Octo-core Opteron project Shopping list.

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ultatryon@ecc

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 19, 2002
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I figured I would put all of the stuff I have ordered in one place, for easy reference, and comments. This all started with Robstar's post about the 2x Quad Opteron cpus for stupid low prices.

This is what I have ordered thusfar:

1x Pair of Opteron 8346HE 1.8ghz Quad CPUs $149 + $16.95 ship ($44.70 / 30% cashback)
1x Supermicro H8DM3-2 Dual Socket F Motherboard w/SAS $129.00 + $10.00 ship ($25.80 / 20% cashback)
2x Kingston 4gb (2x2gb) Registered ECC DDR2-5300 Memory modules $144.00 + Free shipping (no cashback :()
2x Fujitsu 36gb 10k RPM 2.5" SAS Drives $80.00 + $8.00 ship ($24.00 / 30% cashback)
1x 3Ware Multilane SAS Breakout Cable $34.99 + Free ship ($10.50 / 30% cashback)
2x Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu Heatsinks $47.98 + $11.60 ship ($1.44 / 3% cashback)
1x Rosewill RSV-V4000 4U EATX Case $109.99 + Free ship ($3.30 / 3% cashback)

That brings me to a total of: $694.96 + $46.55 shipping, and $109.74 coming back from live.com. Grand total: $631.77 for this project.

I already have an EPS powersuply from AMS (550w), as well as three or four 320gb SATA drives from my old RAID array.

The only big drawback I have found for this motherboard so far, is that it only has PCI-e 8x slots (no 16x slots!). Normally, I would just chop the plastic off the back of the connector for a video card, but there are ICs, Capacitors, and a heatsink in the way. I am going to have to figure out some sort of way to get around this tomorrow when the Heatsinks show up, and I can actually start doing some real testing.
 
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Well.. I was thinking about buying them on ebay, but I wanted the heatsinks tomorrow. Damn me and my impatience, as they have the CNPS7000B for $22ish shipped, but 30% off of $7.99 is only $2.39..

I live in Connecticut, so Newegg from NJ gets to me in one day. They are scheduled to be delivered to me late tomorrow morning.
 
don't worry i'm exactly the same way... luckily he's in the same state as me, so i get it usually within 3 days or so.
 
All of the pieces are in (except for the SAS drives and cable), and I just finished assembling it. I am just about to install ubuntu x64 on it right now to get this party started.. I do not want to go too crazy with it until the SAS drives get here.

Photos will be forthcoming..
 
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It wasnt the easiest case to work with.. it is JUST big enough for EATX, and the 5.25" drive cage is a PITA to get in and out when the motherboard is in. But, the BD-RE drive is really the only device I am going to put there, so its all good.

I did have to remove some of the full length PCI brackets so that the SAS connectors are accessible.
 
I could have sworn someone said that supermicro mbs need to be in supermicro cases. I guess I may have misread that.
 
some of them do.. but this is standard EATX. about half of the boards they make are for their 1u/2u/3u cases. Someone in one of the threads also said that the quad boards only work in supermicro cases, which is not true, its just WATX, but finding cases for those are.. difficult.
 
Ok thanks. It'll help me find a motherboard for cheaper price I guess since I have more choices.
 
Ther guy I bought mine from also has a H8DME-2 refurb for $99 on ebay.. the only difference between the boards is the lack of SAS, and twice the memory slots.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Super-H8DME-2-Socket-F-Refurbished-MotherBoard_W0QQitemZ270289077762QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item270289077762&_trkparms=39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3A15|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14
 
Thanks, I'll look into it if my offer doesn't go through on another board.
 
So.. I have the system together, and things are working.. sort of.

I have an ATi x2600Pro that I chopped half of the connector off of (made it into an 8x card), but I cant seem to get this board to recognize that its there.

I checked the card in another board (one with a x16 slot) and the card still functions, but I am starting to wonder if this board is hard coded to ignore video cards...
 
i cant beleive that price, INSANE! dam wish i could build 3 of those and i could run everything in our office off of them and get ride of the...9 servers we have now!
 
It looks like I may be in the market for another board after all of this.. I have a PCI Express x1 TV Tuner card which gets recognized right off the bat, but I cant get this video card to kick over for anything..

I am thinking about the MSI Speedster, and just selling this current setup to my work (as we could use an 8 core ESXi server to get rid of a bunch of smaller boxen)
 
with a lot of server / workstation boards you have to set it to look for a video device in the pci-e slots in the bios. perhaps that's what you're looking for?

as for the speedster-wa6, i'd stay away from it. there's a thread on 2cpu about the board and it's very mediocre. flashing the bios to support the 8mb chip is also a pita.

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?t=81420&page=3

if you compare engineer3d's results to LIKMARK, LIKMARK's scores are much better. it's just one benchmark though.
 
There were no such options in this bios.. the closest thing was PCI/PCI-Express priority mode, but the onboard video is pci-e, and I wasnt about to find a "mid-range" PCI video card.

Besides, I have already "sold" the getup to my work, so tomorrow, I am going to install ESXi and get that rolling.

I have already purchased a pair of 2347's from the seller, and I am thinking about an L1N64-SLI w/ 4x 1gb memory (I really do not need 8gb at home, but I want dual channel)
 
hmmm...try a cheap nvidia card

i make the suggestion just to see if it has to do with issues with the chipset

i like ati better myself
 
That would require me to buy another card, and chop off half of its PCIe connector... I dont feel like doing that again, especially since the board is no longer "mine".
 
who's is it?

you couldn't use an older card or even a PCI one just to test? i was just making a suggestion anyways:).
 
As I said before, I sold it to my work for an ESXi project that I have been cooking up for a while.

I could use an older card, or even a PCI one, but I do not have one to do said testing. I have plenty of PCI cards, but they are not PCI 2.2, and do not have the correct keying for the PCI-X slots which I belive are 5v slots on this board.

But, the bottom line is, as an ESX box, it will not need a video card, so I am not going to pursue it any longer on this setup. I am just going to pick up another board, and start anew.
 
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It has been completed. After screwing around all day with VLAN Trunking, and iSCSI Target config in Openfiler.. my ESXi platform is working 100%
 
To resurrect my thread from the depths of hell.....

I now have my new system booted up here.. I do not have a purpose for it, but it seems to be screaming along just fine.

I ended up buying a pair of Asetek Vapochill Micro HS's for this Tyan S2912R board. They needed an extra little bracket to mount up to the 4.1" mounting pitch, but they seem to be working just fine being offset by .3" off the core. I will post some pictures later of the ghetto setup I have here.
 
I made a 16x PCI-e card into an 8x PCI-e card. This required physical modification of the edge connector, by cutting off the extra lanes. The card does work perfectly fine in both another board with an 8x slot, and with other boards that have 16x slots. Just that Supermicro board refused to see it no matter what.

I later tried using a 1x PCI-e TV Tuner card, and that did not function either.
 
ultatryon@ecc said:
I made a 16x PCI-e card into an 8x PCI-e card. This required physical modification of the edge connector, by cutting off the extra lanes. The card does work perfectly fine in both another board with an 8x slot, and with other boards that have 16x slots. Just that Supermicro board refused to see it no matter what.

I later tried using a 1x PCI-e TV Tuner card, and that did not function either.
Click to expand...

please post a picture, I'm justkeen to see what it looks like.:p
 
Nope, I did not modify the slot on the board, but the edge connector on the Video card. I left the card at home today, so I will snag a photo or two when I get home. In the meantime, I have photos of the new mobo/cpu/hsf getup sitting here on my desk.

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Yes, the HSFs point in different directions, but there is less then 1/2" between them in this configuration.

The radiator is offset a bit from the center, so if they were facing the same way, they would overlap by a good 1/2"-3/4". I also did not realize how tall these things were, so I am going to have to buy a case around the height of these... Or possibly make a case...
 
Say how much each of those components cost you? Esp the RAM and the new dual opteron server motherboard, does it have any support for 3rd party RAID adapters, USCSI connections?

Those HSF don't look that reliable considering cooling that Quad, what temps do you get?
 
Everything is actually very cheap. The board goes for $60 new, the processor were had for ~$60 on eBay a piece, RAM is ~$100 for 8gb. You can put any RAID card you want in the board. SCSI? No one uses that anymore. Those processors have the same TDP as a Core 2 Duo (well, very similar in the HE models). I use $9 AM2 heatsinks on my 95w quads.
 
dual socket boards are computer porn....maybe my next PC will need to be dual sockets again.

can you get a picture of the video card after you modified it?
 
As Blue Fox said, its all very cheap stuff. This particular board does not have SCSI onboard, but some of them do. This board had a manufacturing option for SAS onboard, but my version does not have it.

These Heatsinks are actually very very good. I am getting temps of ~20c at idle (room ambient is at 17c) and I have yet to see over 35c at 8x 100% load. These heatsinks apparently have R-143a in them, and they are a small, non-powered "phase-change" system.


As for the video card.. I finally had both the card and the camera in the same place at the same time. This was once a 16x card, now a physical 8x card.

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Sir, and you are claiming this card will work?
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This guy is whack? :confused: :p
 
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