Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

[Topcat]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

I chipped away at this one a little this morning before getting myself into construction-mode....

Removed all heatsinks and hotwashed the motherboard, it was filthy.



3.6GHz Irwindales that came with the board and 12gb RAM from my parts bin.



More junk....


Case stripped. The AFT lower motherboard side section of the 5.25" drive cage interferes with the back of the board & heatsinks....


Fixed!




3.5" Cage reinstalled. Clears everything.


The rest of the case cleaned up. I removed the "property of dent county" sticker goo. The county clerk actually removed the sticker (with a serial number on it), so they can clear it from their records. There was also a XP COA, I removed that and de-goop'd the case....then hotwashed everything.







I'll resume this again when I have a little extra time.

[Topcat]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

^
There are PCIe power adapters for that.... I've had this card for a while, I lowballed a guy on ebay ($19 shipped) for it, and he accepted. I tested it when I got it, it worked. I think its been in the parts cabinet for close to a year now.

[ratdude747]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

^I have the PNY "energy efficient" version in my irwindale box... slighly less performance (underclocked a tad), but uses a slimmer heatsink and is under 75W (no PCIe power connector, which is good since that PSU doesn't have it).

[Topcat]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

...and looky what turned up in the junk pile...

[noppa]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

Maybe you should try an updated version.

CPU-Z shows wrong Vcore value, SMH...

https://ark.intel.com/products/codename/5960/Irwindale

https://ark.intel.com/products/codename/6191/Paxville

[Topcat]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

...and here's the start...I'll just throw this build into this thread since they're kind of 'cousins', no need for a new one.

What better use for an old beige Aopen case...




Some modifying will be required (which makes it more fun anyway):


Old mATX P4 system (momaka, let me know if you want it, it works).


More to come....

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

Lots of buffering but not due to the actual buffer.

I think I had that kind of issue before, even with a Core 2 and later, IIRC, LOL.

[Topcat]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

...and another strange sleeper is born... Finally got around to testing this X6DAL. It's the DDR1 version, I've got 8x 2gb sticks, so populating all 6 slots gives me 12gb.....good enough. It flunked the Paxville test, it would only recognize one CPU (both cores), but socket 2 was not seen. This board came with a pair of 3.6GHz Irwindales, of course both CPU sockets show and function with the Irwindales installed.

...but I've got a couple old P3-era beige Aopen cases that this might fit nicely in...

[ratdude747]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

By how much? A jerk fest like a later-2010s Braswell laptop CPU?

The (Pentium N3700, IIRC) laptop that was given to my sister was shit, when it came to 60 FPS 1080p YouTube videos!

Stutters every 3-10 seconds. Lots of buffering but not due to the actual buffer.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

It struggles a bit on 1080P 60 frame youtube videos , but otherwise it does what it needs to...

By how much? A jerk fest like a later-2010s Braswell laptop CPU?

The (Pentium N3700, IIRC) laptop that was given to my sister was shit, when it came to 60 FPS 1080p YouTube videos!

[ratdude747]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

Those systems are great fun to build but none want them. I have a room full of fun builds going back to the 8086 8088 days and while I love them like my kids, all they do is take up space and collect dust.☹️

I have one (X6DA8-G2, Twin 3.8 Irwindales w/ Geforce 9800GT GPU) as my living room PC. Does that make me weird?

It struggles a bit on 1080P 60 frame youtube videos , but otherwise it does what it needs to...

[brethin]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

Those systems are great fun to build but none want them. I have a room full of fun builds going back to the 8086 8088 days and while I love them like my kids, all they do is take up space and collect dust.☹️

[Topcat]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

No, this one is actually a pretty reliable PSU. Just has pretty low efficiency, like you said. It's basically a 5V design with a "beefed-up" 12V rail. Of course, like any oldschool design like that, don't expect to pull full total label power on the 12V rail or even half of that without some serious sag on the 12V rail. But all in all, it's a good PSU and is more than adequate for the system that it was running (sans the Quaddro FX4800, of course).

Thats why I didn't use it in this build....I'm going to recap it and store it for a retro box....some oddball P-classic through P3 era system. This system would be a little overwhelming for it, not only for the higher TDP netburst CPU's, the FX4800, and then add in 4x 15,000RPM HDD's (the originals were 2x 9.1gb 7200RPM)...

[momaka]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

still a garbage PSU, as are (almost) all Topower made ones.

That one looks like it doesn't have the active PFC Board, does it??
And its either P4 or P5 series...
And the big heatsinks are due to really shity efficiency - the one's I've seen are around 65%, maybe lower 70% range...

Even if it seems fine, I'd throw it away and use a more trustworthy unit...

No, this one is actually a pretty reliable PSU. Just has pretty low efficiency, like you said. It's basically a 5V design with a "beefed-up" 12V rail. Of course, like any oldschool design like that, don't expect to pull full total label power on the 12V rail or even half of that without some serious sag on the 12V rail. But all in all, it's a good PSU and is more than adequate for the system that it was running (sans the Quaddro FX4800, of course).

That said, be glad this PSU didn't come with APFC. Otherwise, that efficiency number would have been even worse. Not to mention make a big dent in reliability. Only real server-grade PSUs can be considered reliable with APFC, at least from what I've seen. The APFC garbage we see in consumer units today is just a ticking time bomb. A few years and *bang* goes the primary cap(s). I have seen very very FEW oldschool PSUs with voltage-doubler circuit have their primary caps go bang (usually, it's from incident with the 115/230V switch set to 115V on 230V mains). In contrast, I have seen a considerable amount of "modern" units with blown APFC circuits / primary caps - even with Japanese brands.

But I can't help and be nervous when I see a pile of boards stacked up without an ESD bag. Hahaha

ESD is rarely a problem, unless you live in a really dry climate or store your stuff in a dry room environment (especially with carpet).

I too rarely store my stuff in an ESD bag. Here on the US East Coast, there's too much moisture in the air during the summer and fall for ESD to be a problem. On the flip side of that, moisture causes contacts to tarnish a lot quicker. And if you store your stuff in an underground / basement with lots of dust, that's almost equivalent of storing your stuff under water, lol.

[Snayperskaya]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

Pretty nice to see old server-grade still kicking. But I can't help and be nervous when I see a pile of boards stacked up without an ESD bag. Hahaha

[Topcat]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

I assembled this system this morning. Its so nice working with well-built cases!!

I ended up using a 500w Supermicro PSU (Not sure who OEM'd this one)...Yes RD, its that one that came out of one of your new cases many moons ago. I used it in another system, and sold it a few years ago....the client upgraded and I ended up with that system back...and here we are.

Anyway, I want to change HDD's around a bit. It's running a single 146gb 15k RPM. I want to get a few more and try a few different SCSI RAID configs, for benchmarking & testing purposes....but its running & stable right now, in an awesome & clean case. Fun project for under 100 bucks!

Photographic goodness....













Here's the Crystal DiskMark for a single drive U320 15k RPM on an Adaptec 2120S RAID controller....yikes its slow compared to SAS! I'll retest this when I can run it in a raid0/10.



I'll hunt down some drives whenever I have some more free time... This post of course created from the freshly assembled Irwindale Awesomeness.

[Topcat]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

I piddled around with it a little this morning, I got the case debadged, sticky goo removed, and washed out.

Just a few pics...





So much awesome!




Even more elderly PC awesome!

More later.

[Topcat]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

still a garbage PSU, as are (almost) all Topower made ones.

That one looks like it doesn't have the active PFC Board, does it??
And its either P4 or P5 series...
And the big heatsinks are due to really shity efficiency - the one's I've seen are around 65%, maybe lower 70% range...

Even if it seems fine, I'd throw it away and use a more trustworthy unit...

I'm not using that PSU in this build, I haven't even messed with it beyond taking the cover off. I have a couple Supermicro PSU's to choose from (a 865W and a 665W, both are Ablecom built), and those are bulletproof.

The pics shown are using a bench supply, Antec HE650 (seasonic & recapped)....good PSU's.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

Even if it seems fine, I'd throw it away and use a more trustworthy unit...

I did that to my 2007 GeForce 7600 GS, LOL. Focking FZ caps!

[Stefan Payne]

Re: Paxville or Bust! The Supermicro X6DA8 Project

This system was the freebie from the county. Stellar solid Enlight case with Enlight 470w PSU. I did the usual inspection of the PSU (whch appeared to be working)....and lo & behold, some bad fukyou caps, but otherwise its a very beefy PSU.

still a garbage PSU, as are (almost) all Topower made ones.

That one looks like it doesn't have the active PFC Board, does it??
And its either P4 or P5 series...
And the big heatsinks are due to really shity efficiency - the one's I've seen are around 65%, maybe lower 70% range...

Even if it seems fine, I'd throw it away and use a more trustworthy unit...