JFPdude

This is the kind of technical question that perks my attention.

The white servers (many of the hosting companies use these rather than actual servers) are actually desktops. The difference between these and actual servers are as follows:

1. Desktop motherboards have printer ports on them. While this doesn't seem like a big deal to you these printer ports has a really slow baud rate. The fact that these printer ports cannot run at the same speed as the processors means other parts need to be put on these mother boards to slow the bus speed down.

Summary of #1 : You get slower speeds from the same size processor in a desktop model than in a server model.

2. Desktop motherboards have more bus ports (AGP, ISA, PCI) than any server board. Because these ports exist the processor and ram uses a certain amount of resources to see if anything is in these ports. Therefore only server motherboards should be used in high bandwidth sites. Less resources means faster speed to your user your trying to sell to.

3. Desktop Cases have very little cooling. These cases are designed to be used in a house where the house is kept at a comfortable temperature. Although most datacenters have big air conditioners your processor will suffer being in a desktop case rather than a server case.

Desktop cases all total usually have 3 fans for cooling.

Server cases have at least 5 to 10 fans for keeping things cool.

The smaller server cases filled with fans are easier to cool and keep your sites running.

So no bigger isn't always better.


Oh and on a side note I can verify that picture Brad showed of his servers and rack is actually his and real. (I racked some of those with corey, brad, and his staff)