HEADCASE - Intel Skulltrail, 8 Cores Before It Was Cool

[YellowDragon]

So everyone has been hyped up about the new X99 Haswell platform that is due for release soon, everyone wants an 8 Core desktop from Intel and everyone is waiting. So I thought i would take the time to take a trip down memory lane and share an older platform that went under the codename "Skulltrail". The platform was originally launched in 2008 and  was slated towards the ultra-enthusiast and the goal of this platform was simple, bring multi socket desktop mainboards to consumers.  Intel launched the Skulltrail platform on Feburary 19,2008 the main selling point of the Skulltrail  platform was  its  ability to bring  an 8  core CPU platform to enthusiasts and blend it together with more commercial features  such as ECC Ram support and the ability to do 4 way Crossfire or SLI  (which  there were only one or two boards on the  market  capable of doing this). The standard spec of the Skulltrail  platform consisted of 2 Core 2 Extreme QX 9775, these processors are commonly confused with  the QX 9770 processors  that appeared on the LGA 775 platform, however these chips were specially made for the  Skulltrail platform, Today it is a dream to  run  two extreme editions on one board, the  Skulltrail  platform allowed two Core 2 Duo Chips with  unlocked  multipliers  work on the same  board much like Xeons.  This feature has  not been seen since in modern day platforms.

Above: A photo of a DX5400 Seaburg Chipset Skulltrail  platform

 

To put it simply Skulltrail leveled any other motherboard/ Cpu platform out there,  it  was an extreme outlier on  all  benchmark graphs,  however it had  an  Achilles heel the platform  made use of FB Dimms instead of DDR3 which  was just rolling off the  production line, this choice handicapped the Skulltrail platform as there was too little memory bandwidth at too slow a speed to compete with standard one socket desktop boards, couple this with the fact that there were almost no multi-threaded apps back then and you have  a  platform that only ever ran at  half its  overall potential. There was also  the problem of price. A brand new  Skulltrail platform  was stratospheric  in costs , Each CPU costed $1600, The motherboard which  was  a unique Intel only design would set you back another $600 and finally the Ram which was specialized server Ram  would  set you back another $200-300, You would have close to a $5000 computer without even touching the storage or graphics cards. Couple this with the blunder that it was mostly marketed towards gamers (ahem similar to Titan Z)  it became a really oddball  platform that was interested but  didn't fit anywhere in the  market.

 

Put simply the Skulltrail platform was  far,  far  ahead of its time and because of that the platform failed to appeal to a large market,only today are we seeing the benefit of 6+ cores in gaming and were are just starting to see 8  core chips  enter the consumer market.  Right now  software is still playing  catch-up  to  multi-core chips and  this was a  platform that hoped apps would be threaded properly, however that never  came  to  pass and  the  Skulltrail platform faded out  of  existence and  relevance. Intel has never revisited the Skulltrail concept and  likely never will in  the  consumer market.

 

 

 

Though today I  have something  special to  share with  you all, 3 weeks ago I  got a   call  from  one  of my friends that moved  out to California after highschool  and  got a  job in  IT. He was calling me about a Skulltrail platform that he  recently took out of service for a small marketing firm. He told me he was sent in to do a system replace for the firm and they were buying completely new systems from the ground up, he managed to salvage an entire Skulltrail platform from a server rack that was used as an emergency backup. Thats right  this high end enthusiast style platform was being  used as a backup server. When he questioned the owner about it he said the  previous  company that handled the first system install  told them they needed a high  end  system like Skulltrail  to handle 3-4 VMs in case of  an  emergency. Needless to say he was dumbfounded  and  so  was  I after I  heard the story. That previous  company must have been some  hella good marketers to sell  a  small  company an entirely overkill  platform for a back-up  machine.The  system was  rarely powered on  and the  CPUs were never overclocked  apparently. He offered  to sell me the kit for $350 as he had no use for it, I accepted  and he shipped it out.

 

I received  the package today and I  can honestly say I am  shocked, there  was no  dust to be  found on the  board, it honestly looked like  it was just taken out of the packaging. I originally wanted to build a  small server with the money that I  spent, however the kit was too good of a  price to pass up, since I had enough spare parts lying  around the kit seemed to be the right idea. I had some old Raptor hard drives from my very first PC build that still worked flawlessly, I also had a EVGA NEX Supernova 1500w PSU that was leftover from my Quadfire 7970 rig, then I had  a HAF X case and a HAF XB case lying around from swapping cases for clients and my  own  builds. So for  $350 I got  an  entirely  working dual  socket CPU platform...a  complete steal.

 

Now  to make  this a  bit unique I going  to try to cram the following specs into a HAF XB  Cube Case, I figure with some light modding I can get the board and all the parts to fit.

 

 

Motherboard: Intel  Skulltrail D5400XS

CPU: 2X  QX 9775 Core 2 Extreme 3.20Ghz

CPU Coolers: Dynatron 2U Socket 771 Coolers

RAM: 4x4Gb Micron DDR2  FB-Dimms ECC 667Mhz (16Gb Total)

PSU: EVGA NEX  SUPERNOVA 1500W

HDD: 2x 36GB WD Raptor 10k drives

GPU: Radeon HD 5770  MSI Hawk Edition

OS: Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter

 

CASE: Cooler  Master HAF XB

 

Heres some Starter pics:

 

The board and all its glory:

 

 

A quick testbench to make sure everything works:

 

The Box that its all going in (hopefully):

 

Stay Tuned

[WinNut]

much beautiful...

 

subbed

[austin541]

im so glad you bought the skulltrail, and are doing a build log with it.

[Bagmup]

Oh yeah subbed

[iAfroMan]

I live for these kind of builds. A board this epic needs a bigger case, don't you think??

[ERSCreeper]

I cringe at that case because I have one. The build on the other hand is going to be awesome.

[Giancarlo124]

Sweet. Cant wait to see more.

[Tearass]

I'm against Cooler Master for cases...

 

Can't wait though, this'll be interesting.

[The_Strict_Nein]

My ... God. Subbed. I needed some new ... material

[YellowDragon]

Well I have good news and i have bad news. I will start with the good news, everything runs and purrs like a kitten, the RAM being FB DImms gave me quite a scare as they kept getting insanely hot, I actually had to invest on a ram cooler to get them out of the 95C danger zone. the bad news is the HAF XB just is not going to cut it, part of the frame gets in the way and the board sags quite a bit without the proper standoffs, I tried using some nylon washers and still couldn't get the board to sit flush. i had to resort to plan B.

plan B  being use the extra HAF X full tower that I had sitting in my basement as it accepts HPTX sized boards out of the box, plus i figured some extra cooling would help as the RAM ran unusually hot and the heatsinks need quite a bit of airflow going over them since they are based off the old Seaburg chipset.

 

Yes this board makes even the HAF X interior look cramped:

 

Cable Mess, i brought the NEX out of retirement, I decided I didnt want to  risk this board to an old Rocketfish 700W I had sitting around.

 

The HDDS, I decided on using these raptors as they were also just collecting dust, that in the fact these mechanicals  are almost immortal, they each only have a single platter and only have one tiny read and write head, there is not much that can  go wrong with them:

 

Cleaned up the cables:

 

added a RAM cooler:

 

Some finished shots:

 

 

Right next to the GMC R4 case that everyone on LTT just loves

[YellowDragon]

Geekbench3:http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/586409

CPU mark From Performance Test 8.0 (Passmark) : 8547

 

This score would put it on par with an FX 8350

[Bagmup]

Awesome to see cool old hardware get a second life.

[Jumper118]

do you still have this? its very cool