Re-potting a system

Repot
Verb: To transfer a plant to another (usually larger) pot.




At work, a while back, we put together a machine as a quick and dirty testbed, and racked it.
It was only used for about 3 months and then decommissioned.

Basic specs:
x58 Motherboard (Asus P6T WS Pro (was looking for something with SAS connectors))
i7 970 CPU
12GB RAM
A bunch of hard drives (a 300GB 15,000 rpm Seagate Cheetah SAS drive as the boot drive and a pair of 1TB Western Digital RE4 drives)

A couple weeks ago, my boss was looking to get rid of the machine (taking up valuable cabinet space) and I asked if I could have it.

It's now in my apartment, waiting to be disassembled.
Budget for the move? About $600.

And you've already seen the first part. It's going from the 4U rackmount case into a Thermaltake Core X9 cube case.

Second, going with an NZXT Kraken X61 CPU cooler.

Third: The GeForce GTX 560 is coming out of my existing rig (yeah, it's old, this is a budget build, no Titan X Triple SLIs here).

Fourth: Swapping over the boot disk to a 500GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD.

Budget-wise:

Found the SSD on Amazon for $189.99 (had been over $200 just a few days before).

At the local MicroCenter, found the X9 for $159.99 in stock (can't find it on Amazon, Newegg is out of stock, and a couple other places I found it want almost $200 for it).

The MicroCenter also had the Kraken X61 for the online $139.99 price with immediate (even multiple) availability. Several places online are out of stock on it, and the price in the places I was finding it were higher.

Retailmenot has a serialized coupon for $10 off purchases of $50 or more (but if you have access to multiple systems on different networks, that's no problem).

So I was able to get an additional $10 off the case and $10 off the AIO.

So, even with taxes, I still got away cheaper than I would have online (including gas burned).

$160.86 : Case
$139.41 : AIO
$200.80 : SSD (Amazon now collects tax in Illinois. Ain't that PEACHY?)
$501.07 : Total

So, that's it thus far. I have to work this evening and tomorrow, so nothing is likely to get done until Monday or so. I'll have more pics up by then.

Okay! I said I probably wasn't going to work on anything until the coming week.

I LIED!

I came home tired, but my caffeine reserves hadn't depleted yet. So I did a bit of disassembly work. Then sat down to upload the pics and passed right out in my chair.

This one here is some of the other toys I touched on earlier.


This is the guts of the server box. Yeah. The cables are a rats' nest. But I was building this thing under time constraint when it went together. No points for neatness.


One of the two SAS RAID cages I'd dropped in. And, as much as I'd love to use these in the new build, there's no real point. I'll probably be dropping these into FS at some point.


And here's the other one below the optical drive.


And here's the motherboard, free of its housing, with the cooler taken off. Got a small surprise. The thing was fastened from the bottom with fairly large nuts. Then I remembered that the cooler had come with its own lug for tightening things down. Still, a box wrench later, and air cooling is now but a memory.


The SATA and SAS ports. The two on the far-right are the SAS ports. Still trying to decide if I'm gonna use that Cheetah drive or sell it. Thinking it might be a good home for SQL Server, so it isn't competing for I/O with other stuff on the SSD..


And here's the 970 with a higher-res cut-out of the info on the lid.


Yes. I'm one of those pack-rats who keeps old anti-static bags around. Can you blame me?
Here's a quick look at the backplate.


And finally, the memory. Since it's old Mushkin stuff, it'll probably overclock a bit just fine. If not, I can always grab a DDR3-1600 kit.


Probably going to wind up splurging for a new PSU though. The one that's in there is some cheapie off-brand. It's modular, but I don't really trust it.

Okay, blew my budget.

As I said, I really didn't like the look of the PSU. It was kinda foisted off on my by the owners, in lieu of a more trustworthy brand name.

So, I went and took another look and immediately got back online. The last thing I need is a flaky frickin' power supply gumming up the works.

As I don't need some thirty-zillion watt PSU that grabs my Coke from the fridge, gives me hand jobs and spits $100 bills from the fan housing...shit, I never learn do I?

Anyhoo, I dropped the dosh for one of these:

Seasonic Platinum SS-860XP2

Given the fact that my build is going to be relatively low-power, this sucker's a bit overkill.

For the cost of the water cooler and power supply, you could have bought a better CPU and motherboard along with a good power supply. Sounds like you are going to sell the SAS drives anyway. That's a 5 year old CPU you are dumping $140 on just to cool it...

Especially since you have a Microcenter local...

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1854653

You're also forgetting the cost of RAM as well.

While I don't deny what you say, I'll remind you of this.

This setup is a stopgap. For now. My budget should loosen up later this year. At which point, I'll probably be looking at an X99 setup. All I'll need to do is basically swap motherboard/chip/RAM onto the motherboard tray and go (though I'll probably lose the SAS drive at that time).

My current rig is an an even older Core2Quad 2.5Ghz. And it's limiting me, currently, as I have certain types of guest OSes that the CPU is precluding me from using.

I know the spending seems extravagant at this point. But I have a certain endpoint in mind, and I'm not really willing to compromise with cheaper components.

Okay, was a little busy today, but managed to get some stuff done thus-far.


Got the motherboard mounted onto the motherboard tray. The tray's already set up to just slap a standard ATX board on and screw it down. You just need to fiddle with it if you're going E-ATX.


Got the tray back into the case. Thumbscrews FTW!


Next, I moved on to getting the radiator mounted.
After hand-mounting rads in case builds prior to this, these rails feel like cheating!
Yank the rail, screw the radiator down, you're done! It took all of about 5 minutes (if that).


And then just hook the rail back onto the case. The rails are set up to be bi-directional. So you can put the rail in "backwards" too. This way, if you're checking fitment and just want to flip it around and see, you can. No fuss, no muss.


And yes. I'm not a professional photographer or reviewer. I'm doing this with the phone in my camera. Because I suck! (No! Not like that! I'd be more popular otherwise.)
Anyhoo, a bit of trial and error (and no small amount of shaky-hands and I get weird angles like this:


Yeah, I kinda expect to see Adam West and Burt Ward come swinging across at any moment.

More later!

Pet Peeve Encountered

PULL THE FUCKING PLASTIC OFF YOUR MOBO HEATSINKS

Pet Peeve Subdued

How are you liking the case so far? It looks like a good Test Benching case.

*Plastic on mobo heatpipe*

Yeah. I thought I'd done that when I put the damnable thing together the first time. Guess not.

The case is a gargantuan fucking monster. It's roughly the same size as my damn dishwasher.
My current case is a CoolerMaster RC-690-KKNN1-GP.
HxWxD
20.69x8.39x18.98

The Core X9.
HxWxD
19.8x15.25.2

So it's roughly DOUBLE the volume.

But, after years of cramped cases and trying to SQUEEEEEEEEEZE shit in, this case is a system builder's wet dream.

Thumbscrewed EVERYTHING.
Removable EVERYTHING.
INSANE room for fans and rads.
Plenty of component space for extra drives and such.

Someone asked if you could fit 9x3.5" HDDs and 3x2.5" in this bad boy.

You can! I could do it right now with the equipment on hand.

1: 5 hard drives in the sleds underneath the motherboard area.
2: 1 hard drive in the hidden mount under the motherboard.
3: Get a 3 in-2 HDD cage for the 5.25" bays.
4: You can mount 2 SSDs in the remaining sled under the motherboard area.
5: You can mount 2 more SSDs under the motherboard next to the hidden HDD mount.
6: And you STILL have space for a 3.5" optical.

How's that for capacious?

As for a bench testing case? Maybe. If I were bench testing, I'd probably go with something more suitable to open-air assembly.
And if I need to bake the system, I can always throw a cardboard box over it G[H]etto Style.

Had a small setback with DumbEgg today.

Somehow they got my CC info garbled on my account. I've used the card there before and haven't had a problem. But when I went back in to check, they had the wrong year listed.

AND the price had gone up $10.

So, off to Amazon I went and found it for the original price.

Sorry about the interval.

Had to wait on the new PSU.
Then had a couple problems with a connector on the PSU.
It would seat in place and click but I'd try to power on and the system would throw me a CPU failure blinkie.



Turns out that click was a bit of "give" in the connector itself.
So, as firmly as I THOUGHT I seated it, it wasn't.
Spent a bit more time pushing stuff in and finally heard the bastard click PROPERLY.

After that, boom, power on with no issues.



SHE LIVES!

Currently getting the system installed on the SSD.
Then I'm going to troubleshoot why the SAS drive isn't powering on properly.

As for assembly. I'm kinda NOT a fan of the sideways hard drive trays for the 3.5/2.5" disks.

Trying to mount a 2.5" drive on one of the sleds is 3 handed task (Hold the drive, hold the tray STEADY, and screw it in).

Also, because of the sideways orientation, you have to yank the cages to get the power and SATA/SAS connectors on (unless your hands are REALLY small and you have REALLY excellent physical dexterity).

I know. I know. I can't have everything.

But dammit! I WANT IT ALL!

Okay.

Windows: IN
SAS Drive: IN/Formatted
SATA Drives 1&2: IN/FORMATTED
AV: DONE
Malwarebytes: DONE
Currently downloading my ISOs for SQL 2014 and Office 2013

Okay, ever so slightly pissed.

Apparently this motherboard, for GOD only knows what reason is refusing to allow me to modify the multiplier on the system, even in full manual mode.

I remember those times with x58 where it was a hassle to get the multiplier to adjust.

Do a search for that problem and you should find the required steps to free up the multiplier on that board.

Okay, I always suspected I was a dumbass.
Now, after careful research, I've PROVED I'm a dumbass.

Should have remembered this.

The i7 970 is *not* a multiplier unlocked part. (Hence multiplier stuck on Auto.)
So all I can do is bump the bus.

Oh well.

Update: Recently upgraded to 24GB of RAM.
Was getting a bit weirded out that I'd stepped up from 8GB (max) RAM on my old system to a new system with 50% more. But was getting daily out-of-memory errors.

Turns out, the culprit is Samsung Magician's OS "optimization".

It basically sets a tiny user-managed paging file (200MB-1GB).

And while this more or less forces the system to push as much as possible into memory, it's not necessarily a Good Thing.

Granted, with 24GB in the system now, I'm no longer getting OOMs.

quick question about that case, do you think it would that tray fit an SSI-EEB motherboard (12"x13")? if so im tempted to get one for my 'gaming server' XD

Okay, SSI-EEB and EATX are the same in terms of board dimensions (12x13).

However, the motherboard supports are in different places.

There's no reason you COULDN'T use the case. But you'd need to drill the motherboard tray (which, luckily, is removable) to accommodate the differently placed support posts.

Chas said:

Okay, SSI-EEB and EATX are the same in terms of board dimensions (12x13).

However, the motherboard supports are in different places.

There's no reason you COULDN'T use the case. But you'd need to drill the motherboard tray (which, luckily, is removable) to accommodate the differently placed support posts.

Click to expand...

that's what i wanted to hear same with the fractal designs define R2 XL i believe, few mounts missing but will be fine without them, looks like my next case is decided XD this chenbro one whilst it works is a tad noisy and has terrible airflow XD

Excellent! Welcome to the club.
Try not to lose your jaw when you first see how big this bastard actually is.

Chas said:

Excellent! Welcome to the club.
Try not to lose your jaw when you first see how big this bastard actually is.

Click to expand...

oh im expecting massive can't be much longer than the chenbro though XD but im expecting huge given it can just be a rad box XD

Heh. And some people are buying two, to stack them and house ginormo-rads and crazy multi-loop setups.

Granted, if I had the time and cash free to do something like that, I might do it too.

But DAMN!

Chas said:

Heh. And some people are buying two, to stack them and house ginormo-rads and crazy multi-loop setups.

Granted, if I had the time and cash free to do something like that, I might do it too.

But DAMN!

Click to expand...

well i mean im going to watercool eventually but i don't need that many rads XD hell i could probably get away with just one 480 XD my CPU's are only 60W so take VERY little cooling XD

Well, Someguy133 came by my place yesterday.
He was rather flipped out by how big the case actually was.