Sigh.........

[Brucifer]

Went out and bought another X2. Of course this time it was an AM2 socket, which also needed different memory than my other stuff, and the M/B (gigabyte, and a sata HD. Started off trying to put opensuse 10.2 on it.... didn't go so hot, ended up seg faulting. tried putting XP-64 on it, got the BSD a couple times. Pulled out the new HD, and put in a new 160gig ATA. The stuff didn't like that either. Moved the DVD R/W, and ATA drive over to another box. Tried to install XP Home on it, BSD again. Put slackware on a 20gig partition on it, ran fine, loaded it from the new DVD R/W. Am now in the process of running diags on the ATA. Tomorrow I'll take the memory down to a shop and ask them to test it. They'll probably tell me to pi$$ off since I ddin't buy it from them. Some days just make you feel like chucking it all in the garbage and joining a hermitage.....

[vaughan]

That's why I didn't go X2 as it needed new RAM, PCI express GPU etc on AM2. The el cheapo non-overclocking Asrock 775 dual-vsta m/b did allow me to use my old DDR400 RAM and AGP GPU.

When I went to upgrade the e4300 C2D Allendale had the most o/c potential compared to an X2 running on an AM2 m/b so I went that route.

One day AMD will be the performance leader again :icon_neutral:

[drezha]

Doesn't this bode well for when I purchase my AM2 system later this year. :icon_rolleyes: (Summer ish time...Student loan has to be used on something :icon_lol: )

I was gonna go AM2 route (3800 X2 has 2 high energy effcient chips I'll try and get hold of...65W TDP and 35W :icon_eek: TDP) in a Shuttle system with DDR2 and a 40 or 80Gb HD and DVD drive.

If it's that much trouble, I may not.

[Brucifer]

I am not impressed at all with the am2 stuff and the sata drives. If I could turn all this back in I would. I have been dinking with this crap all afternoon and night now, and it's past 1am here.

I shoulda bought the intel...................................... This has been the biggest headache I can ever remember. But I'm sure not going to buy any more crap so I have spares to troubleshoot with. 939's or nothing...

[drezha]

Is it better for me to not go the AM2 route?

Or is it just the SATA drive that's screwed up and not being recognised? I mean the Shuttle I was looking at had a IDE port as well. I assume when you say your testing an ATA drive, you mean an old school IDE? I mean I've been using SATA on Ubuntu no probs for almost a year now. Even fine in 64 bit. That's on a socket 939 though so if the AM2 is the culprit, that might be it.

[Bender10]

Just an observation Brucifer,

I've noticed that you have to check the M/B manufacturer site for the ram they specify for that board these days to stay out of trouble on that end. They should list approved ram by part number/manufacturer. Don't just buy the correct configuration.

I've had a couple of hardware problems with new stuff, Video card and ram stick. It sux waiting for the replacement parts. Don't let it get you down.

Although I don't understand the HD problem, sounds wierd.

Off to werk I go....


running x64:
300G sata, sli w/ 2 ea nvidia 7600, 2 gig ram, X2 4200+(65w) AM2, 2 ea dvd drives no problems. This started out with a 3800+. All I did was buy the 4200+, remove (non X2) 3800+ insert X2 4200+ and away we go.

[Evil-Dragon]

This might be a stupid question but..

Did you try setting different memory timings in BIOS?

Sometimes memory can cause BSD's if they are not set with correct timings in BIOS. Try setting them manually also instead of auto.

[gatekeeper53]

The prices they are comming down:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103773

[Brucifer]

Ram, m/b, sata HD, all came from the same shop in another town that uses the same stuff to put their stuff together they sell. Will get the memory checked today at another shop. Not much I can do with the m/b as I have no way to compare it or interchange working parts.

Probably the main lesson here is that when you get the first item of a new socket set and memory in this case also, then have the whole thing put together at a shop so that you can besure it works when you get your hands on it. Otherwise you have no way to check things out. And also it's just too easy for a shop to say "you fried this stuff" and take the cop out way. All too common. Meanwhile you get stuck holding the bag.

Meanwhile I went through installing XP Home on another system. Turned out to be a huge time consumer by the time the online updates, etc. Plus had to get the system "Validated" before any updates could be downloaded. Then MS does another update that is a rehash of the "validation" thing again, wanting to take serial numbers, etc., from stuff in your computer, IP address, etc., to load into their database in their anit-pirate campaign. I guess I've just spent too long in the Linux world and drifted farther away from MS than I realized. Upon doing a new MS system it has been a bit of a shock. It sure re-inforced my high opinion of linux as compared to MS.

So there I laid in bed last night trying to unwind after the "events" and listening to the muffled roar of the computers in the room next to my bedroom, and couldn't get to sleep because it was too noisy. So I got up, shutdown the large majority of the boxes and managed to get to sleep. Now this morning I still haven't turned the other stuff back on. What I'm really thinking about is just turning off the rest of it and just keeping a web browsing system going. All the bucks for the power, parts, and it just isn't the fun and exciting thing it used to be. This latest escapade of a few more hundred bucks, and then having to spend some more bucks to find out what's wrong with it, just has basically turned into pretty much the final straw. I'm already saving money now, as the A/C hasn't been kicking on due to the massive heat generation....... :)

[Brucifer]

Continuing on.... :) As the saying goes, something good comes out of everything. Had this not happened, I probably wouldn't have shut down everything but my amd-64's and one paltry little xp2100+ I use for a desktop system. And thus I never would have learned that half my crunching output was coming from less than 1/4th of my systems. I also wouldn't have found out that my real heat generation issues are primarily from the non-amd64 athlons.... And in taking a peek at my power meter on the side of the house, the disk in it isn't racing around like car tire at 100mph.

So I think I'll just leave the older systems off as they are really juiceing up the electrical bill between the power they use and the power used by the A/C in hauling away the heat. and without all those socket7 cpu fans howling, it is much quieter around here too. :)

[Ototero]

Every cloud has a silver lining, as they say :)

[Brucifer]

yes.... but a liitle more silver and less rain might be nice... heh :)

I turned on the XP2600 and xp2400's, and will see what they do to the output and the heat. Meanwhile 8 others are definitely out of the running and being retired. Can save the parts for spares.

[Bender10]

I have 4 (i think) sub xp 2100 boxes. I am going to replace each of these with X2 boxes as funds permit. You're right, It sounds like an aircraft carrier flight deck in my basement!!

I don't think I will increase the number of boxes I have now (unless it's donated..heh..heh), just switch to more efficent cpu's, in quiet boxes.

[vaughan]

My observation is that the computer room / office reaches a limit on the number of computers I can put up with. The things to consider are:

heat - I had to upgrade my 1 hp air conditioner to a 2.5 hp unit

noise - lots of white noise droaning away in the background has caused me to upgrade to quieter / more efficient power supplies and replace noisy old generic boxes with quieter name brand cases. The features I look for are 120mm fans instead of 80mm, rubber grommets to hold the HDD screws in place so the HDDs are isolated and don't vibrate, I look for quiet or quieter at least versions of GPUs (not all reviews discuss the acoustics just the raw performance of these things)

light - with 18 computers in the room its amazing how much light gets emitted by the LEDs; at first it looks kinda cool having a tri-color fan (or 3) on the case but after a while it gets annoying, same too for blue lights in power supplies and front case fans; the blue LED on my Antec P160 is so bright I had to disconnect the wire to it as it was at just the wrong angle and caught my vision once too often!

space - huge cases may be good for keeping components cool but they get in the way due to their sheer size (cubic capacity); my Shuttle XPC is brilliantly designed but in general their boxes are just too expensive, which is a pity as I'd buy more if they were 50% cheaper

stackability - sort of goes with the size comment but I prefer to stack the computers on top of each other in bunches of 3. This is the limit of the IEC power cord from the gpo to the computer's p/s unit. Now I understand why the BTX specification has the p/s at the base of the unit - not to suck in all the carpet fibres and dust, no, its so you can stack a 4th box on top of the existing 3 level stack! :icon_wink:

cables - spaghetti junction here I come :icon_razz: with the power cord, keyboard, mouse, monitor and ethernet supporting 18 rigs there are just too many wires. I have added two KVM switches (Lagu knows all about the trials and tribulations of those critters :icon_twisted: :icon_wink: ) and installed LogMeIn (http://www.logmein.com) (thanks for the lead on this Ototero) and its sister product Hamachi (http://hamachi.cc) (thanks to Doomeva so we managed the b/w and the colour laser printers using this) in addition to Wi-Fi access to try to eliminate some of the cable clutter.

[Brucifer]

heh :) yeah I'm not a big fan of those blue lights on the power supplies, etc., either. I pretty much agree with your whole synopsis there. I've also noticed that there is a point where there is just too many for the a/c to put up with, and also for the ears to tolerate too. Those fans get noisy, even the big ones do. But I'm pretty comfortable where I'm at right now :)

[spikey_richie]

Someone mentioned heat of chips...

I found this (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20070305092707.html)which I felt appropriate.

[Bender10]

Nice job Vaughan,
That seems to round out most of the problems.

Also, I am sold on (non-led) 120mm case fans. I just switched to those, and what a difference.

And I am still using KVM's, I'll look into LogMeIn, Thanks.

It's off to werk I go...

[drezha]

Yes spikey, I saw that news in my latest version of CustomPC. Nice news.

I've never liked the LED and stuff in cases. With the PC being in my bedroom, I'm sensitive to noise and light. I can sleep with resonable noise from the fan but every night I have to drape something across the power LED because it lights the room up and I cant sleep. I even spent extra money on getting and LED/LCD clock that glows but when the lights are out, the backlight dims.

vaughan, have you checked out the other barebones systems around? I'm looking now and Biostar seems to do Shuttle clones cheaper and Asus have some nice small cases. Also I guess it depends on the Suttle you want with prices from about £125 to £300! :(

As for the KVM's, you've had trouble? I was getting one later this year along with my Shuttle based rig.

[vaughan]

I have purchased 4 KVMs over the years. One worked really well for about 5 years then one day stopped working for no reason.

Its replacement had dud cables that gave multiple images, very blurry.

Another is still working fine - touch wood :icon_wink:

The last one I bought for Lagu and shipped in to Sweden. After a great deal of mucking around he got it working; one of the cables didn't work. The power supply provided in the box was not that specified in the outside packaging or the instructions sheet. Also he had to purchase gender changers for the Australian to Swedish power plugs. I'm pretty sure he got it working in the end.

[Bender10]

I haven't had any problems with KVM's. But if I can eliminate a monitor, and a bunch of cables, and gain some desk space, that would be nice. I have 3 KVM's now.

I just built one of these, and plan on ordering another today? or tommorow. Hopefully it will wind up as a diskless box.


APEVIA X-QPACK-NW-AL/420 Black/Silver Aluminum MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 420W Power Supply - Retail
Model #: X-QPACK-NW-AL/420
Item #: N82E16811144160

In Stock
$89.99 -$15.00 Instant $74.99

ASUS M2N-MX Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Model #: M2N-MX
Item #: N82E16813131040

In Stock
$74.99

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+(65W) Windsor 2.2GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model ADO4200CUBOX - Retail
Model #: ADO4200CUBOX
Item #: N82E16819103741

In Stock
$154.99

Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR533D2N4K2/1G - Retail
Model #: KVR533D2N4K2/1G
Item #: N82E16820144152

In Stock
$77.99

Update Thermaltake CL-P0200 80mm Silent 939 K8 - AMD K8 solution w/ Heatpipe Cooling Tech - Retail
Model #: CL-P0200
Item #: N82E16835106068

In Stock
$31.99
Subtotal: $414.95

[gatekeeper53]

Sounds like a great little cruncher! As for the KVM's I bought a D-Link DKVM-8E last summer and I haven't had a minutes problem with it. It's one of the very few things in this whole computer mess setting here that I would highly recommend. It's a little pricey and only comes with 3 cables, but I can't tell the differance with it hooked up from when it wasn't. Except that I have a great deal more space.

[spikey_richie]

vaughan, have you checked out the other barebones systems around? I'm looking now and Biostar seems to do Shuttle clones cheaper and Asus have some nice small cases. Also I guess it depends on the Suttle you want with prices from about £125 to £300! :(

As for the KVM's, you've had trouble? I was getting one later this year along with my Shuttle based rig.

DON'T buy an Asus S-Presso barebones PC, the cooling on those things is appalling. I have a Thermaltake Armor full ATX case, with water cooling so my noise levels are very low. I also have a case full of LED's (blue ones), one of which points right at my face whilst I have my head on the pillow which is slightly irritating.

As for KVM's, I used to have a little 2 box Belkin device which would get itself confused very often. I'd have to switch everything on in a certain order for it to work.

[spikey_richie]

I'll look into LogMeIn, Thanks.



I use LogMeIn too, it's awesome!

[drezha]

DON'T buy an Asus S-Presso barebones PC, the cooling on those things is appalling.

I was looking at these 2:-
Asus Pundit (http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=25725557701&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X3NwZWNpZmljYXRpb25z&product_uid=116317)
Other one (http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=25725589375&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X3Jldmlld3M=&product_uid=119972)

[spikey_richie]

They look okay from the outside, but see if you can get some pics of the inside.

The S-Presso has the HDD mount under the DVD/CD drive, and there's no fan at the front of the case. It has a CPU fan drawing air in from outside, and then 2 extraction fans at the back to pull warm air out. However, because of the static area at the front the heat just cooks the HDD - especially if you watch a DVD movie.

If you're just after a small media centre, why not look into mini-itx or nano-itx?

[Lagu]

(Lagu knows all about the trials and tribulations of those critters)
That´s is a little excessively, Vaughan:icon_wink:

The last one I bought for Lagu and shipped in to Sweden. After a great deal of mucking around he got it working; one of the cables didn't work. The power supply provided in the box was not that specified in the outside packaging or the instructions sheet. Also he had to purchase gender changers for the Australian to Swedish power plugs. I'm pretty sure he got it working in the end.

Yes, it works and I have not had any problems since I got it working. Many thanks to you Vaughan!:)

The cause Vauhan bought out the KVM-switch to me was the price. It was to expansive in Sweden and I couldn´t find NovaVIEW UNV104D here. I have found all parts are more expansive here than in Australia, England or USA.

[drezha]

If you're just after a small media centre, why not look into mini-itx or nano-itx?

You must have missed my power consumption thread ;) It was discussed in there.

And no, it's not just a media center. It'll be a desktop PC for linux (so work and web brosweing basically)

[Brucifer]

As time as marched on, a couple of issues have come to light. One problem on the computer from hell is that one of the 1gb DDRII800 mem sticks was really DOA. Then the issue was getting something installed on it so I could crunch with it. Well thespecific Gigabyte M/B chipset is not supported by OpenSuse at this point in time. I loaded a copy of slack on it, which ran okay. However then my network access to the internet just crapped. As we move fast forward a bit, it turns out that my router has/had a bad intermittant connector. And when anything was plugged in to it, then it would drag the net down. Of course narrowing down the intermittant problem was a true bear. As things sit at this moment, the box is online, running XP-64 and crunching OGR, running on one 1gb stick of memory so no dual paging. Even with that, it is running only approx 200 Mnodes/sec over a 24 hour period behind a 939 chip X2-3800 on OpenSuse running the 64-bit dnetc client. So it isn't doing bad at all. It is keeping up with another X2-3800 running OpenSuse using the 32-bit dnetc client. So it appears to me that the AM2 socket & M/B along with the DDRII800 memory is a pretty smooth running system. I wish that is was supposrted by OpenSuse as I'd like to see what that system would do with dual paging, and the 65-bit dnetc client.

So I must revise my opinion of the AM2 sockets as they do appear to be more efficient than the 939 stuff. And of course it is also a low wattage model too. Would I buy another one? Yes, and I intend to do that. I got the sick memory stick exchanged yesterday so now I can put it back in the system and get back to dual paging.

As for the internet connection issue, that was a real little bugger to find, as are any intermittant problems. So while I would prefer to be running the system on Suse, I'm very content to have it happily crunching away on XP-64 finally.

[drezha]

Glad you gotted sorted :)

Nice to know the AM2 sockets are good as well.

[Brucifer]

Glad you gotted sorted :)

Nice to know the AM2 sockets are good as well.

Yeah, actually I'm pretty impressed with it. And I also like the sata drives! :)

[Bender10]

Glad to see you resolved your computer problem Brucifer.

I can't buy (cheep) computer parts locally, unless they have a special on something I need. So, I have to buy on the internet. The turn around time for bad parts sux.

I just finished my second am2 box. It was on BONICpe until I switched to running pi. To run pi I installed x64. I just downloaded the x64 Evaluation .iso and will run that until this pi thing is resolved, then I will switch the box back to BOINCpe.

65w am2 4200+, oem cpu fan, 1gig ram, and a cdrom. Runs cool and quiet.