Tobit's Slim and Sexy Toy

T

Tobit

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - March 2010/May 2011
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
Messages
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Well, most of you know by now that I like to play with hardware that is a little on the obscure side. I saw this recently on eBay for a decent price and decided to snap it up. It's a toy, it's not going to produce much PPD in it's present config but it is another A4 cruncher for the Horde and I am curious to see what it does and the power draw.

Supermicro X7DWT-INF Dual S771 *
Pair of Intel L5240 3.0 GHz Dual Cores @ 40W TDP
Pair of 1GB FB-DIMMs - Thanks Haitch

* These boards are slim and small like this as they are designed to be place, two at a time, in a custom 2U chassis/power supply making it a 2-node server. The one minor challenge was that I had to make a custom ATX 20-pin adapter to power the board but it is fully documented in the manual and I was able to do this while the board was in transit from the seller.

Board currently posts fine and I don't anticipate any problems. I'm off now to find a USB stick or HDD to install Linux onto.

2z8di78.jpg
 
Yep the board was mostly likely designed exactly that - a "twin" server config in a 2U chassis. I believe that's around the time when SM started their whole "twin" line. SM has really expanded on the "twin" line last the generation or two. They currently have an 8-node 4U chassis option - pretty powerful setup since all 8 nodes are 2P. They're calling that model the "fat-twin" more details
 
Skripka said:
Does it play Crysis?
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What's Crysis? Just kidding. Some of us have powerful hardware and haven't gamed in years.

Sounds like a fun toy. I also happen to know that Dell has made two server in two U type boxes too. Some of Bing runs on them.
 
wouldnt you want those cpu heat sinks rotated 90 degrees so the fins are parallel to the airflow? seems like with passive sinks you would get much worse cooling with them the way they are now, but i dont see a way to rotate them.
 
ekuest said:
wouldnt you want those cpu heat sinks rotated 90 degrees so the fins are parallel to the airflow? seems like with passive sinks you would get much worse cooling with them the way they are now, but i dont see a way to rotate them.
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They can't be rotated, this is the LGA771 server spec. Designed to have a loud blower force feeding them air. I have a 120mm fan sitting on top of them, they are low TDP and will be fine.
 
I'd be interested to see how it performs with a usb stick, I've often wondered why folders are not using them...
 
sc0tty8 said:
I'd be interested to see how it performs with a usb stick, I've often wondered why folders are not using them...
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USB was actually very common pre-bigadv days. One of the first F@H specific folding images was based on USB and CD-ROM images. With bigadv, performance of USB sticks at the time, they simply did not perform well and were not reliable.

Some things might have changed recently with USB stick technology but, with the current cost of ~40USD for a 32-60GB SSD, I really like SSD for dedicated Linux folders.
 
Tobit said:
USB was actually very common pre-bigadv days. One of the first F@H specific folding images was based on USB and CD-ROM images. With bigadv, performance of USB sticks at the time, they simply did not perform well and were not reliable.

Some things might have changed recently with USB stick technology but, with the current cost of ~40USD for a 32-60GB SSD, I really like SSD for dedicated Linux folders.
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Interesting. I scored up a bunch of 16gb ssd's for $20 a crack over winter I've been using.
 
I don't have a big enough USB stick to install Gentoo how I want it so this project is on hold. However, sc0tty says he is sending me a couple 16GB SSD's which will be perfect so, as soon as those arrive, I will have some number.
 
Reading the thread title and first sentence makes me think you are a little "out there".
 
Is s771...for the noise and expense idk if id touch it.
 
OMG, how did you find such a gem and what did it cost you?

20 Watt per core at 3 GHz is awesome for that generation.
 
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Nice little unit. Are you going to go naked, or get/make some kind of chassis?
 
runs2far said:
OMG, how did you find such a gem and what did it cost you?
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eBay - it's where I usually find the best deals on surplus server hardware. I have ~$60 invested in this.

Monkey34 said:
Nice little unit. Are you going to go naked, or get/make some kind of chassis?
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Naked most likely, I really don't want to invest much more in this.
 
Unius Legionis said:
Anybody have any idea what the PPD would be for this on SMP? 40k?
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I get 15-20k ppd with a 2p L5420 system (total of 8 cores @ 2.5GHz).

Two blades each with 8 cores at a lower clock? Think you can guesstimate it.

Anyways, hope to read more about this toy, Tobit :)

I misread L5240 (flipped the 2 and 4 around) and then noticed runs2far's post talking about 20w a core... aww, only 4 cores in total :( still, oddball configurations are fun. Heck, you are the one who inspired me to buy the X7DCA-L for cheap, hah.
 
Unius Legionis said:
Anybody have any idea what the PPD would be for this on SMP? 40k?
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Need to remember that twin server will function as two individual 1.8 GHz 8-core servers. Based on my L5420 system (8-cores @ 2.5 GHz) that produces 15K to 20K PPD, the numbers on 8-cores @ 1.8 GHz are going to be much less. E5320's are also 80W TDP chips so you are going to be consuming quite a bit of electricity for very little PPD. I, therefore, cannot see that SM server from geeks.com for $330 to be a very wise purchase for a dedicated folder.

Remember, also, that I am only playing with cheap S771 systems when I can find 50W TDP or less CPUs at decent clocks. I wouldn't be wasting electricity on the platform otherwise. L5420 and L5240 CPUs are really the only ones I can see worth playing with on this platform.
 
Tobit said:
Need to remember that twin server will function as two individual 1.8 GHz 8-core servers. Based on my L5420 system (8-cores @ 2.5 GHz) that produces 15K to 20K PPD, the numbers on 8-cores @ 1.8 GHz are going to be much less. E5320's are also 80W TDP chips so you are going to be consuming quite a bit of electricity for very little PPD. I, therefore, cannot see that SM server from geeks.com for $330 to be a very wise purchase for a dedicated folder.

Remember, also, that I am only playing with cheap S771 systems when I can find 50W TDP or less CPUs at decent clocks. I wouldn't be wasting electricity on the platform otherwise. L5420 and L5240 CPUs are really the only ones I can see worth playing with on this platform.
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Yeah, I wouldnt recommend it for folding either.
I would love it for esxi if it was in a 2u/4u so it wouldnt be so loud.(just for playing around purposes)
 
Ok, it is now folding.

~8,600 PPD on a p8055 A4 unit. Not one of the better scoring A4's, it's a new project that scores ~10% less PPD compared to the nice units.

Kill-A-Watt is showing 149W.
 
9,880 PPD on a P7513 A3 unit, I can dig it.
 
oh colinstu, it looks like 7513 is a new beta unit. I run the betateam flag on all my clients since I am active in the beta forum on FF.
 
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