Iwill punts 16-FB-DIMM Xeon mobo

Computex 2006 Iwill displayed its latest range of server motherboards for the Intel Dempsey and Woodcrest range of Xeon processors at Computex this week. The DPK66S series of motherboards all features support for dual Socket 771 Xeon processors and no less than 16 FB-DIMM slots for up to 64GB of RAM which would set you back in the region of £5,300 inc VAT.

This might not be a feat in its own, but Iwill has managed to squeeze all the 16 memory slots into an E-ATX board, which is only slightly larger than a normal ATX motherboard. The location of the memory modules are rather odd as they're all placed towards the back of the motherboard, but it makes very good sense in a 1U server environment. When asked how hot the DPK66S ran with 16 populated slots, the answer was "very hot".

Other features supported include a 667, 1066 or 1333MHz system bus thanks to the new Intel 5000X chipset which has been specifically designed for high-performance, dual-processor machines. As an optional extra the DPK66S is available with Ultra320 SCI or an eight-port SAS controller. Expansion slots comes in the shape of one x16 PCI Express slot, two x8 PCI Express slots - one with a x16 electrical connector - two 64-bit 133MHz PCI-X slots and a single PCI slot.

The DPK66S also features a digital VRM design, which seems to be the new buzz word among the motherboard manufacturers here at Computex, which takes up less space on the motherboard and should run cooler than traditional VRM designs.

Also on display were several AMD Opteron socket-F boards with various designs depending on their intended usage. If you've invested in an Iwill H8502 chassis with eight CPU sockets you'll be glad to know that the company is going to offer new CPU cards which will accept the new AMD Socket F processors and DDR 2 memory. Some of the Opteron boards also featured HTX expansion slots for connecting devices directly to the HyperTransport bus.

All of the new Socket F boards featured the Nvidia nForce4 Professional 2200 chipset. ®