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WCG-TPU Cruncher's Hardware/Tech Support Discussion Thread

xvi said:
HP Z600 workstation. Has the stupid $60 heatsinks. It's the one that I've been having overheating issues with on top of that. The CPU fan won't ramp up when the proc gets hot. Tempted to just get some eBay CPU waterblocks for it and find some screws that thread in to the HP mounts.

6GB is definitely better than the, uh, 2-3GB it came with? Mostly just want to populate all 6 slots for memory bandwidth and to get sticks in there for the second proc.
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BIOS ought to let you set the minimum fan speed. My Z400s do.

We just recycled a Z400 at work; I might be able to pull the heatsink out of the recycling bin if you need a second one.
Bandwidth isn't much important; given that I can run 12 WUs fine on 2GB if you want 6GB that should do. I can have the sticks in the mail next Monday
 
[Ion] said:
BIOS ought to let you set the minimum fan speed. My Z400s do.
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It does, but it's fan speed for the two rear case fans, not CPU. Maxing those out does lower CPU temps by a few degrees, but that's just case airflow. I've got the CPU fans on a molex to 3-pin fan adapter and temps are fantastic, but it's incredibly noisy and I always have to hook up a keyboard/monitor to it to clear the "CPU Fan Malfunction, press F1" message on boot.
[Ion] said:
We just recycled a Z400 at work; I might be able to pull the heatsink out of the recycling bin if you need a second one.
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I'm not entirely sure they're compatible with the Z600. Heatsinks for the Z600 and Z800 are shared, I know. The Z400 heatsink looks wider, which may interfere with the memory shroud (possibly?). I'unno. Mounting *should* be the same, I'd imagine. Some Z600 heatsink ads advertise compatibility for the z400. Thoughts?
 
What do you guys think about using (something like) a Zotac Zbox-ID90-Plus as a dedicated Cruncher? I like that it's very small, low wattage, quiet and has 4 cores/8 threads. My i3-3220T will do ~2000 PPD while only using 54 watts, and that's not even with a good PSU. The power brick that comes with that Zotac is only rated at 65 watts.
 
I'd wonder what the price is. Yes, I'm sure power usage is pretty low, but I don't see something like that being cheap. I'd imagine it would probably be better to buy something that's faster, cheaper, and higher power, and then spend the rest of the money towards electricity.
 
thebluebumblebee said:
What do you guys think about using (something like) a Zotac Zbox-ID90-Plus as a dedicated Cruncher? I like that it's very small, low wattage, quiet and has 4 cores/8 threads. My i3-3220T will do ~2000 PPD while only using 54 watts, and that's not even with a good PSU. The power brick that comes with that Zotac is only rated at 65 watts.
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It is possible, at this moment, purchase a laptop with similar specs and equal power consumption at half that price.
Newegg has a bunch of older refurbished Lenovo Tinkpads and DELLs with core i5 in it. At $120-$150 apiece it will get you 5 less powerful crunchers with 45-60W power consumption and the ability to give partial moneyback, after selling their brand-new batteries on ebay.

If you don't like the idea of refurbished laptops and still care about energy efficiency, then I'd recommend looking into NUCs:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883800007

A total power consumption of a single system is 10W max, and at $239 apiece you can get 3 of those for the price of one ID90. Pretty sure that 12 threads on these puppies will beat a single ZBOX, while consuming half its power.

But a regular LGA1366 XEON workstation can pack all that punch in one box and cost about a half.
 
silentbogo said:
It is possible, at this moment, purchase a laptop with similar specs and equal power consumption at half that price.
Newegg has a bunch of older refurbished Lenovo Tinkpads and DELLs with core i5 in it. At $120-$150 apiece it will get you 5 less powerful crunchers with 45-60W power consumption and the ability to give partial moneyback, after selling their brand-new batteries on ebay.

If you don't like the idea of refurbished laptops and still care about energy efficiency, then I'd recommend looking into NUCs:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883800007

A total power consumption of a single system is 10W max, and at $239 apiece you can get 3 of those for the price of one ID90. Pretty sure that 12 threads on these puppies will beat a single ZBOX, while consuming half its power.

But a regular LGA1366 XEON workstation can pack all that punch in one box and cost about a half.
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Having just recently managed to replace all of my old Westmere/Sandy i5 laptops with something else, I cannot discourage going this route enough. They give bad PPD per system, it's irritating to deal with administering this many computers, and they seem to be unreliable. PLEASE go with a single desktop system :)
 
NUCs look promising in terms of efficiency, though.
With a bit older Celerons and Atoms PPD/W was even much higher than ARM A58. I'd like to try a cluster of those new NUCs some day... when I become rich and famous :pimp:
 
Does anyone know a good source for E5649/X5650/X5660/X5670 CPUs? I'm still looking for six or eight of them, but the nearly-$100 each on Ebay is far too expensive for that volume.
 
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Got the 850 Evo installed and it's running nicely. Ran the asssd bench and I think it's a good score, better than my old 830.

850evo-10-31-15-b.jpg



Swapped the old 830 into the wife's pc and after a few problems during the reinstall, I finally benched that ssd too.

830-10-31-15.jpg



At first I thought that a few years of crunching had killed the drive, but then it hit me.... coming from a hdd as a boot drive, I had never bothering to switch the boot setting in bios from ide to ahci :banghead: Thankfully after getting that fixed, it worked fairly well. (wow, after typing this out and looking at the ss, I just noticed the ss says that it's in ide mode, not ahci. I totally missed that earlier :oops:)

830-10-31-15-ahci.jpg


Those numbers aren't too bad after all the crunching it's done over the years are pretty close to what they were out of the box! I'm looking for an old ss I took of it, and I'll add it in if I can find it.
 
[Ion] said:
Does anyone know a good source for E5649/X5650/X5660/X5670 CPUs? I'm still looking for six or eight of them, but the nearly-$100 each on Ebay is far too expensive for that volume.
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I got a good deal for 2 X5675 for 338€ they have 7 months, almost brand new.
 
[Ion] said:
That....ludicrously expensive.
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Well they cost over 1000€ brand new, and for 7 month life and 338€ for 2 of them I think price it's not that bad, considering that they cost 149€ for one used over years.

Note: unfortunately this is Germany:shadedshu:

Edit: I forgot to mentioned that I have 2 years warranty.
 
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That's about how much they cost where I'm from: $130 for an X5675, or $100 for X5650 in the best case.
I got lucky and bought mine for ~$80, but of course no warranty.

Some local dude offered me 14 of X5675s for $110 each, but I'm so broke right now, I had to sell all my toys just to get moar RAM.:cry:
 
thebluebumblebee said:
Yeah, but we know the kind of deals seem to walk up to your door.:laugh::p
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Well, even discounting the stuff I get locally, I pay nothing near that much online. I've been buying my six-core X56** series CPUs for less than $60 each online, mostly on [H]
 
As i have said, Germany.
Over here you pay or you get nothing!
 
Just bought a riser so I can install 2 CPUs in my last T5500 system. Going to put the ES X5670 in the single-CPU X58 system and then run dual E5649s in it I think.
 
I've upgraded another T5500 from a single ES X5670 to a pair of regular E5649s. Put the ES X5670 in the single-socket X58 board since it won't run in multi-CPU mode. Still have four more that need new CPUs, but this is progress :)
 
running now on 12 Cores / 24 Threads :p

let´s bring it on :nutkick:
 
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