Octo-core Opteron project Shopping list.

odd.....I never knew.......you sure? then why couldn't my ATi Rage card boot up? It does on another old computer but not the Dell
 
Yes it does have a onboard Intel GMA graphics, but the thing is that when I power the up the computer, the whole screen is full of garbled pixels.
 
Then you have bigger issues, as the GMA video is part of the northbridge.. either its toast, or the main system memory is bad.. either way, a video card aint gonna fix it. I would swap out the memory first, if that does not fix it, then your motherboard will need replacing.
 
I know this is an ancient thread, but I am resurrecting this project again!

Not much is left from the original purchase, but I now have a pair of 2352 B3's and a Speedster-WA6 on the way. I picked up a new case from Newegg, and some new heatsinks for the 3.5" pitch.

I also picked up an LSI SAS controller a while back, which is humming away just fine in another box, and I am currently in search of a video card.

I was thinking about picking up a GT240 for this, and using the pair of 72gig 10k-rpm SAS drives in RAID 0.
 
The motherboard gets here on Monday, along with the heatsinks, so Monday afternoon should have at least a few pictures at that point. right now it is just a new case with a power supply, and a pair of hard drives in it. Too bad my video card is not going to be here until next Friday :(

I guess I will use my hacked up x2600 Pro until then.

The other question is which SAS card to use. I have an LSI SAS 3442E-R and an LSI SAS 8888ELP. The 8888 is a much faster, more powerful card, but I am not sure if I am really going to see a benefit with just 2 small arrays. I suppose I could try both and pit them against each other.
 
Ok, so.. an update was promised, and the list of hardware has completely changed from the original post here.

Parts list:


2x Opteron 2352 2.1ghz Quad CPUs 117W TDP
1x MSI Speedster-WA6 Dual Opteron Motherboard
1x MSI N240GT-MD512-OC/D5 GeForce GT240 PCIe Video Card
2x Kingston 2gb (2x1gb) Registered ECC DDR2-5300 Memory modules
2x Fujitsu 73gb 10k RPM 2.5" SAS Drives
1x LSI Logic SAS 8888ELP Controller - Retail w/ Cables
2x Generic AM2 Heatsinks (these suck, looking for something new)
1x APEX Vortex 3620 ATX Case
1x LG GGW-H20L BD-RE and HD-DVD-ROM Drive
1x PCP&C Silencer 750W Crossfire PSU
 
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hehe my parts have changed too, but that still is a beast of a machine.

i shoudl have some ram though...if you need...
 
I should be good with 4gb for now.. and if I do need more, then it would have to be another 4x1gb kit to keep my dual channel going.

I just ran an HDTach on my RAID0, and I am getting 405.5MB/s burst, and 106.6MB/s average. I think I need to tune that up a little more, but its not too bad to start.
 
o_O 16 months != 2.5 years... lol.

But, some progress today. The original Zalman HSFs that I bought way back when fit perfectly fine on this board, and cool so much better then these generic POS AM2 ones. They have gotten a little beat up since then, but they work perfectly fine.

Oh, and I have some pictures, I am going to post them shortly.
 
DSCN0195.JPG

The LSI SAS 8888ELP Controller.

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CPUs and Memory.

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Case, PSU, BD-RE..

DSCN0199.JPG

Speedster w/CPUs and Memory populated, has those craptacular HSFs on it.

DSCN0200.JPG

Fully assembled. Still with the old HSFs, but its in a functioning state at this point.
 
I do not have my GT240 yet, so there is an NV285 workstation card in there right now that I had kicking around. Its just putzing around at my work for now until my video card shows up on friday.
 
DSCN0201.JPG

New (Old?) Heatsinks.. 10C cooler then the old ones. One of them is kind of bent up, but it works perfectly fine.

There is not a whole lot of room between them for things like.. fingers, but hey, once they are on there, they do not need to come off.

Just need that video card, and I should be good for now!
 
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Yea, the Silencer is a little long, but I already had it. It also has just about every connector I need, as well as a bunch that I dont. I have most of them hidden in the top drive bay, but it has 2x 6 pin and 2x 6/8 pin SLI cables if I ever needed them.

This particular motherboard, was $99 on ebay.
 
Matthew Kane said:
Nice. The PSU is kind of big, also how much was the Dual Opteron mobo?
Click to expand...

It's an MSI Speedster modified with a 8 (?) mb bios chip that contains the speedster 2 bios on it. That motherboard is very nice.
 
so i just skimmed this thread and may of missed it but, what do you use this rig for?
 
No hacked BIOS, its the official Speedster-WA6 bios, just version 2.20. The motherboard came with both a 4mbit v1.04 BIOS, and a 8mbit v2.20 BIOS. Oddly enough, the 2.20 chip was not preinstalled, so I had to put that on before I could get a quad to POST.

As for its use.. I am just going to use it as my gaming desktop, some software development.. I love my Mini, but its just not fast enough for some of my needs. This machine is WAY overkill, and I may end up removing one of the CPUs at some point, but for now, I am loving the 8 cores..
 
haha, nor do I.

Your using server components for gaming? Way too overkill there bud. Have you considered overclocking the thing?
 
I've considered it, but its plenty fast as it is. I may bump up the video card to something a bit faster, but I can run three instances of WoW and it only runs about 50% total cpu, which makes me really think about pulling one of the CPUs.

Then again, if I need the processing, its nice that its there, and the machine is only on about 8-10 hours a week, so the power bill isnt impacted that much. I do need to Kill-a-watt it at some point to see how much its drawing..
 
ultatryon@ecc said:
No hacked BIOS, its the official Speedster-WA6 bios, just version 2.20. The motherboard came with both a 4mbit v1.04 BIOS, and a 8mbit v2.20 BIOS. Oddly enough, the 2.20 chip was not preinstalled, so I had to put that on before I could get a quad to POST.

As for its use.. I am just going to use it as my gaming desktop, some software development.. I love my Mini, but its just not fast enough for some of my needs. This machine is WAY overkill, and I may end up removing one of the CPUs at some point, but for now, I am loving the 8 cores..
Click to expand...
Ya you had to use the 8 mbit chip. Orginally the Speedster 1 just had the 4 mbit chip

Living in CT doesn't help the power bills :\.
 
Most server boards don't have BIOS capabilities for overclocking, not much extreme going on when it comes to servers other than pure amounts of memory, core numbers or hard drive capacities
 
I have no intention in getting "hardcore" on this machine. I am just happy that it is rock stable, even if it is way overkill for what I am doing with it. That, and this is not a Skulltrail board, and very few other boards have its capabilities.

Oh, and don't call me a little kid.
 
lets cut it out with the name calling please... and for the record I use a server board in my workstation without OC'ing or anything, its called stability ;)
 
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