Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

Pics!

The front:



As one can see the only front USB ports are at the bottom (and I doubt they're USB2.0 capable due to being fed with a ribbon cable; it uses a special connector so maybe I'll make a replacement). Hence why a good AFT card reader with a front USB port is perfect (evnetually I will score one on the bay, all my other rigs have them).

An overview of the guts (sorry for the dirty basement ):



Clearly I haven't done any cable management... once I have the HDD layout finalized I'll clean that up.

The video and audio cards:



Note the routing of the gameport conenctor cable that will probably never see use.

The two front fans and HDD bays:



Unlike the bays above which have virtually no cooling, these lower two have these two fans all to themselves. They're arctic cooling F8's, FWIW.

The rear fan:



The CPU coolers:



As always, braided fan cables. Like my other gallatin rig, I'm using fans off stock socket 940 coolers (which have thier own speed controller in the fan, great for non-PWM boards like this). Also like that rig, I neglected to remove the holographic AMD stickers first. Note that the ATX cable isn't actually as close to the fan as it looks... once I properly tie the wires up, that won't be an issue.

My redone SATA power cable:



These Ac-Bel PSUs have a habit of loosing the on-wire press-fit connectors in storage... this one lost the upper SATA connector long ago, and by this time, Molex changed the connector a bit; the contact blades are spaced different so I couldn't just press a new connector in the old wire cuts (hence the tape). I also have two more of these, ready to push on if I need to run SATA power to the upper two HDD bays for some bizarre reason.

How's it looking so far?

[Topcat]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

so far so good....but I'd have used that big SM case...

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

so far so good....but I'd have used that big SM case...

Which one? V4.1's case?

Nope. That one has too many fans and w/o PWM is a jet engine. Not to mention that V4.1 isn't dead.

The only other SM case I have is V3.5's, which isn't going anywhere... that system is my fastest by far (It has SLI'd geforce 250's for crying out loud).

Besides, this is a foxconn case... not exactly junk (thick metal, etc.). Thick metal and the like. Build quality is on par with my supermicro cases IMHO.

[brethin]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

I can' post in your WTB for the WD 740 Raptors but I think I have 8 of these NOS pulled from Dell Servers that were instantly upgrade (they may have like 10hrs on them). Not sure what your budget is but these have been stored well (climate controlled etc).

PM if you are interested with a offer and how many you would like.

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

I can' post in your WTB for the WD 740 Raptors but I think I have 8 of these NOS pulled from Dell Servers that were instantly upgrade (they may have like 10hrs on them). Not sure what your budget is but these have been stored well (climate controlled etc).

PM if you are interested with a offer and how many you would like.

You could have just PM'd me... I'll think about it (pay check comes at the end of the week; if the side seals say "D1" with stripes then I am interested) and PM you there.

(This is why they banned posting there, as that discussion needs to be in a PM).

[brethin]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

You could have just PM'd me... I'll think about it (pay check comes at the end of the week; if the side seals say "D1" with stripes then I am interested) and PM you there.

(This is why they banned posting there, as that discussion needs to be in a PM).

Not sure what they side seals says since they are in Dell Caddies but I guess I can look if want.

As for the PM thing I am fine talking in the open about my price if you are not then yes you need to PM me, after all if you don't want them someone else might and for what the go for if I gave them away it would not break my bank.

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

^I ask because I've had two D3 ones fail in the same way right after they shipped... Sending a PM now...

[Pentium4]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

Looks pretty good. Like the look of that chassis. How loud is it?

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

I had two 80GB Velociraptors come in today... But what controller to use?

Answer: The 9550sx in V4.1... as it will be getting a 3ware 9650 upgrade (I have a PCIe 4x slot to burn and I found a 2x SAS one w/bbu for $18 shipped... more in it's thread)

I still need to get cables; for V2.5's last rebuild I nabbed some nice 6" 90 degree cables, of which I only have one left (bought 4, used 3). Sadly the seller ran out and what I did see on fleabay was crap. So that will wait (I have some chunkier cables I can use to test with for now)

Minus troubles with optical drives and still no card reader, it is coming along...

[shovenose]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

I had two 80GB Velociraptors come in today... But what controller to use?

Answer: The 9550sx in V4.1... as it will be getting a 3ware 9650 upgrade (I have a PCIe 4x slot to burn and I found a 2x SAS one w/bbu for $18 shipped... more in it's thread)

I still need to get cables; for V2.5's last rebuild I nabbed some nice 6" 90 degree cables, of which I only have one left (bought 4, used 3). Sadly the seller ran out and what I did see on fleabay was crap. So that will wait (I have some chunkier cables I can use to test with for now)

Minus troubles with optical drives and still no card reader, it is coming along...

And if you would have mentioned that I could have thrown something like that in with the drives

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

And if you would have mentioned that I could have thrown something like that in with the drives

Yeah, I kinda forgot about that. At least I have two of the three stiff 6" SATAIII cables originally in V2.5 (when it ran 3 WD740GD's and a 3ware 9500) which kinda suck but do work.

edit- cloning the arch x86 install off my Precision M70 to a transfer drive (a Seagate ST340015A I had in the drawer)... thanks to idiot over here not having any usable external HDD, I ended up finding what was the board to an external CD burner; the power pigtail used to power the drive also happens to be wired straight to the 4 pin power brick connector. This was lucky for me, as I never had the brick to this one, I bought it for the drive inside years ago and tossed the busted casing but kept the PCB and pigtails. To power it, I hooked a clay pidgion 250W hipro to the drive (jumpered on at the ATX connector) and jimmied a berg connector onto the PCB's pigtail jack. So far it's working... I'll reply with a pic of the monstrosity.

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

Ghetto external HDD pics attached... once the cloning is done, I'll rinse and repeat on the workstation and then redo grub, the kernel, hostname, and fstab. I'll see how well it runs in such config; if I like it, I may leave it that way or keep it.

PS- I'm cloning and tweaking because Arch is a PITA to install and not miss some package you need but don't realize it... for me, its easier to take a good build and copy and change/recreate the necessary files. I only have 5 different builds running: two nvidia based x64 (one may have "issues" so on the second I built fresh), one intel based x64 (run on two of my laptops), one intel based x86 (used on a tiny 10" sony subcompact), and one nvidia based x86 (run on my precision M70 and now this workstation).

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

Good news and bad news:

Good: The Arch clonign was successful, posting from it now. Runs nice, I can even watch youtube videos w/o any issues! Yay! Also, I looked on ebay, Under $15 shipped buys 8GB of DDR-400 ECC (4x 2GB)... damn. I put a best offer one some; for now I'm using the 4GB (2x 2gb DDR-333) that came out of V4.1 when I first bought it. I still have an 8GB kit somewhere, but at this cheap, it's not nearly as pressing of an issue. FWIW this system only runs it at 266 but the slower stuff costs more (I've run said 400 kit in these boards before, no problem).

Bad news: Arch won't work long term... PAE support is patchy at best, and while there is a PAE kernel in the AUR, the only Nvidia driver there to go with it (nvidia-PAE) is the latest, which won't work (I need 304.X to work with my Geforce 7600GS). Looks like I'll be using the last of my upgrade copies of windows 7... Which isn't an issue since aside from my other X5DAL (V2.5) and my parent's setup, everything else that runs 7 is SLIC'd.

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

Installed 7, did some benchmarks after drivers, which is attached. Not the highest but for what's in it, not too shabby... it sure runs well.

[ratdude747]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

... and 3 years later, she's still not finished!

Reviving because I pulled her out of storage last night. I'll share pics later but there was some storage damage:

• The 3ware 9550 card corroded where a bunch of bugs decided to commit mass suicide. I cleaned it, and SMD parts came off . I have a few spare cards at least, and the BBU survived.
• One of the RAM sticks is toast.
• The PCI-X #2 (133Mhz) slot seems dead... although the PCI-X #1 slot works better for the 9550 card (no inteference from the USB headers) and I was able to force it to 133MHz in the BIOS settings (or so I think, we'll find out later).

I'll have to order more RAM... but with some fiddling and other changes (cable routing- see later pics) I was able to get it to post and start to boot windows. To avoid crashing the RAMdisk, I won't let it fully boot until I have all 8GB in again.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

The 3ware 9550 card corroded where a bunch of bugs decided to commit mass suicide.

LoOL

In additon, I have an Nvidia 7600GS AGP card in the pile... and this IMHO is the best AGP based platform (and thus would be a good rig for the card).

I got rid of mine unusually earlier, before I even could detect cap failure, because of shit caps, they were the typical-of-7-series FZs!

[Topcat]

Re: Yet another Ratdude Workstation Build?

Ahh yes....the trusty old X5DAL