Asus L1N64-SLI WS to WS/B?

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flamex

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Is there any way to flash an L1N64-SLI WS board to WS/B without having to use a dual core FX series CPU to boot with?

I'm planning on building a folding rig consisting of dual quad core opterons and two or three 9800GX2s and I want to avoid having to buy an FX series CPU for this board if I can't get my hands on a WS/B.

Does anyone have an L1N64-SLI WS/B on sale by any chance? Possibly bundled with a pair of quad core opterons?
 
flamex said:
Is there any way to flash an L1N64-SLI WS board to WS/B without having to use a dual core FX series CPU to boot with?

I'm planning on building a folding rig consisting of dual quad core opterons and two or three 9800GX2s and I want to avoid having to buy an FX series CPU for this board if I can't get my hands on a WS/B.

Does anyone have an L1N64-SLI WS/B on sale by any chance? Possibly bundled with a pair of quad core opterons?
Click to expand...

There is you need to get a new BIOS chip in order to make it work as an WS/B. The difference is the size of the chip the new bios chip is 8mbit.

I actually built the exact same rig back in october for the same exact purpose (dual quad opterons and dual 9800 gx2's). You're better off not doing it. The CPU's were next to useless for folding and consumed a lot of power. Coupled with the fact that you need active cooling on the northbridge and the cpu power sources it get's kinda noisy and is power hungry. You're much better off getting a MSI k9A2 with 4 PCIe 16x double spaced slot instead. Simpler, a better chipset, not as power hungry, more room for expansion. I could go on. Also the MSI setup is cheaper as you need ECC Registered RAM for the L1n64 and a server chip.

I sold my L1n64 WS/B with two 8346 opterons back in january for about $400. I've been running a k9a2 since then with 4gpu's with zero problems unlike my l1n64 setup.

If you do build is and are having problems drop me a line I troubleshooted that system for a while and finally just decided for a much simpler setup.

Also I have some heatsinks I can sell you for cheap.

Pics of the old setup
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1033273843&postcount=713
 
What kind of problems did you encounter in your build, other than high-power consumption, hot running chipset and folding on the cpus being less than great?
 
flamex said:
What kind of problems did you encounter in your build, other than high-power consumption, hot running chipset and folding on the cpus being less than great?
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nvidia drivers. The chipset drivers are junk. I spent three weeks troubleshooting why the computer would just hard freeze for no reason. I heard a whisper that the nvidia "optimized" sata drivers where the cause so on this very small hunch i reformatted and installed everything but those bastardized drivers and from then on it wouldn't randomly freeze. Also it's not really an overclocking board for opteron cpu's. Also you're going to block a shed load of all those SATA ports with your 9800 gx2's.

Overall unless you're dead set on dual CPU's go with something more simpler. You're going to want a folding rig to be as painless and non time consuming as possible. A simpler, more well supported, and modular rig is better.
 
How did those cpus perform while folding? For some reason, I was under the impression that they would be useful for that function.
 
flamex said:
How did those cpus perform while folding? For some reason, I was under the impression that they would be useful for that function.
Click to expand...

They weren't really I forgot the number but my 2.3 ghz phenom average 1115ppd one three cores. You're better off using a lower wattage chip and taking that savings in wattage and redistributing it to a better or more graphics card. They get a ton more ppd.
 
I have a WS board flashed to a WS/B. I have two 2347HE BA stepping processors installed, and the peak temperature is about 121F with two dynatron A86G coolers. They are the best 3.5" pitch coolers.
I have not experienced any stability issues with the board after a few modifications.
First off, get 800MHz DDR2 ecc memory. You want to install either 2 or 4 cards. Go into the BIOS and set the system to run the memory at 667MHz, that will eliminate all stability issues.
Then while in BIOS, set the FSB to 220MHz, it will not change the cpu frequency, but it allows ntune to work.
I was able to push my 1.9GHz quad cores to 2.2GHz Octicore for days on end stable running world community grid. I can get up to 2.24GHz stable, but that is it.
AFter the board is flashed the bios doesnt let you do anything, you need to use ntune and baredit to overclock the cpu FSB and northbridge.
The hottest part of the L1N64SLI- WS/B is the dual chipsets. The board has two nforce 570 chipsets sitting back to back. The chipset will hit around 130F and stay around that temperature. It surprisingly runs hotter than the processors.
I do crunch on my system and it pulls in between 3500 and 4000 points a day on the BOINC client for WCG.

I did not do the BIOS mod, Hard member "freeloaded1969" did. You may want to PM him for more information, he is a very knowledgeable guy.
I thnk you need a FX-74 to do the bios mod to WS/B.

K-TRON
 
sorry to bump this old thread ;)

I just bought an L1N64-SLI WS board, I'm looking to flash it as well, so it can run 8346HEs opterons.

After searching a lot on google I found out there was a second revision with red pcie slots, a /B sticker and a soldered bios chip, which does supports opteron from the start.

Here is the problem: my board has blue pcie slots, no /B sticker, yet the bios chips i soldered, I guess I have the older bios version? Am I done for aka I need an FX? :(
 
Only the /B can support the 8346HE's AFAIK. The WS is FX only, IIRC. This was all about 8 months ago, so I am going off of memory from the research that I did..which may be fuzzy.
 
Also sorry to bump thread. well not really :)

I just picked up a WS with a pair of FX-74s and am interested in trying to get lower wattage quads in here. I have done a bunch of googling but no one seems to know whats up.

Is it possible to flash the WS to a WS /B so that the board can take quads?
 
The storage god was pulling equipment from his batcave. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

I am probably going to play around with the system for a month or two with the FX's then attempt to move to eight core system down the road. I just wanted to plan all this out ahead of time...

Holy Shit! A pair of 8346HEs is only like 110 with shipping on ebay?!? Now to find the ram!
 
I have used kingston KVR800D2D8P6K2/4G
Its a tad on the pricey side, but it works well.

The board cannot run it at PC6400 speed stably, but you can change it to PC5300 speed in the BIOS.
Than with ntune, when overclocking, you can bump the speed of the cpu's up, which will bring the memory bus up too. I think I got 780mhz out of the memory with a pretty hefty overclock on my 2347's

K-TRON
 
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