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March 28, 2024, 04:52:41 pm

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SMF - Just Installed!


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Messages - Andy Brown

241
Hi Jon and welcome to the forum. It's quite densely packed inside the official case isn't it? I see you've replaced the official CPU heatsink/fans with some nice looking replacements as well.

You certainly get your parts for great prices in the US. My total cost exc. storage/graphics is about GBP 800 (2x X5680, board, case, PSU, 48Gb RAM). It's the VAT (20%) and import duties that hurt us over here.
242
I blew a DIMM!

I did a reboot this morning and the POST check reported a "failing" DIMM, and told me which one it was (nice, that). It was one of the second set of 24Gb that I'd fitted after installing the second CPU. This was from a cheap batch that I got on ebay so either they were dodgy to begin with or the additional heat generated since fully populating all the slots up to 48Gb was too much.

I'm back down to "only" 24Gb because I was running at that level for months without any problems and I'm going to devise a bracket to rig together a pair of 140mm fans to cool the memory before attempting to fully populate all the slots again.
243
Hi and welcome to the forum. It's quite likely that the library will work for you by using the f1hd configuration and simply avoiding the peripherals that you don't have.

The f1hd examples won't work "out of the box" because the linker script is designed for a 512Kb/64Kb configuration. You'd need to adjust it to match the 64Kb/20Kb configuration of your board. Your 72MHz clock matches the HD so the startup code that sets the clocks should work without changes.
244
Quote from: Marco Silva on January 18, 2015, 01:05:06 pm
Andy, does your revision 3 board gives you turbo frequency under full load like mine? My cpu is 2.66 GHz and 3 GHz turbo but under full load i'm always near the 3 GHz mark.

Funny you should mention that because I did a rendering session yesterday and noticed that I was getting 3.46GHz throughout. Turbo Boost gives you 133 or 266 extra depending on load. I sometimes see 3.6 and almost all other times get 3.46GHz. This is because of the great performance of the aftermarket fans. Even under full load the core temps don't get up to where the clock has to come back down to the stock level. I run Intel's free cute "turbo boost monitor" on my desktop to keep an eye on it.
245
Hi, dimare and welcome to the forum. Yes it's OK to let people know you've got some parts to sell. Please conduct any negotiations by private message or use the private message facility to exchange your own email addresses and talk that way.

Of course I should add that neither myself nor the ISP that hosts this forum are in any way responsible for private sales negotiated between members. I should put that in the T's and C's somewhere  ;)

Good luck :)
246
I just updated the main article with my experiences of adding a second X5680 and taking it up to 48Gb of RAM.



247
I think I would agree with Marco. The Z820 board is not the bargain that the Z800 is and the really desirable E5 Ivy Bridge CPUs are also very expensive. If you're going to lay out that sort of cash then the path of least resistance is the Asus board with everything else standard.

The dual E5520's ought to work in your 002 board with no issues.
248
Quote from: Marco Silva on January 12, 2015, 12:01:21 pm
Just a little update on these connectors...they are not true atx connectors they are like 1/4 of the real size  :o

I've ordered the taobao kit, actually 3 of them because they were so cheap....i've used a tabao "agent" and like always i will give my feedback if i ever receive them  8)


Shame about the connectors but I'll be very interested to hear how the taobao agent thing works out. I've seen their advertisements but never got around to trying them. I'm sure you'll be able to offload the spares you get on ebay and cover all your costs.

Looking forward to hearing how it works out.
249
Now that I've had every available PCB colour from the usual prototype services I thought that I'd write a short article giving what I consider to be the pros and cons of each one. It's all opinion of course and I've included very high res photographs that have been colour-corrected to help you make an informed choice for yourself.

Feel free to disagree, share your opinions and your own photos.
250
stm32plus C++ library / Version 3.6.0 released
January 04, 2015, 02:33:18 pm
stm32plus 3.6.0 has been released. This release brings the library up to speed with all the bug fixes and features introduced since 3.5.0. Click on the link to see a full list of changes.

This will probably be the last 3.x release before 4.0.0 that will feature USB device support on the F4.
251
General discussion / Forum font and size changes
December 27, 2014, 06:34:47 am
I was never really happy with the default Questrial font used throughout the forum so I've changed it to Open Sans which I find to be much more readable and matches the font used in my site's blog articles.

I've also increased the font size slightly to make it more readable. I don't know about you but I was finding the default size a little hard to read, particularly in the quoted text blocks.
252
I hope you all had a good Christmas and are looking forward to the 2015 new year celebrations! I've just published an article that I've had in development for a few months now. In this article I document the development and testing of a development board for the Micrel KSZ8091RNA RMII ethernet PHY.



The schematic and gerbers are all available for you to improve and adapt to your own project and I've included the necessary changes to get it working with the TCP/IP stack in stm32plus.
253
Quote from: badboy2 on December 16, 2014, 12:58:55 am
Do you have any idea about trouble ?
My config:
dual xeon x5650


Hi and welcome to the forum.

Do you have motherboard revision 001, 002 or 003? Let me summarise what we know so far about the different revisions and their compatibility with the Westmere (X56xx) CPUs. This information is gathered from this thread, my article and own experience and other threads on the HP forums.

001: No information yet but I assume it's the same as the 002 revision because the BIOS bootblock (the root cause of the issues) is the same as the 002.

002: Will not boot with X56xx CPUs unless the BIOS has been flashed to the latest revision. You will need to source an E55xx CPU to get it to boot once so you can flash the BIOS from a USB stick using the option in the BIOS setup. After flashing it will boot reliably with a single X56xx CPU. Dual CPU configurations are reputed to boot unreliably but are stable if you can get it to boot (see reports in this thread from Marco).

003: This is the one you want. It has the newer bootblock and will boot reliably with every CPU in HP's supported list.

In all scenarios I would only ever use a processor that is listed in the Z800 datasheet. Using a CPU that's not in the list runs the risk of it not POST-ing at all.
254
Quote from: Dieapy on December 09, 2014, 09:27:29 pm
I have been checking out my tower case measurements it would be tight with 2 to 3 centimetres all round but what’s is upsetting is the ram at the top end, pushes all the ports at the back towards the centre, meaning I would have to cut a longer hole to access them, you might say what’s the problem well the darn thing is still under warranty I only bought it last year, and im under order not to mess with it because they all use the server through Wi-Fi. Who’s the boss here I ask myself lol… I got caught taking these pic’s, never mind I’ll buy myself a even bigger case most likely Hewlett Packard with a 1110W PS. And if I do that I might just as well go the whole hog and be done with it. Thought you might like to view a few of the pic's I took so here they are. 


Which ports get pushed towards the centre? I don't quite understand that part. Do ensure that when you are making measurements that you do it with a PCIe card (any card) inserted into a slot and aligned to the side of the case where it must screw in because that's what determines where the motherboard will sit. I'm sure you did that, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

If you can get hold of the official HP case then that will solve a lot of problems instantly but of course you will then have to use their power supply and make do with their drive bay limitations (it seems like you have a lot of hard disks).
255
Quote from: Dieapy on December 08, 2014, 05:50:25 pm
Andy I am beginning to have my doubts about this 02 board already the more I read the less I like regarding the Sata and Sata NAS onboard ports not being up for the job of running my high end high speed hard drives is it capable of running the specs below I think not… maybe I should go for the 03 motherboard now before I start, im not sure which CPU would be best for the 03 but I really do need to use the onboard NAS capabilities for my hard drives, is there anything better than the 03 go on quote me the best in this motherboard range and let me build it.


None of the Z800 board revisions will support SATA drives above 2TB using the onboard SATA or SAS controllers. To support those very large drives of yours you would need to use an add-in card such as those sold by LSI or Adaptec; and you'd need to check their specs carefully to ensure that your 4TB drives will work.