Is identical hardware required?

[Hito]

I'm planning my installation and I'd read on one of the posts here that identical hardware for the four auxilliary machines should be identical. Is there a performance hit if it isn't?

I got a good deal on some 4U rack chassis, so I'm going to do a rack instalation. It seems pretty simple, but are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?

[Svpernova09]

The only performance hit you'd want to be aware of is if one machine is significantly slower than the others, that toon may lag behind / have latency issues. one of my setups is 4 PCs, the slowest being a 1.67ghz Atlhon XP 2000+ with 768mb ram and a 32mb video card. it doesn't have any lag problems at all. So I wouldn't be worried about everything being *exactly* the same.

[Kaynin]

The only hardware I can think of that is prefered to be identical, is if you have multiple graphic cards run in SLI. Other then that, like said before, it is a bit easier to manage if all clients have similar performance/latency. But it is far from required to run identical systems.

[Xzin]

No but it helps. You will always be as slow as the slowest machine and even identical machines are not always going to be perfectly in sync (defrag, random noise, etc).

[Hito]

The only hardware I can think of that is prefered to be identical, is if you have multiple graphic cards run in SLI. Other then that, like said before, it is a bit easier to manage if all clients have similar performance/latency. But it is far from required to run identical systems.

I don't plan on doing anything exotic like SLI. I don't think WoW could make good use of it anyway. I basically plan on following Bradster's approach with some hardware differences.

Since the hardware doesn't have to be identical, I'll shop around for something like the gigabyte setup I just upgraded from. I know I plan on sticking with gigabyte mobos, OCZ memory and power supplies, and NVIDIA video cards. I'm getting too lazy to learn a new control panel, so I'm sticking with what I know.

Since I'm putting everything in a rack, I was considering a large-ish liquid cooling system to cool all five computers. All those fans could get loud and since I happen to have a 50 gallon fishtank I-'m not using, it sounds workable.

Sorry for the ramble. Thanks for the quick answers.

[Hito]

You ever water cooled before? One leak and it could be bad. 5 leaks on 5 systems? Oh boy... what a mess.

Personally, I'd just go with silent fans.

I've used liquid cooling, but never on this scale. I just hace to be very careful setting it up and do testing outside of the box beforehand to test for leaks. I think shutoff valves and bypass lines to isolate individual units would be smart.

Silent fans are definite option and worth looking into.

[algol]

You ever water cooled before?

Yes. It's very effective and surprisingly easy to do. Also, relatively low risk as long as you bother to learn how to maintain it.

And even if it leaks...brief exposure to water is extremely unlikely to damage electronics. Now, if it causes a short, that's another matter...but if you catch it and cut the power quickly, it will usually be fine once it dries. But I tested my system thoroughly during installation and check up on it regularly, so there haven't been any issues in several years of using the same loop.

There are scads of ways to kill a computer. Most of them boil down to "you're doing it wrong."

[Clanked]

You ever water cooled before?
Most of them boil down to "you're doing it wrong."

Hmm. When I boil my computers they don't change into anything, especially not words. They just stop working. Am I doing it wrong?

[Hito]

You ever water cooled before?
Most of them boil down to "you're doing it wrong."

Hmm. When I boil my computers they don't change into anything, especially not words. They just stop working. Am I doing it wrong?

Try adding salt to the water... I've saltwater makes electronics scream.