Project: Gear Up

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CaptainUnlikely

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - May 2014
Joined
Mar 20, 2013
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311
So, I'm fairly new to the team and forum, but I came over here to DC and kick ass, and, well, I already kicked all the ass that needed kicking (elsewhere) :cool:

I decided to go ahead with the purchase of a few older servers at a decent price - they're NEC 120RGs, which are dual socket 771 setups. There's 11 of them, and they came with 2x1GB RAM and 1 x Xeon 5130 in each, plus 3 HDDs. Apparently the HDDs weren't being detected, I've only messed with one of the servers so far but it seems fine, possibly user error. My intention is to upgrade them with either low voltage duals or quads, and up the RAM, then use them for DC.

I only have one picture so far, and not too much progress - I started the top one up, it POSTed, and chucked out a ton of dust. I've tested it with an L5320 and an E5310 which I had laying around, both worked fine despite not being officially supported so I'm now going to try a 5148 which is a low voltage dual core, to see what happens. Then I can decide what to deck them all out with. I have a fair few 1GB and 2GB modules of RAM laying around, I'll pick some more up as and when I can - it's DDR2 FBDIMMs so not particularly cheap unfortunately. I'm also going to pick up a power monitor to see how much they draw. I have a 24 port switch I am picking up tomorrow to connect them all up, and I have some Ikea Lack tables to make Lackracks!

Anyhow, here's the picture of them all stacked up when they arrived this morning



More to come over the next few days as I clean them all up and get them running!
 
I have many DDR2 FBDIMMs available if you need some. Cost of shipping only.
 
Forgot to mention, I'm in the UK, so shipping might be prohibitive? This is assuming you're in the US as most here seem to be :) if not, or if shipping internationally isn't a problem, that would be fantastic!
I currently have, as a rough count, around 40GB to distribute between 11 machines, although I haven't tested it all yet.
 
Yes, US -> UK not a good idea. Since you won't be able to run bigadv on those servers, 4GB per host or less should be fine. Last I knew, the lower-end WUs didn't use a ton of RAM. Also, that RAM (and those servers in general) pull a ton of power for very little PPD.
 
how much is a good deal...

And which DC projects were you planning to help?
Have to say I agree with brilong, those aren't worth their power draw.
 
For folding those servers aren't worth running, but for BOINC you could definitely knock out some WU.
 
brilong said:
Yes, US -> UK not a good idea. Since you won't be able to run bigadv on those servers, 4GB per host or less should be fine. Last I knew, the lower-end WUs didn't use a ton of RAM. Also, that RAM (and those servers in general) pull a ton of power for very little PPD.
Click to expand...

I won't be folding on them, planning on doing a mixture of BOINC projects. I'm picking up a power meter to see how much they do draw. Hoping the low voltage CPUs should help with power draw, and I'm going to try and use as few modules of RAM as possible, so larger modules rather than just lots of 1GB sticks.

Patriot said:
how much is a good deal...

And which DC projects were you planning to help?
Have to say I agree with brilong, those aren't worth their power draw.
Click to expand...

£20 per machine, seemed like a good deal to me, adding a few £ to bring them up to a dual quad setup. Had interest from a few friends in buying one or a few off me if I decide not to keep them, so even if I don't end up using them for crunching I can always just use them for testing out some things at home without tying up my main machine, without needing to run them under full load or for extended periods of time so again the power draw won't be a huge concern. Planning on running them only overnight anyway as power at night is pretty cheap for us. At the end of the day, for £240 plus change for the CPUs there's not too much else that offers that kind of computing power, at least not that I've seen, and if they prove to be massive power hogs or terrible performers I'm confident I can move them on without taking much of a loss if any.

At some point I also want to see if the BSEL mod will work with these, the servers are listed as supporting some 1333MHz FSB CPUs so hopefully it'll work.
 
DooKey said:
For folding those servers aren't worth running, but for BOINC you could definitely knock out some WU.
Click to expand...

That's the plan, I will have an SR-2 for a little folding (but mostly BOINC because it's dual quad rather than dual hex) and two 7970s which should pump out some decent numbers on F@H or BOINC depending what I feel like running at the time. So these are just for BOINC.
 
Let me know how much noise and heat they bring too. At some point this next decade, I would like to go server class hardware. Obviously, there is a lot more to plan when such systems are in your home.
 
Will do, right now they are LOUD with a capital LOUD, but they don't have any software on yet so I'm assuming (and hoping) that they will either quieten down when the power management kicks in or that I'll be able to slow down the fans with software. Running them with one drive each, rather than the 3 x 15000rpm SAS drives they currently have in, should quieten them down and improve airflow, too. 3 of them will be getting my spare 32GB SSDs and the rest I'm not sure about yet, depends how it goes.
All 3 of the unsupported CPUs work fine so I have several cost effective options for upgrading the machines depending what kind of deal I can strike. The redundant PSUs are all 650W Delta units which is a nice surprise, wasn't sure what would be in there. I may see about selling off most of those as I don't have enough sockets, nor a need, to have them all hooked up to two outlets, so I may sell say 8 of them and keep a few spare in case of problems down the line, and probably the same with the HDDs which I won't be using. Should help recoup some of the cost.
 
CaptainUnlikely said:
Will do, right now they are LOUD with a capital LOUD, but they don't have any software on yet so I'm assuming (and hoping) that they will either quieten down when the power management kicks in or that I'll be able to slow down the fans with software. Running them with one drive each, rather than the 3 x 15000rpm SAS drives they currently have in, should quieten them down and improve airflow, too. 3 of them will be getting my spare 32GB SSDs and the rest I'm not sure about yet, depends how it goes.
All 3 of the unsupported CPUs work fine so I have several cost effective options for upgrading the machines depending what kind of deal I can strike. The redundant PSUs are all 650W Delta units which is a nice surprise, wasn't sure what would be in there. I may see about selling off most of those as I don't have enough sockets, nor a need, to have them all hooked up to two outlets, so I may sell say 8 of them and keep a few spare in case of problems down the line, and probably the same with the HDDs which I won't be using. Should help recoup some of the cost.
Click to expand...


I remember the first time I started up my F socket in my house, which has the same fan setup I believe. It was like UNREAL loud. Even scared the hell out of my wife out in the living room.

Thankfully I had a garage to store it in =D.

Good times...
 
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