Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Don't bother mentioning that. He'll just go on about the old stuff is "higher quality" than that "new crap"... in other words, I wholeheartedly agree.

Edit: lol, I posted a tad too late.

I will say this; what I think about the hardware quality is irrelevant. It's a hobby. It's like telling an gun enthusiast to play with with a paddleball instead of a pistol; you may have a point in terms of expenses, but you've failed to see the forest for the trees in terms of why one has such a hobby (I.E. they like guns). I like my workstations. If I tell you "no thanks" to the idea of swapping them for generic low-end muggle desktops, please don't take it personally and instead relize that I enjoy my hobby and intend to keep it.

(gee, you guys never tell topcat to junk his workstations, and he builds more of them than I do!)

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Apparently AMD still didn't have thermal throttling by the time the opteron came out. The athlon XP didn't and they liked to fry:

That don't make sense for an AMD 64 processor to be Kentucky-fried!
Even some socket 462 motherboards had thermal shutdown!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

-One of the KZG's has bulged...

Son of a bitch! KZGs seem to often last for a good while then suddenly bulge!

My KZGs bulged out of the blue!

I still have KZGs that are visibly fine on a 2008 or 2007 motherboard and they should be fine, knock on wood... I'm investigating to see if post-2006 KZGs do better...

My KZGs I believe are from 2004 and it seems a lot from near that period and up to 2006 bulge... (at least)

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

That don't make sense for an AMD 64 processor to be Kentucky-fried!
Even some socket 462 motherboards had thermal shutdown!

As did mine, set at 75C IIRC. Strange, all I know is I fried CPU1 and the cooler bracket also happened to be loose.Maybe the thermal shutdown wasn't quick enough?

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

(gee, you guys never tell topcat to junk his workstations, and he builds more of them than I do!)

I was wondering about that myself....and I will never stop building them. Some of the hardware I tinker with is slightly newer, but that is irrelevant. When you stop by this spring, you're goiung to get a crack at another one too! Enjoy your hobby!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

in defense of topcat, ratdude and myself. its always better to repurpose old, still working hardware than to toss it away into a landfill and pollute the earth and generate e-waste unnecessarily. we have said this many times. the power efficiency argument is unrelated and does not hold water as it is a separate and different issue altogether.

[chowder]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

I solely use "old" hardware, I have no need for anything more modern. The number of people who get sold what are essentially gaming rigs and then spend all their PC time on Facebook is just stupid. I have useable Socket A systems running as general web browsing machines, use a first gen i5 laptop as my main system, and a Core 2 Duo E8500 based Shuttle XPC as a desktop PC. With an 8500GT graphics card, it even plays older games well.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

I was wondering about that myself....and I will never stop building them. Some of the hardware I tinker with is slightly newer, but that is irrelevant. When you stop by this spring, you're goiung to get a crack at another one too! Enjoy your hobby!

You mean RD main rig 5.0 may exist someday?

(I do have another AFT XM-5U card reader that I nabbed for peanuts a few months ago which is slated for such a main rig. )

[shovenose]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

(gee, you guys never tell topcat to junk his workstations, and he builds more of them than I do!)

Because he has unlimited time and money for these projects

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

You mean RD main rig 5.0 may exist someday?

(I do have another AFT XM-5U card reader that I nabbed for peanuts a few months ago which is slated for such a main rig. )

That's a very real possibility!

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

That's a very real possibility!

Yay, an excuse to spend money! (lol, eventually). Depends on what it is and how much building such will cost (CPU, RAM, and coolers if it's socket 604). I'll find out on the 1st then.

My wife might kill me over this...

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Yay, an excuse to spend money! (lol, eventually). Depends on what it is and how much building such will cost (CPU, RAM, and coolers if it's socket 604). I'll find out on the 1st then.

My wife might kill me over this...

Its much newer than 604, has 2x quad-core processors and 32gb of memory in it.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

My wife might kill me over this...

thats why i dont have a wife... lol~

[Sweet & Spicy]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Yay, an excuse to spend money! (lol, eventually). Depends on what it is and how much building such will cost (CPU, RAM, and coolers if it's socket 604). I'll find out on the 1st then.

My wife might kill me over this...

He's making enough to afford it. As long as he's reasonable about it, it's cool.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Its much newer than 604, has 2x quad-core processors and 32gb of memory in it.

Well, I have a home for it all right, as main rig V3.5 is officially DEAD.

My CPUs came in, and upon installation the problem has returned. Unless I was shipped bad CPUs (which is possible i guess, I'll look into it further), that indicates that the motherboard itself has gone belly up.

While I know you want to keep it a surprise, as I'd probably be installing it in the case as soon I got it in, I'd like to know enough to know what other hardware I may need to get. Mainly, whether I need a new PSU and whether it supports SLI or not (that way I know whether I'll need new GPUs or not). Unless it's in a case, it looks like V3.5 is getting stripped and redone.

Edit- yup, either two fried CPUs or a fried board. Given the circumstances, I'm leaning towards a fried board.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Two things:

1. Something occured to me: if the cooler came loose on the CPU1 socket, then why is CPU2 having issues? Unless it's a dual CPU issue (I.E CPU2 is good minus the fact that it can't run dual CPUs due to fault and that CPU1 must be populated to start). IDK. I may have to come back to with with some known working single core opterons I have in storage (in hindsight I should have tried them first, )

2. For another build I designed a breakout PCB to allow the use of Supermicro LED/switch ribbon cables with RAID cards. While the two I have are fine and dandy (of which I owe Topcat one), I'm redesigning it for this potential V5 build which I suspect would involve a SM board (as I don't like using thier breakout cables when the ribbon matches the board otherwise).

Mainly it will use two DPDT slide switches instead of four jumpers and will be sent to OSH park as a dual-sided PCB with silkscreens instead of a single sided milled PCB. Topcat, I will make you a new one and you'll get that instead (OSH park boards are made in sets of 3, so I'll be making three total).

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

New board design complete.

https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/zszsAHZa

The boards are on order...

I made everything but the 2 pin headers from scratch... as the existing footprints in the latest Kicad don;t work for this. Besides, doing this ensures that the parts will fit correctly.

Look nice?

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Did some bench testing... Got it to fire up one time. But to no avial. CPU2 keeps getting pretty hot (much more so than CPU1), so my guess is the VRM went to shit. Oddly the CPU that I thought burned up tested out as good. My guess is that the loose cooler bracket was a red herring (I probably did knock it loose when pulling the PSU). Stupid tyan...

I'm starting a V5 thread since I know what I'm getting (but not posting it as Topcat hasn't posted the backstory yet). I have some stuff planned, and I think some of you out there who have been somewhat critical of my builds might like this one a little bit better. However, it will (when complete) swap out a good chunk of the system (more than the V3.0 to V3.5 change), so I'l still have some parts left over. I know topcat has a K8WE wannabe board (denutted HP) that I've wanted to trade for and attempt a BIOS hack or two on... maybe that's where the guts will go. IDK.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

I'm contemplating rebuilding this rig as most of it's parts have become free again. In fact, all that is missing:

-Motheboard: The board is still fried. However, This is on ebay and all that is holding me back is not wanting to spend $93 on a project (even if it potentially yields my 2nd fastest rig):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-H...kAAOSwpWVW8cN3

-HDDs: The Hdds out of it are in V4.1... but V4.1 had two 160GB 7200RPM drives come out. Alternatively I could swap them back (and look to make V4.1 go SAS).

-GPUs- One of the two GPUs is still in V5.2... but I've been looking to upgrade that anyway

-Opticals: The opticals moved over. That said, I do have a SATA optical or two sitting (yay dumpster scores).

Other than the prospect of spending $ this is a very tempting buy. I've always wanted to try one of the supermicros (especially since they have provisions for a PCIe 4x in adddition to the same options on the K8WE).

I hate to ask this, but somebody give me a reason not to?

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Went ahead and bought the board... As I may never see another.

Other changes:

-Different optical drives (details in my next post)
-9650 Raid card (as I have one sitting and I have the PCIe Slot to do it)
-One GPU for now, until I find an upgrade for V5.2l Once I have two I will keep the Tyan SLI Bridge though (bad luck?)
-Different BIOS mod (as this one is AMI based, you better bet I'll look into a custom splash image)
-Supermicro Breakout Board (for the 9650)
-Coolers: I have options. This one has dynatrons but they're 3 pin (although the fans I bought for V5.2 would fit and I buy more). I can also re-use the cooler master TX3s that came off or the modded stock coolers.

One thing I like about this platform is that it is QUIET. Although that mobo fan may prove otherwise. All my other workstations are a lot louder.

Sound like a cool build? It will be my second fastest workstation... Not to knock my Irwindale build, which is also pretty spiffy.