in new infrastructure including a competitive return on investment.

The DBMS may even facilitate the use of hierarchal storage, depending on what's used. For example, in the Oracle DB's, you can place certain parts of the database on HDDs, and other parts on SSDs. Thus even modest use of SSD storage can compliment HDD-based storage quite nicely.

Are you just querying this data, or are you constantly updating/changing it? What's the query rate? What's your uptime requirement? Linux/Unix or Windows?

Flash will never be as fast as RAM. So forget that idea completely. As for eliminating add-in DRAM, there will be a point at which Intel can't sell many more CPU's, and has fab capacity to start integrating a lot of DRAM on the main die. Currently they don't do this to a great extent because you don't need the latest/greatest fab processes to produce DRAM, and it would not be an economic use of their high-end fab resources to merely produce DRAM. Especially when people need it in quantities and variable amounts that usually will exceed what's economic to put on a main chip.

Haven't watched the video, but I've argued quite a bit here against 'gaming' laptops for college. Namely that you're paying top dollar to haul around a heavier machine with poorer battery life and long-term reliability. When in fact the "use case" for a typical college laptop more closely resembles that of a travelling salesperson or a truly mobile professional who needs all the battery life, longevity, and reliability that they can get. Especially since a typical student is paying tens of thousands of dollars to study, has no IT department or loaner laptops, and may even have significant budgetary constraints (and Murphy's Law tells us that stuff always fails at the worst time possible!). I advise every student who asks "which laptop I should buy" to look at the 'business class' laptops, ie: Dell Latitude, Lenovo Thinkpad T-Series, etc. for precisely this reason. Or an Apple if everyone else in the course is using one (you really don't want to be the 'odd man out' here!).

Quite frankly, I'd be astonished if a reseller will be able to tell you anything/know anything along those lines.

The key to replacing a laptop LCD panel is whether or not the panel uses LVDS, or eDP. And of course, physical compatibility. http://www.panelook.com/LP156WF4-SPL1_LG Display_15.6_LCM_overview_22815.html The panel appears to be 30-pin eDP. So you should be able to replace it with a 30pin eDP model. Unfortunately for you, full-colour panels in the 15.6" form factor, IPS, seem to be rare: http://www.panelook.com/sizmodlist.php?st=&pl=&sizes[]=15.6&application=NBPC&display_mode_lc_family=IPS&resolution_pixels=19201080&signal_type_category=eDP&page=2 http://www.panelook.com/LTN156HL06-C01_Samsung_15.6_LCM_overview_24666.html You potentially could use this opportunity to transition to a 4K panel though. There are 3 4K panels which would meet your specs. But 4K would depend upon whether your laptop's electronics could handle it. Would be a very unique laptop though if you could source and integrate that panel :). http://www.panelook.com/sizmodlist.php?st=&pl=&sizes[]=15.6&application=NBPC&display_mode_lc_family=IPS&signal_type_category=eDP&resolution_pixels=38402160

Yes, such a can may be used to construct a higher-gain antenna. No guarantees that it'll work as well as you think, but no harm in trying.

The Asus website says that the board in question supports "USB BIOS flashback", meaning that you can flash the BIOS without actually booting the system up by following the procedure. Failing that, you could remove the BIOS chip and flash it with an external programmer and/or a hot-program if you work out how to do that.

Its possible. The MXM "standard" has the MXM providing the 3 DisplayPort outputs from its pins, which presumably are just hard wired to the physical external HDMI interface. So upgrading the MXM card "may" also upgrade the entire system to the more powerful standard. However, no guarantees, and an implementation that was engineered for signal integrity with HDMI 1.4 may not pass the test for HDMI 2.0. I'd get assurances from a support engineer that it would work, or alternatively, attempt to obtain a favourable return policy if your efforts at integration are not successful.

Which chipset does the laptop have? Which laptop is it anyways? >16gb is usually a no-go on 2-slot configurations with Sandy/Ivy/Haswell. And no, more than 8gb RAM probably won't help you out a lot on gaming.

Yeah I tried to find an online copy of IEC 60950-1. Didn't find one (and if I did, it would be written in a bunch of language that only an engineer could love!). But found this minor synopsis of what the requirements are: http://acstestlab.com/understanding-ite/understanding-ite-product-enclosure-design-requirements-part-2 It doesn't appear to be as 'cut and dried' as saying that all computers need a fire enclosure. However, the author goes on to write: LPS = Limited Power Source. Therefore, to make this desk meet IEC 60950-1, and hence, meet regulatory requirements, given that it contains a PSU > 100W, it is highly likely that it would need a fire enclosure. Overall, good reading. The first page actually has a picture of a guy DIY-building a PC with what appears to be an off-the-shelf fire rated enclosure from one of the usual manufacturers: http://acstestlab.com/understanding-ite/understanding-ite-product-enclosure-design-requirements-part-1

Its not conductivity to be worried about in particular. Its flame resistance, ie: the ability of the case to resist starting itself on fire if there is component failure. The other cases shown by Linus in the video are built of metal for a reason. Linus' case, although neat and novel, is seriously deficient in that aspect.

There's a significant amount of debate over that, and it has been said that ES chips are often obtained through electronics recycling, ie: dumpster diving after such machines are disposed of, or the equivalent at the electronics recyclers. If you're a Chinese person working at a PCB recycling operation making $1/hour and you find a reasonably modern ES CPU in a dump of boards, that's a pretty good score being able to sell it for $150! A 3rd party who comes into 'stolen' property without their knowledge has no obligation to seek out its owner and return it. http://thelawdictionary.org/bona-fide-purchaser/ As for whose property the chips are, if Intel doesn't make a reasonable effort to protect its property, especially when it certainly could do so by requiring the return of the chips, then it is questionable whether its really a loan or not. Additionally, we are not privy to the contracts between Intel and the engineering partners which may or may not transfer ownership.

Although there's lots of debate on whether ES CPU's are "legal" or not, they are not intended to be for 'production' use, and the 'engineering' processes they're used in may actually destroy or significantly damage them. Return it and try to get your money back. And go buy a proper CPU.

No. Pure 100% speculation. As I said above, I'd throw a 64-bit Linux boot stick on it, see if the whole 48gb is available, and if so, then chances are, you're dealing with some sort of Windows issue rather than the underlying hardware.

2 x 2Tb HDDs in RAID-0 would yield ~4Tb of space, not 2199GB. Something is wonky with your setup and/or the benchmark program.