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Hacking an HP Z800 motherboard into a standard PC case

Started by Andy Brown, November 01, 2014, 04:53:46 am

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BenGman

Thats the same PSU cable I am currently using.

The speaker connections are the furthest two pins (top and bottom) on the biggest bank of black connectors (closest to the capacitor).

I had my motherboard almost 2 weeks before I had any other component. I built my own HPZ800 power cable (took a day) using an ATX Extender cable and I took a chance and just hooked up that cable and speakers to see what happened. I was awed that I heard beeps (cause I had no CPUs, no RAM, no graphics card as yet).

tangram

Quote from: BenGman on June 02, 2015, 08:28:15 am
Thats the same PSU cable I am currently using.

The speaker connections are the furthest two pins (top and bottom) on the biggest bank of black connectors (closest to the capacitor).

I had my motherboard almost 2 weeks before I had any other component. I built my own HPZ800 power cable (took a day) using an ATX Extender cable and I took a chance and just hooked up that cable and speakers to see what happened. I was awed that I heard beeps (cause I had no CPUs, no RAM, no graphics card as yet).



Considering the image below, the last pins (top/bottom from the left or from the right?




And which one is + and which one ground ?

I'll test when i get home.

BenGman

June 02, 2015, 02:05:08 pm #137 Last Edit: June 02, 2015, 02:07:20 pm by BenGman


The speaker connections are the red & black wires in the image next to the capacitor. I am not sure what the polarity should be, but for POST beeps it should not matter. These speakers are also your default speakers in MS Windows if you do not have a connection plugged into the 3.5mm jack, but since it was just a single 4cm speaker I could not tell the left and right stereo apart.

I think my original source for the speaker pinouts was Andy's blog post.

tangram

Ok, with your help I got something :D

So, I have a beep after power-on then after about 20-25 seconds a sequence of 6 beeps, than nothing.
I read that 6 beeps is video card related. This card requires 6pin power cable and I'm thinking the psu may be too weak to power this mobo and graphics. The card is a Radeon HD3800.

With the other vga card I have from the dell i get 6 beeps right from the start, so i'm guessing that graphics card has some issues.

Also, with no graphics, i get 6 beeps.

Vesuveus

Hey all,

I have picked up a rev 2 motherboard and a couple x5550 cpu's with the power adapter cables, all for around $130 (pretty much a steal for a 16 thread computer). I also bought a couple hyper t4 cpu coolers and 24 gb ram.  I have yet to build the computer (hoping the processors match and are supported).

My biggest issue is this. I am a huge fan of overclocking, but obviously this motherboards bios does not support raising the fsb or voltage. The only option I have been able to find is setfsb, but that doesnt sound like an ideal or even promising option because the motherboard has to have a supported pls. I havent checked yet, but I have heard that even if it does it probably still wont go beyond a 1 or 2 bump in fsb speed due to the raise in RAM, pcie and sata speed.

My question is this. What about modifying the bios?  I know the EVGA classified SR2 has the same chipset, and is an overclockable double lga 1366 motherboard. Is there a way to take the overclocking code and splice it into a modified bios for overclocking purposes?

I know basically nothing about coding, but it sounds possible. Please let me know if anyone here knows how/can/want to do this. It seams like there is a stupid high price tag for a mere .5mhz bump on these cpu's. Anyway, thanks. I will be posting pics of my build as it comes together in the next week or so, and will even be making video!

alfamate89

I have one more question. The original HP PSU supplies only 5V standby. From where does the normal 5V comes from to power the HDD/SSD? I would like to use a server PSU like this:

It is very cheap and the 12V is on one rail.

alfamate89

OK I find the answare to my quastion, in the service manual.
"+12 V-B Input to onboard regulators that supply 3.3V and 5V, system fans"

x2xx

only quick info for all original Z800 users, successfully running 2x X5687 + 2x R9 290 OC with stock 1110W PSU (no additional psu needed).

power to GPUs
V-G1 6pin -> 8pin
V-G2 6pin -> 8pin
1x molex -> 6pin
1x modified CPU power cable -> 6pin (1x +12 CPU0  1x +12 CPU1)
(Obsidian Series 800D 8-Pin Motherboard Power Extension Cable Corsair CC800D-8PIN)

all stable

Quote from: JonMS on March 14, 2015, 07:41:45 pm
Quote from: x2xx on March 11, 2015, 10:26:07 am
quick info:

i was searching for max power output thought 6pin GPU connector and i find this pdf
http://www.nvidia.com/content/quadro/maximus/di-06471-001_v02.pdf
where they use  6-pin to 8-pin adaptors for tesla and quadro fx5xxx in Z800

because i want to try SLI GTX980 and dont want case full of molex conversion cables


Z800 board is not GeForce SLI certified so you will need to use an SLI hack to make it work. I did this back in the day on an Asus P5Q-E board. As far as powering them if you're using the standard Z800 case you can run dual 5.25" drive-bay PSUs (1 for each GPU) I'm doing this for my dual AMD R9 280X set up as Crossfire requires no certification. Here is a picture of my set up:

Vesuveus

So I got my rig up and running with windows 10 technical preview, dual xeon x5550, a gtx 295 and 24gb ram. My problem now is that hyperthreading isnt working. I have it enabled in the bios but it doesnt work when I am in the OS. If anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated. If not I will try and install windows 7 on one of the other hard drives to see if it is a problem with the OS. Thanks.

Andy Brown

Quote from: Vesuveus on June 17, 2015, 06:02:51 pm
So I got my rig up and running with windows 10 technical preview, dual xeon x5550, a gtx 295 and 24gb ram. My problem now is that hyperthreading isnt working. I have it enabled in the bios but it doesnt work when I am in the OS. If anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated. If not I will try and install windows 7 on one of the other hard drives to see if it is a problem with the OS. Thanks.


I strongly suspect the OS but have you run the Intel processor identification utility anyway? It should look something like this attached screenshot.
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!

Attilio Fiandrotti

Hello,

While digging into the issue of the write protected bootblock preventing (dual) X56xx configs from working, I found out these links (the second one is in German only, sorry,)

http://austintovey.blogspot.it/2011/03/dell-r610-tylersburg-chipset-stepping.html
http://www.computerbase.de/2010-03/intel-16-32-nm-cpus-mit-vier-und-sechs-kernen/

it appears like the difference between -002 and -003 boards is not only in the BIOS, but goes down to the revision of the 5520 chips under the large black heatsink. Boards from the -002 gen include rev B3 5520's, whereas latter -003 boards include the C2 rev. It seems that C2 is required to enable advanced CPU features such as the AES-NI and TXT extensions. Myself I have two X5550 on a -002 and cannot tell, but it would be interesting to know what /proc/cpuinfo or similar under Win read on an X56xx with the 002 and 003 revs respectively.

Attilio

Attilio Fiandrotti

Today I managed to assemble my mainboard into my Thermaltake Armor+ VH6000 [1]: it's a thing for gamers and I am not a big fan of fancy blue lighst and odd case designs, but I got it second hand for 70 Eur including a 600 W (2 x 18 A @ 12 V) PSU and other accessories. The very good thing about this case is that it is relatively small (60 cm tall) and the mainboard is hosted on a sliding tray which is almost exaclty the Z800 mainboard size and can be slid from the case: that was very convenient while drilling the backplate and checking the assembly on the testbench. I have installed 2 x X5550 @2.66 GHz and 12 GB of RAM in 6 banks (only two are displayed in the picture). I had to update the bios first as also mine was much behind and did some tests. First of all, operating this thing is like powering an electric heater: the two CPUs produce lots of heat, the black heatsink produces other heat and needs separate cooling, and finally also the memory and the rest of the electonics produces their fair share of enthropy. The PSU fan immediately starts spinning at its maximum and becomes noisy quickly and the exhaust air gets immediately warm. I did some rendering tests with the POV raytracer on 16 threads, hyperthreading and turbo boost enabled. The rendering was stunning fast compared to my old CoreDuo @ 2.13 GHz, but after a little while I could clearly feel the smell of overheated hairdryer coming out of the PSU, so quickly aborted the tests. Using a hardware monitor, I found out that with 16 rendering threads, turbo boost enabled, each core runs at about 3 GHz and each CPU consumes up to 108 W. By disabling turbo boost, the maximum clock speed drops down to the nominal 2.66 GHz and the power consumption to 95 W, which is enough to give the PSU some rest; it is however clear that my PSU is not really adequate for this configuration: either I drop a CPU or will have to look for a better PSU or power the CPUs via another PSU. Also, I found out that the CPU near to the back of the case was about 10 C degrees hotter than the other during the render session. The reason is most likely that the former intakes the hot exhaust air blown by the latter: I am considering rotating the 2nd CPU heatsing by 90 degrees, so that the hot air is expelled through the opening at the top of the case.
So, I am very impressed by the capabilities of this PC, but it is plagued by all those sort of issues related to power consumption and heat dissipation that one finds with rack servers. Add that I do not really have an use for it (my laptop is enough for almost everything I do, while heavy duty jobs I usually offload them to some of our servers), and that's enough to wonder why I got into this..  :o

[1] http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/products-model_gallery.aspx?id=C_00000091

colincoates

Hi Guys,
I was hoping you could help me out?
I've got this PSU hooked up the the z800 motherboard "http://www.scan.co.uk/products/850w-nzxt-hale82-hybrid-modular-80-plus-bronze-1x120mm-atx-psu";
I've had my multimeter out and tested all the connections at the MB side and they are all correct.
I've hooked up a pc speaker to hear the diagnostic beeps and it is complaining about power (system beeps 4 times (once per second), then a 2-second pause)
Do you think this PSU is powerful enough (70A on a single 12V Rail)

I've only got a single x5580 in at the moment to test.
It's a revision 002 board.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

JonMS

Quote from: x2xx on June 17, 2015, 03:25:44 pm
only quick info for all original Z800 users, successfully running 2x X5687 + 2x R9 290 OC with stock 1110W PSU (no additional psu needed).

power to GPUs
V-G1 6pin -> 8pin
V-G2 6pin -> 8pin
1x molex -> 6pin
1x modified CPU power cable -> 6pin (1x +12 CPU0  1x +12 CPU1)
(Obsidian Series 800D 8-Pin Motherboard Power Extension Cable Corsair CC800D-8PIN)

all stable

Quote from: JonMS on March 14, 2015, 07:41:45 pm
Quote from: x2xx on March 11, 2015, 10:26:07 am
quick info:

i was searching for max power output thought 6pin GPU connector and i find this pdf
http://www.nvidia.com/content/quadro/maximus/di-06471-001_v02.pdf
where they use  6-pin to 8-pin adaptors for tesla and quadro fx5xxx in Z800

because i want to try SLI GTX980 and dont want case full of molex conversion cables


Z800 board is not GeForce SLI certified so you will need to use an SLI hack to make it work. I did this back in the day on an Asus P5Q-E board. As far as powering them if you're using the standard Z800 case you can run dual 5.25" drive-bay PSUs (1 for each GPU) I'm doing this for my dual AMD R9 280X set up as Crossfire requires no certification. Here is a picture of my set up:



Can you share pictures of your custom cable and how you have it connected?

colincoates

Quote from: colincoates on June 29, 2015, 07:44:36 am
Hi Guys,
I was hoping you could help me out?
I've got this PSU hooked up the the z800 motherboard "http://www.scan.co.uk/products/850w-nzxt-hale82-hybrid-modular-80-plus-bronze-1x120mm-atx-psu";
I've had my multimeter out and tested all the connections at the MB side and they are all correct.
I've hooked up a pc speaker to hear the diagnostic beeps and it is complaining about power (system beeps 4 times (once per second), then a 2-second pause)
Do you think this PSU is powerful enough (70A on a single 12V Rail)

I've only got a single x5580 in at the moment to test.
It's a revision 002 board.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Hi Guys,
turns out it was the psu. I RMAed it for a evga 1.3kw supernova g2. It starts up and recognises both processors.