Hello,
I have a friend who works in IT and he adviced me touse xenon server instead of a normal desktop as the xeon servers ismore powerful and more expandable than just a desktop. My question is wouldiClone work with the xeon servers and it's operating system (linux operatingsystem), the one that I'm thinking to purchase is:
HP G6 ML350
8GB DDR3 RAM
1 X 460W PSU
1 X Intel Xeon E5504 @ 2GHz
2 X 146 GB SAS 15K HDD
The video card and the extra Rams and Harddrives will be purchased separately 
any advice will be appreciated 

Om

iClone works under Windows, so having Linux would be you first complication. I wouldn't advice it. I believe you can run Windows programs under Linux, but that wouldn't give you any advantage, add a lot of complications, and may even not work very well.

If you need Linux, you could create a double-boot system, with Windows as an option. I would recommend Windows 10 Pro, forget about the Home edition.

As graphics card, the preference is for an NVidia card as it supports the Global Illumination feature. Experience from users (including myself) has shown that you want at least 8 GB of VRAM for more complicated scenes. This leaves you with a GTX 1070, 1080 (which I have), or the latest 1080 Ti, which has 11 GB of VRAM.

Lots of RAM is good. As textures get more detailed, scenes need more memory to be loaded. I have 32 GB of RAM, other users have even more. One purpose of extra RAM is that will serve as extra memory for the video card if need be.

I don't believe a Xeon in itself has a particular advantage. The one you mention seems to be an older product with 4 cores but no hyper-threading. A server is a kind of application that has steady processing power requirements. 3D applications are different because they need lots of power when rendering for instance, but revert to a more relaxed (is quieter) pace. Modern Intel i7 CPUs deliver all that. There is also an advantage in having more cores and hyper-threading.

I've built a system that works very well for me, based on an Intel i7 5820K with six cores. If you are interested, the details are here: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/2BtpvV. If you are building a system, don't skip on parts, especially the motherboard and the power supply.

I'll stop now, because I don't want to overwhelm you...:unsure:

EDIT: Fixed typo and grammar errors...:blush:

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Those server motherboards often do not have any slots for graphics cards.

My advice. Stay away from this system. It is very likely not going to work.

you really need to do research before messing with Xeon. Some are not designed to work single. I am using Dual Xeon E5-2630 v3 which won't work alone. I do get advantage of 20 cores able to run 40 threads so certain applications work well. I am running Windows pro as you have to run pro version for Xeon systems ( dual) and as stated you would be fine with a single with good ram, I am running 128 gig. ECC checking memory. Depending on the board you get they do have the newer PCI express and can handle multiple video card. But you need a massive power supply Mine is 1500 watts. I am running a 12 Gig Titan but all this comes at great cost. This is speed and power are a question of money How fast can you afford to go?

The processor you have is capable of single usage.

check out the i7 920 processor it is a bit more but has double the thread's and a lot more cache memory plus a higher clock speed.  this i7 processor has double the PassMark score as this Xeon processor.

After all of that, I think I will stick to a normal desktop. Thanks guys,

actually for iclone the cpu is not that important, for most things, iclone will only use 1 core, DX11 works that way, so it is kinda irrelevant if you have 2 4 or 6 cores, sure stuff like realtime smooth will work faster, but the preview and render process use very little cpu, what matters most for iclone is the gpu power, gpu memory and ram memory.  

The PC runs more than just iClone, so with multiple cores you get a smoother load-balancing between applications and OS. Single or dual core processors easily get choked to death.

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