Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

monkpea · Jun 1, 2002, 06:02 AM

First off do they have covers or are they open 'trays'?
If they are covered you could just have it leaning on the floor by your desk or if your desk is against a wall you could mount it on the wall there by saving ALL your desk space, except for the peripherals!
If there is no cover you could just make one.

Next worries are:
Could you pop in a geforce 4 in?
Would it run Standard OSX no questions asked?

pea

Tom N · Jun 1, 2002, 08:11 AM

I don't think the xserve would make a very good desktop at all. At least not how I use a desktop. When I buy a desktop, I buy a minimal configuration of the model I want, I then add all the goodies I need. This is usually less expensive then buying additional memory or hard drives or other stuff from Apple. With the x serve, I'm not able to do that as well. The hard drives require special carriers. Apple does not sell the carriers seperatley, only as part of a hard drive unit. Therefore I have to buy Apples hard drives, which are quite a bit more then the same drive available from other sources. Servers are not usually designed to be graphi workhorses, so you will not find high end graphic cards as an option at time of purchase. Using a third party card will cost you quite a bit, considering you already paid for a basic video card that won't have any use (the xserve does not have the available slots to run multiple video cards). Also I would suspect you will awant to replace the CD-ROM with a CD-RW or DVD drive or a Combo unit. Once again you are replacing items you have already paid for.

The xserve seems to be a fine server, and I am even considering the purchase of one to migrate our web, mail, and name servers to, but the xserve would be run headless (no monitor), wouldn't need anything other then the included CD-ROM, and for our needs will require 2 of their expensive hard drives. I am holding off on this purchase till after Macworld. I expect there will be desktops, that would meet my needs at lower prices then the xserve (OS X server software is available for desktops). Of course my server needs are not that great and will not demand a great deal of horse power. I currently use older beige G3s as servers using OS X and don't have a problem with performance.

So if you need a desktop, get a desktop.

Tom N.

red rocket · Jun 1, 2002, 10:13 AM

I think it would be complety cool to use an Xserve as a desktop computer.
The ultimate luxury, in a way, buying something very expensive that doesn't suit your needs but looks great, then adding everything you want afterwards. If I had money to burn, I'd probably do it myself.

Actually, if it was me, I'd buy the whole 42 units rack and attach about 4 of them 23" Cinema Displays, among other things. Rack'n'Roll indeed! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

As for using it with standard OS X, don't see why it wouldn't work.

[ 06-01-2002, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: red rocket ]

tr · Jun 1, 2002, 10:25 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr /> Servers are not usually designed to be graphi workhorses, so you will not find high end graphic cards as an option at time of purchase <hr /></blockquote>actually, you can get a Radeon 8500 in Xserve, it fits in the combination PCI/4x AGP slot. it adds $150. you just have to BTO. take out the standard PCI video card they put in the lower PCI slot, and change the combo slot to the 8500, which removes the 2nd gig ethernet card (you won't really need it since there's one on the mobo). no GeForce 4 in BTO, but i'm sure there's going to be someone out there trying to put one in.

i think Xserve would make a pretty cool desktop. Tom N, monkpea isn't really asking if Xserve would be a really practical desktop solution. that's like asking "will this Ferrari F50 make a good work commuter car?" hell, you'd probably have to fill up your tank when you finally make it to work, and it would be murder driving that in stop and go traffic, but, damn, it'd be cool!

i understand your points about the HD's and such, but the fact is, right now, the Xserve has the best hardware compared to any PowerMac G4 tower available at this time. and as for replacing stuff that you already paid for, i don't have much of a problem with that, and i'm sure there are a lot of people who agree with me. we like to mess around with stuff as soon as we get it. people like us live in the mac modifications forum.

it would be nice to have an Xserve for desktop, saves a lot of space, looks cool. a couple things that may be problematic is 1) will it run regular OS X? (which you mentioned) and 2) you gotta find some way to get sound out, maybe a PCI card or something. then you'd have complete desktop setup.

tr

[ 06-01-2002, 11:31 AM: Message edited by: tr ]

OreoCookie · Jun 1, 2002, 10:28 AM

The XServe is just a preview of what you'd expect in the next line, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.

So why don't you wait a bit for the desktop computers?

Macanoid · Jun 1, 2002, 10:54 AM

Actually, it seems the video market has discovered this beautiful rack mount machine, as Apple is already selling quite a few of these bundled with FCP to the various video companies

cmoney · Jun 1, 2002, 11:13 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by OreoCookie:
The XServe is just a preview of what you'd expect in the next line, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.

So why don't you wait a bit for the desktop computers?<hr /></blockquote>Because Apple doesn't sell what is essentially a pizza box Mac other than the XServe. The only concern would be depth, which is 28". But since my desk is a nice 34" deep, I'm now thinking of buying one and mounting it under my desk! That would be too cool!

I've got an ADC hardware discount that expires in June (one month before MWNY damnit!). My price for XServe is $2399, the same price as the DP 1GHz QS. Hmmm...I just may do it!

cube-dude · Jun 1, 2002, 11:16 AM

Topic: Xserve
Forum: OS X - Server

Thread moved