I was thinking of making up a Dual CPU Xeon with either an 8core or 10core CPU (thats 16 to 20threads!). The CPU's are supercheap thanks to Facebook and Google etc upgrading their server farms. Whats not cheap are motherboards, usually around $400!

So on eBay I found:

Dell C8220 system board $119
Intel E5 Xeon CPUs from $20 to $90
DIY case, maybe 3d Printed
DDR3 ram is cheap and most of us have it already.

So.. does anyone know if the Dell C8220 system board (used in server sleds) will actually power up with a standard PSU (perhaps after some wiring changes)?

PS: Techspot had a good article on this too:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1155-affordable-dual-xeon-pc/

PPS:

Dell C8220 manual here, still heading it but nothing too alarming in it yet. Good to know this tidbit however, there are different revisions for the different versions of the Xeon E5:

V1.0 CN0W6W6G (for sled with Intel Xeon E5-2600 series processor)
V1.1 CN0TND55 (for sled with Intel Xeon E5-2600 series processor)
V1.2 CN09N44V (for sled with Intel Xeon E5-2600V2 series processor)