Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

well shit.

looks like one of the USB ports (on the header) is no good. right now I have it set as the USB port on the card reader... what's bizzare as the old setup (before I got the system) this port was unused.

If it wasn't Soo pricey ($100+) I'd get a X6DAE-G2 or X6DA8-G2 so I could use DDR2... but even the G's are $$$.

FYI, what happens when the bad port is used:

Linux: nothing, not shown by lsusub
Windows: reports a "usb device malfunctioned" error.

Suggestions on fixing this? Or is my best bet to toss in a USB/firewire card I have kicking that has a dual port USB header?

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

well shit. (again)

I've confirmed that Supermicro BIOS CANNOT be SLIC'd. Why? I took a pot shot with this one and it did the exact same fucking thing V2.x did... one good boot, freeze, fan spinner.

Since a USB channel was toast and this was the most "waste of EATX form factor" board of the series, I'm not too pissed off... kinda sucks... Now, do I:

A. Find a replacement BIOS chip (through SM or on ebay)
B. Find another X6D__-__ board (better would be good, like a DDR2 version, SCSI not so much) and move the parts over
C. Put something else in the EATX case (all I have is a pair of clay pigeon Tyan S2885's that are workstation boards in deifnition only)...

Call me whatever BS you want, I was having issues with V3.5 (which are at the time of this post mostly resolved) and wanted to/needed to test my BIOS flash and modding methods... Yes I have a negative IQ and the common sense of a lugnut...

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

If I go with B, it's gonna be a while... as the best deal I can find is this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-X...item2336fd930e

Which IMHO is way too much for an untested board... while normally they are bombproof, as shown, they can be killed. After shipping, the best I could do given the condition would be so fucking low that I'd be worthy of an ebay ban... but I may chuck an offer and see. Or not. I find it odd that they have nothing but RAM... but what the hell, I will. Yes I'm cheap, but I'm not gambling that much on a potential pig in a poke.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

The guy took my $40 ($57 shipped) lowball of all lowballs... So coming soon: X6DA8-G2 (the nicest of the 4 options)... and my DDR2 I have sitting is no longer up for grabs .

Too bad my case doesn't have the backplane option that matches the board, oh well, I don't have SCSI drives either. Yay, two EATX builds with unused SCSI options (I'm sure one of you wants to bash in my wasteful skull )

edit- Well shit, I jut re-remembered that my DDR2 is 2 rank... I better check the manual..

edit2- It will do dual rank, but only 4 modules... I think I also remember topcat posting that

I guess I have 8GB I can use and 8GB I can't... oh well... not like I use more than 8 anyway (I've come sorta close a couple times though).

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Upgrades are a comin'....

Saw these on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3ware-9650SE...item1a05d08f64

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3ware-9650SE...item1a05d08fa3

Well shit, they have BBUs even. They claim the batteries are toast, but even in that case I have a 3ware 9500 clay pidgeon with a good battery (the BBUs are different but the battery itself isn't)

And to go with it, I bought a couple of these lovely cables:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/321843020056

Which is awesome as they have both 90 degree connectors, staggered cable lengths, and best of all, they appear to be straight cables (as I want to turn mini-SAS into SATA, not the other way around).

Why did I buy two? Because if we go back, I made this bit of awesome for it:



IIRC WD740GD and later Raptors (and Velociraptors) don't actually draw all that much in terms of power. So this probably could power 8 of them Also, since I have a fully fanned midplane, doing anything less than 8 10K drives feels denutted. To be honest this is the direction I've always wanted to go with this build.

Also, this also is my only system with PCIe not used for graphics (a 4x slot). My K8WE only has two 16x slots, and hell no am I swapping this for one of my SLI'd Geforce GTS 250's. FWIW supermicro did make a board (H8DC8) for opteron based on the same layout (nforce professional 2000 series) that in addition to PCI-X slots (What the k8we has for RAID cards) they had an an additional PCIe 4x slot (for a total of 7 slots vs the k8WE's 6). If it wasn't for the fact that said board is probably unobtanium... [ratdude checks ebay, only sees one for $800 ], I'd be tempted to swap as the layout would allow for said newer RAID card and also allow me to run both a kickass sound card AND my tuner card. Oh well. Damn. And thus is life... (that said, if I ever did find one for say $150ish or less, I'd hit it, Tyan is good but SM made the better board in this case, as all they tyan has better is a 1394 port )

Yeah, it may bottleneck a bit (the 9650 can do 8x) but I suspect the twin 160GB's in V4.1 may be sketchy. The rig isn't stable, I've had bad HDDs of this vintage and manufacture do the same thing, and swapping controller cards had no effect. Not to mention that the rig is kinda a waste right now as V4.1 does circles around it (and always will) and all it is really good for right now is going balls out and tossing in a 8 drive monster array.

What drives will I use? Not 100% sure; had I been able to negotiate a deal I knew of 8 WD740GDs that were up for sale (but due to their near-mint, less than 10 POH condition they were priced way out of budget for what this project is worth) I'd have done that. I also know of some number of other WD740GDs that may be getting retired soon. They have 5 zillion POH (albeit with few POCs) which sorta sucks but, if and when they are available, may also result in a price that is more what I'd feel it would be worth spending on said system.

(that said, if you happen to have 8 WD raptors or velociraptors that you'd like to sell, PM me)

Another "Upgrade" it will get when it goes back in service is the 17" Dell Ultrasharps I used to use with V3.5 (which are now much nicer 22" 1680x1050 HP L2245wg's)... Yay twin DVI. Right now it is out of service due to the aforementioned stability issues and also because my 2nd Xeon Gallatin build needed a place to be tested.

Still, nice score on the RAID upgrade?

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Got the 9650 running... was a PITA though, as the BBU wasn't initialized with the controller. Had to use some tw_cli magic from a live cd. Also got the cables, all is good there.

I went looking at HDDs... apparently 80GB and even 160GB velociraptors are going for less in lots WD740's... And that is with the heatsinked 2.5" to 3/5" sleds. Like $55+ shipping for 5 160's or $30+ shipping for 5 80's vs $85 shipped for 6 WD740GD's.

They're so cheap for a second I though I could buy three lots of these and upgrade all my non velociraptor systems ( 4 + 3 + 8 = 15, or 3 lots of 5):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Our-Best-Lot...item3d02ce7d81

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Awesome-Deal...item3ab1fa852b


But then I remembered that I have other projects coming up (engine hoist and stand, etc.) and I chucked that idea. Not to mentions shipping is a bitch (I checked, it combines a bit but still pricey).

Damn, they're nice drives, but a bit much for what's on my plate right now. Maybe after Thanksgiving I'll think about it again. Between then and Now I have a busy work schedule (only one week free a week and a half from now, so I will be making some serious money).

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

BUSTED!

Decided to run it some tonight... and caught it in the act. the error on the bsod:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Basically means something tried to access a memory location it wasn't supposed to (aka a segmentation fault), which supposedly means a bad driver. However, all my drivers are known good ones... Another cause I read was file corruption (which could lead to bad pointers, which would cause such to happen), which I'm thinking is the issue due to a bad spot in one of the HDDs. Since it happens every time I re-install (sometimes without any extra drivers IIRC), I suspect that every time windows is installed it is installed to the same places on the HDD (think about it, this isn't a random process). Thus, a bad spot would cause a consistant failure?

Is there something similar to memtest86 for HDDs? If so, that would rule it out one way or another (at the cost of a reinstall, which for me is nothing as this system has no important files).

Edit- forgot to mention in this thread (it's in the SM curse thread instead): unlike my X5DAL boards, I did find a way to SLIC it. The trick, upgrade the BIOS with the stock file first, and then flash the SLIC'd file WITHOUT the bootloader (different options at the CLI command).

[rhomanski]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

What are you doing still up, I thought I was the only night owl.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

What are you doing still up, I thought I was the only night owl.

Nope. I hate mornings.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

the error on the bsod:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Usually unstable core(s). Looks like not enough Vcore or OC'ed too much.
Linpack can fail with that code as well.

My darn T-bird 900 @ 1050 used to give me that BSOD.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Usually unstable core(s). Looks like not enough Vcore or OC'ed too much.
Linpack can fail with that code as well.

My darn T-bird 900 @ 1050 used to give me that BSOD.

Umm ok?

I'm running 3.6GHz Xeon Irwindales, Engineering samples. Would that be the issue (the engineering sample part, that is)?

The system was a barebones with a beefy 650W Ablecom (supermicro) PSU and all power connections populated. My GPU is a Geforce 9800GT that uses no external power connector; it's one of these, which I hear draws pretty close to the max 75W under stress, which the system isn't under when the BSOD happens.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Umm ok?

I'm running 3.6GHz Xeon Irwindales, Engineering samples. Would that be the issue (the engineering sample part, that is)?

The system was a barebones with a beefy 650W Ablecom (supermicro) PSU and all power connections populated. My GPU is a Geforce 9800GT that uses no external power connector; it's one of these, which I hear draws pretty close to the max 75W under stress, which the system isn't under when the BSOD happens.

I dunno. Does the any of your Vcore readings look like any undervolting going on?

I bet a system with that error also has Prime95 and Linpack failing.
(Which is just a confirmation of the CPU flunking math.)

For some reason, Windows likes to report "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" when the CPU flipped bits randomly, for me.

But, never had that with a stocker! Something's real wrong, with them at stock!

While OTOH, a "WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR" BSOD on a Core 2 Quad is most likely the darn FSB termination issue.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

No clue. Outta town until the week after next.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Did some testing with a different set of HDDs (the 74GB raptors from Main rig V2.0/V3.0/V3.5/V5.0) and it crashed again.

I didn't recall the nocona's that came in it doing that... but that was on a different (nearly identical) board though.

I suspect the issue is the CPUs... I've put in an offer on a pair of 3.8GHz ones (SL7ZB). In the mean time, I didn't look for vcore readings but I'll nab some real quick and post them as a reply.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Whatever caused the blue screen also nuked my fresh install, as it instantly BSODs on bootup. Before it crashed during testing Windows activation would crash. Something isn't happy, that's for sure.

Here's what I got from the BIOS hardware monitor after trying and failing with the various startup repair utilities built into 7:



(clearly startup repair only used the first CPU)



Vcore looks good? I didn't see much in the way of fluctuations, and all the caps are good on the mobo (It's a freaking supermicro after all). FWIW the nominal Vcore for Irwindales is 1.25–1.3875 V.

[brethin]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Just bury this one as a dead soldier now that you have V5.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Just bury this one as a dead soldier now that you have V5.

Umm no. V3.5 was faster too... The only reason it's a higher number is because it was a later purchase (cheap ebay score) and Topcat more or less gave the number (originally it didn't have one since it broke the number scheme).

The CPUs I found are cheap enough and given a known good set of HDDs (and controller, since other known good controllers caused the same issue), Good tested RAM (as per memtest86), and no other culprits, I'm thinking it's either CPUs or mobo. I do have a spare board though (one known bad USB header channel) so even if the board is the issue I at least have a means of recourse...

That said it, like my two gallatin rigs, it isn't currently in use but I do have future plans once I have an actual house. It was to become either a 2nd main workstation (for my wife perhaps?) or perhaps a workshop/garage computer.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Scored the CPUs for $24 shipped (both CPUs). These are actually faster, as the 3.8 was a later version (3.6 was the fastest at launch, hence why that's what the engineering samples were). Also in terms of stock clock frequency this is one of the fastest CPUs ever made, as 3.8GHz was as far as anybody dared to go out of the box (the 4Ghz Barrier as they say). Hence why multi-core CPUs became the new trend. That's your CPU history lesson for the day, lol.

[dmill89]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

Scored the CPUs for $24 shipped (both CPUs). These are actually faster, as the 3.8 was a later version (3.6 was the fastest at launch, hence why that's what the engineering samples were). Also in terms of stock clock frequency this is one of the fastest CPUs ever made, as 3.8GHz was as far as anybody dared to go out of the box (the 4Ghz Barrier as they say). Hence why multi-core CPUs became the new trend. That's your CPU history lesson for the day, lol.

They're finally starting to break that barrier (with multi-core CPUs), the I7-4790k and I7-6700k both come with a stock (non-turbo) frequency of 4GHZ (and 88w and 91w TDPs), the 220w space-heater that is the AMD FX-9590 comes with a stock frequency of 4.7GHZ

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V4.1

They're finally starting to break that barrier (with multi-core CPUs), the I7-4790k and I7-6700k both come with a stock (non-turbo) frequency of 4GHZ (and 88w and 91w TDPs), the 220w space-heater that is the AMD FX-9590 comes with a stock frequency of 4.7GHZ

Damn. Having taken a couple of relevant classes in college that's no easy feat (as at those frequencies one must use analog/RF design methods even though the processors are obviously digital).

---

CPUs came in today... so far, so good, the issues I had before are gone. Time will tell if it will behave or not...