As those of you who join IRC know I recently managed to obtain a pair of Ivy-E 12core cpu's for the bargain price of $1400, I say bargain as the auction had them listed as 8 core parts but the actual picture was of a HCC chip (the 12 cores look different). CPU-Z identifyies the cpu as a 2640 8 core, HWinfo 64 lists it properly
Purchased these, and an ASUS Z9PA intending to use existing parts where possible, after all v2 is supposed to be a drop in replacement for v1 cpu's with a BIOS flash
Well, not quite.
1. These CPU's are in short supply, unlike v1
2. They must have ECC ram for 2p mode, normal desktop stuff doesn't work even if your mobo manual says it will.
3. Like v1 there have been reports, of CPU's not behaving properly etc, well mine do work but they are B2 stepping, not sure about the earlier ones.
4. They have a high voltage requirement on start up, some psu's may not have the juice to power everything up.
That's the caveats out the way, so here's my tale.
Got everything in the mail, opened everything up and hit the first snag. On the Z9PA the cpu sockets are right close together, you will need to look very closely at heatsink sizes, and it will probably be the same for other ATX boards as most won't fit and if you turn them sideways you may have an issue clearing your ram
Anyway for testing to make sure everything worked I did use my oversized intel HSF and it wouldn't boot in 2p mode. 1p worked fine.
Sourced some cheap HSF that just fit - photo's will come later, and started proper testing.
1p would boot fine on either cpu with stock desktop ram but still no 2p boot, tried 3 different sets of normal ram and no joy. Boot kept failing on Q code b2, Memory init.
Ordered 2 cheap ECC modules to see if it would boot. still nothing so I called on Tear's expertise.
We started disabling things in the BIOS, ISOC, VT, Option Roms, slowing QPI links etc. and still nothing. We pondered and the general consenus was it was still a RAM issue so I went to try and source some RAM from the very short approved list from asus.
That arrived a couple of days ago and a quick test still wasn't having any joy so today I set aside as long as it would take.
Installed 2nd cpu, hsf and started from there, at this time we had it stuck on q code b2 on the boot sequence.
Installed a cheap 5450 gfx card, disabled on board graphics and still b2
disabled ISOC - this has been stated on several websites - b2
disabled Lan option roms - A2, this is a result as A2 is near the end of post
disabled SATA raid option rom - A2
At this point Wyluliraven asked about the PSU and suggested a different one as v2 needs a lot of current on start up
Ripped apart my x5670 rig and put in the 650AX - still A2
disabled Vt and Vt-d - A2
disabled the USB 3 controller and got AE, more progess as AE means its looking for a boot device, in my haste I had forgotten to reconnect power to the HDD
Reconnected that and voila - we now have a working 48 thread machine
So here are some numbers.
1p folding 12c/24t at 2.1ghz, 8gb Gskill 1600 CAS9 ram, 400w seasonic fanless PSU.
Power 132w from the wall folding.
8104 tpf 16:33 for 170k PPD
8105 tpf 20:56 for 176k PPD.
2p folding 24c/48t at 2.1ghz, 2gb Hynix HMT125U7, 650w AX PSU.
Power 234w from the wall folding
8552 tpf 3:36 for 84k PPD - this is single channel mode, I will post updates as I get more ram. When I say single channel, its 1 stick between both CPU's so lots of shunting around of data.
Purchased these, and an ASUS Z9PA intending to use existing parts where possible, after all v2 is supposed to be a drop in replacement for v1 cpu's with a BIOS flash
Well, not quite.
1. These CPU's are in short supply, unlike v1
2. They must have ECC ram for 2p mode, normal desktop stuff doesn't work even if your mobo manual says it will.
3. Like v1 there have been reports, of CPU's not behaving properly etc, well mine do work but they are B2 stepping, not sure about the earlier ones.
4. They have a high voltage requirement on start up, some psu's may not have the juice to power everything up.
That's the caveats out the way, so here's my tale.
Got everything in the mail, opened everything up and hit the first snag. On the Z9PA the cpu sockets are right close together, you will need to look very closely at heatsink sizes, and it will probably be the same for other ATX boards as most won't fit and if you turn them sideways you may have an issue clearing your ram
Anyway for testing to make sure everything worked I did use my oversized intel HSF and it wouldn't boot in 2p mode. 1p worked fine.
Sourced some cheap HSF that just fit - photo's will come later, and started proper testing.
1p would boot fine on either cpu with stock desktop ram but still no 2p boot, tried 3 different sets of normal ram and no joy. Boot kept failing on Q code b2, Memory init.
Ordered 2 cheap ECC modules to see if it would boot. still nothing so I called on Tear's expertise.
We started disabling things in the BIOS, ISOC, VT, Option Roms, slowing QPI links etc. and still nothing. We pondered and the general consenus was it was still a RAM issue so I went to try and source some RAM from the very short approved list from asus.
That arrived a couple of days ago and a quick test still wasn't having any joy so today I set aside as long as it would take.
Installed 2nd cpu, hsf and started from there, at this time we had it stuck on q code b2 on the boot sequence.
Installed a cheap 5450 gfx card, disabled on board graphics and still b2
disabled ISOC - this has been stated on several websites - b2
disabled Lan option roms - A2, this is a result as A2 is near the end of post
disabled SATA raid option rom - A2
At this point Wyluliraven asked about the PSU and suggested a different one as v2 needs a lot of current on start up
Ripped apart my x5670 rig and put in the 650AX - still A2
disabled Vt and Vt-d - A2
disabled the USB 3 controller and got AE, more progess as AE means its looking for a boot device, in my haste I had forgotten to reconnect power to the HDD
Reconnected that and voila - we now have a working 48 thread machine
So here are some numbers.
1p folding 12c/24t at 2.1ghz, 8gb Gskill 1600 CAS9 ram, 400w seasonic fanless PSU.
Power 132w from the wall folding.
8104 tpf 16:33 for 170k PPD
8105 tpf 20:56 for 176k PPD.
2p folding 24c/48t at 2.1ghz, 2gb Hynix HMT125U7, 650w AX PSU.
Power 234w from the wall folding
8552 tpf 3:36 for 84k PPD - this is single channel mode, I will post updates as I get more ram. When I say single channel, its 1 stick between both CPU's so lots of shunting around of data.