Tyan Thunder LE and Tiger LE Motherboards

With the recent launch of AMD's Athlon MP processors and the 760MP chipset, dual AMD it seems, is all the rage. In a market segment completely dominated by Intel for so many years, people were screaming out for a good alternative (which we did get :-). There are some drawbacks to the brand new dual AMD platform though, things like cost, heat and a proprietary power supply make the dual AMD an intimidating platform to work with for a lot of system builders.

So... What is a person to do if they want to build a server and the AthlonMP is too expensive/intimidating/new, P4 Xeons are too expensive/intimidating/new, and the VIA based dual boards just don't offer enough "Umph"? How about a Serverworks based motherboard and some inexpensive PIII's? I mean after all... They are called Serverworks.

Serverworks?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with who Serverworks is exactly and what it is that they do, I suggest you take a look at their site. In a nutshell, Serverworks has made a name for themselves making high-end chipsets specifically geared towards, you guessed it, the server market. By incorporating some pioneering technologies like PCI-X and the Grand Champion Architecture™ Serverworks has caught the eye of many Tier One OEMs, and even Intel themselves. If you are running a newer dual or quad Xeon server or even a recently purchased dual PIII server where you work, chances are good that the chipset has the Serverworks name silk-screened on it

Tyan has a few motherboards based on various chipsets from Serverworks, but since The Tiger LE and Thunder LE are pretty much identical (and since that is what Tyan sent me) we'll take a look at these two boards together.

The Specs

I won't bore you with a bunch of techno-babble, if you'd like to read the full specifications, click on one of the images above. What I will tell you is that the *LE boards are very specialized pieces of hardware. If you're looking for a workstation board, look elsewhere. If you are in need of a reliable server platform that allows for some density in the rack without breaking the bank, here is what Tyan has to say:

The same thing can be said for the Tiger LE as well. As a matter of fact you have probably noticed from the pictures above that the two boards are exactly identical except for one thing. Like all of the boards in Tyan's "Thunder" line, the Thunder LE comes equipped with U160 SCSI onboard (via an LSI SYM53C1010 chipset) while the Tiger LE ditches the SCSI controller in favor of an integrated Promise FastTrak 100. That's it... Other than that one thing the boards are identical (so identical in fact that they are both currently listed for ~$375 on Pricewatch).

In the box

The *LE's arrive in a pretty innocent looking, very small box. Once you crack them open though, you begin to realize exactly how much Tyan has crammed onto a standard ATX sized motherboard. Don't worry about lack of stuff in such a small package either... Tyan packs the box full of goodies (including a single slot riser card!).

Setup >>