Ratdude's main rig V5.0

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

Thanks for the report on the AOC-USAS controller. I have the backplane, so no worries about the LED's, the backplane have their own. I'm also not too concerned about the slow post/boot, as I never shut my systems off....so slow booting is nothing I'd worry about in the rare event I have to reboot the machine.

I picked up a new one, as that will be ideal for the office machine HDD revamp thats coming up.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

I found some standoffs yesterday so I went ahead and built it up.

Some pictures and specs:

Front (with new card reader):



The guts (just doing an overview due to free time... I wanted to get it running!):



-Supermicro X7DWA-N motherboard (I won't say where it came from, that's Topcat's story to tell)
-Twin Intel Xeon E5472 (3.0GHZ, 1600FSB, quad core)
-32GB DDR2 Fully Buffered
-Supermicro Socket 771 coolers
-Supermicro SAS RAID card (Adaptec based). Array is RAID 0.
-USB 3.0 Card + AFT Pro-37U USB 3.0 Card reader

While it can't do SLI, its in pretty much every other way a massive upgrade compared to the old (and now dead) Tyan K8WE. Once I get a better GPU (and beefier PSU if necessary), it will really fly.

I'll novabench it and post the results.

Question: Windows 7 says only 24GB of my 32GB of ram is usable... and I'm on Ultimate x64. The other day it said 28... Supposedly 7 Ultimate x64 can do up to 192GB?

[diif]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

Have you done a benchmark on those drives ?
It's 192GB for all versions of Windows 7 except Home which is 16GB

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

Have you done a benchmark on those drives ?
It's 192GB for all versions of Windows 7 except Home which is 16GB

Which drives? HDD? Card reader?

I do have some benchmarks: (old setup is to the right)



Not too bad

[diif]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

I was more interested in the hard drive speeds with that RAID setup, i thought they'd be faster than that.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

I was more interested in the hard drive speeds with that RAID setup, i thought they'd be faster than that.

They're somewhat old WD 740GDs. 10K, but SATAI.

[diif]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

That explains it, a single 250GB Seagate is faster at 151MB/s but that's Sata 3.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

Question: Windows 7 says only 24GB of my 32GB of ram is usable... and I'm on Ultimate x64. The other day it said 28... Supposedly 7 Ultimate x64 can do up to 192GB?

Reseat all the RAM sticks.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

Reseat all the RAM sticks.

No, all 32GB is shown, it's just not usuble.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

No, all 32GB is shown, it's just not usuble.

I heard that a RAM malfunction may cause Windows Vista and later to falsely report the RAM being "reserved".

[diif]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

Run memtest on it.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

falsely report the RAM being "reserved".

It's a new gay feature introduced with NT 6!

[dmill89]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

Which drives? HDD? Card reader?

I do have some benchmarks: (old setup is to the right)



Not too bad

Definitely an upgrade, not bad performance for ~8 year old hardware.. Here's a comparison with some more "modern" hardware (my main rig, Details Here):


Looks like the GPU is definitely your system's biggest bottleneck (though I imagine you already know that), something like a Radeon R9-380 or GeForce GTX960 would be a massive improvement for less than $200 or an R7-370 or GTX950 for around $150 and with about the same power consumption as that old GTS 250 space heater.

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

Strange about the memory....IDENTICAL setup in my office running S2K8 R2, which is win7. All memory shows up and is usable.





It was fine when it was here.....I'd memtest it for sure, after re-seating everything.

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

The benchmark software is crap, simple as that.

Here's what's reporting on my pc :



It seems to only use 2-3 cores/threads when doing CPU measurements, only the MD5 hasher seems to go up to around 5 threads.. still overall only 29% cpu usage.
It's not even smart enough to report the main video card, not RealVNC's virtual driver as a video card... and I have a SSD capable of about 300 MB/s write speeds but yet the software's only able to measure 88 MB/s
And memory only 6 GB/s...

Aida64 on my hardware reports 22345 MB/s reads, 15429 MB/s writes, 20337MB/s copy and 75.2ns latency.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

^Yeah, whatever. Consumer/gamer crap doesn't strike my fancy. You know that by now I hope.

Will do on the reseat and memtest.

I know about the GPU... I'll look into it.

[dmill89]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

^Yeah, whatever. Consumer/gamer crap doesn't strike my fancy. You know that by now I hope.

Will do on the reseat and memtest.

I know about the GPU... I'll look into it.

Wasn't trying to put your system down, just giving a point of comparison to newer hardware. Your CPUs have about the same performance as an I5-4690/I5-6600 or 3/4 that of an I7-4790/I7-6700 (kind of depressing that there have been pretty much no performance increases between Haswell and Skylake), while dual Xeons may not be the most efficient way to get this level of performance it still isn't too shabby and should have enough power to do pretty much anything you want to with it (after a possible GPU upgrade). If you want a comparison with a "workstation" here's one (albeit one of the mobile variety, my Dell Precision m4600):

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

Found the issue... Lack of cooling!

Apparently one does indeed have to actively cool the RAM... I wasn't and noticed HW montor reporting RAM temps over 100C! eek!

I bodged a 80mm fan from a dumpster find for now... LOUD but effective, all 32GB showing. I may try using one of the 92MM cooler master fans from the 3.5 coolers as it's PWM and will be quieter hopefully.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

I found a better solution. I flipped the clips one one the TX3 fans:



..which fits nicely (and with just enough tension) between the upper two FBDIMMs:




Some modules are cooling better than others but I have yet to see anything reach or pass 80C (but one is getting kinda close). I may bump up the fan speed a bit just to be safe. The hackier fix cooled better but that was by virtue of a jet engine level of noise.

Finally, a butt shot I didn't take last time:



edit- Bumping the speed from "quiet" to "workstation" seems to be doing the trick Sadly it's not nearly silent like the last build... but whatever. Stupid easy bake FBDIMMs. I may try flipping the fan I added...

[Sparkey55]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V5.0

I found a better solution. I flipped the clips one one the TX3 fans:



..which fits nicely (and with just enough tension) between the upper two FBDIMMs:




Some modules are cooling better than others but I have yet to see anything reach or pass 80C (but one is getting kinda close). I may bump up the fan speed a bit just to be safe. The hackier fix cooled better but that was by virtue of a jet engine level of noise.

Finally, a butt shot I didn't take last time:



edit- Bumping the speed from "quiet" to "workstation" seems to be doing the trick Sadly it's not nearly silent like the last build... but whatever. Stupid easy bake FBDIMMs. I may try flipping the fan I added...

I can see why those sticks are running hot. Good ghetto mod. If it was mine I would experiment with turning the fan 90 degrees up from its present position and adding a 4 sided deflector so the air flows more evenly across all the sticks and exits from the ends of the rows.