Tyan intros the ultimate gaming box CeBIT 2006 8 cores, 16 DIMMs and SLIBy Charlie Demerjian: Wednesday 15 March 2006, 08:59PEOPLE SEEM to like the idea of Tyan's supercomputer-in-a-box, but a lot of people lamented the fact that it really was going to do what Tyan said, not what they wanted. Basically, it is a server, not a gaming box. Fear not, Tyan has the ultimate gaming barebones for you, but call it a rack mount server. Weird.The official name is the FT48, and it uses the B4885 mobo, neither of which appear anywhere on the Tyan site. It is a custom design for a customer, so it may not even be for sale, but if it is, I can't think of a better gaming box.Remember when I said the NVidia quad-SLI was CPU bound? How about four dual core Opterons and 16 memory slots to pump it? The FT48 has four 8x PCIe slots or two 16x, and will support SLI.Tyan FT48 barebones It has four PSUs, 3 + 1 redundant for a total of 1350W, and has just about every goodie you could need. With 4GB DIMMs, you can have 64GB of memory, SAS backplanes, and all with server class parts and components. Slap in eight 15K SAS drives RAIDed, four 885 CPUs, 32GB of RAM (to keep costs down, 4GB sticks are expensive), and two of the quad-SLI cards, and you have something that will probably push some decent frames.So, if you want something that will attract attention at the next lan party, sell your car and buy a fully kitted out FT48. As long as the game supports 8 cores, it should fly like no other. Why Tyan insists on calling this a rack mount server. Me, I'd have a custom paint job put on it, and take it to the local BYOC meet. µ
