New Xserves Released, Xsan Now Shipping

[ddtlm]

Trowaman:

The absense of 1.6 G5 eMacs in November also point to a lack of progress in the lowend as well.

Well, even if faster chips were available cheaply and in bulk, Apple would have to withhold them so as to not threaten the PM lineup.

geeman:

I'd guess that they're at 2.3Ghz because you can't stick a liquid cooling system in a 1U high enclosure.

IBM needs to be able to produce 2.5ghz G5s that do not require liquid cooling if they have any hope of getting the design to 3.0ghz. I fully expect that 2.5ghz 970fx's will eventually be refined enough to inhabit iMacs.

 

[AidenShaw]

liquid is for quiet, not because it's essential

I'd guess that they're at 2.3Ghz because you can't stick a liquid cooling system in a 1U high enclosure.

You would not need liquid cooling for a 2.5 in a 1U.

You don't *need* it in the PowerMac dual 2.5 either, but Apple *chose* to use liquid because it could operate at a lower noise level than air-cooled heat sinks would need.

Noise is not an issue with a 1U server - you can push a lot of air over the heatsinks. I just bought 20 HPaq 1U and 2U servers (DL360G4 and DL380G4) with dual 3.6 GHz Xeons - those put out more heat than the 2.5 GHz PPC970 and are air-cooled just fine.

It's possible that the issue is IBM's supply of chips, and it's also possible that the XServe has another restriction - perhaps the chipset or mobo can't be clocked to the 1.25 GHz FSB that the 2.5 would need, or perhaps the power supply can't handle the added drain from the higher draw CPU plus the extra power needed when running the FSB faster.

A *requirement* for liquid cooling isn't the problem....