ArcTek

Hey I've been looking at a replacement board that can Take my two Xeon X5660's. So far the X8DTH-6F sticks out as a nice solution, However I'm a bit confused by the term "7 (x8) PCI-E 2.0 ( in x16 slot)" Does this mean that cards in the slot will operate at PCI-E 2.0 x8 speeds or x16? If this is a x8 lane, would there be any bandwidth loss or issues running an Nvidia GTX 960 4GB? Original Source: X8DTH-6F Specs and Details

The Z800 motherboard, which is planned for use requires case adaption Source: Andy Brown That is correct, there has been a pinn adaption for HP power supplies in a way to keep their boards exclusive to their product range.

Hi Samcool55 The HP Z800 motherboard is a 1366 board and supports both the x5600. The power supply I have should be more than ample to take the Motherboard and other components as it is a 1KW / 1000W PSU reducing the risk of a blow, I'll also use a surge protector for this system. If you're talking about the adaption to the power supply possibly causing a blow risk, there are adaption cables available to convert the HP power input from a standard PSU. I've found an ATX 24P to 18P 10P with cpu 8pin power cable adapter for the Z800 Motherboard, This would save me doing the tricky wire job. The PSU in the HP Z600 is designed to sot exclusively within a Z600 case, the Z600 case itself is a hard drive bottleneck and only allows x2 3.5" Hard drives to fit within the case. I currently have 4 HDD and 2 SSD for the upgrade.

Hello everyone This is my first post here on Linus, My Apologies if this is the wrong section for posting this type of build in, Its a mix between a repair and a planned build / workaround rebuild. I've got a fair bit of knowledge in building desktop systems and have only recently decided to play about with workstation/server equipment.Any assistance / tips / help would be greatly appreciated. About the build / Situation _______________________________________________________________________________________________ The Plan Though being the harder option, I have chosen to make an upgrade on the Xeon workstation. To do this I will be using parts from both systems but also acquiring a few used components to build a revitalized PC. Revitalized Build Specs OS | Windows 7 / Windows 10 "Boo me if you wish" Motherboard | HP Z800 Motherboard [ PCB Rev 1.02 | 460838-003 ] " For Dual X5600 Series support " CPU | x2 Xeon X5660 [ Workstation Component ] " Planning on adding new quieter 1366 coolers " Ram | Samsung 48GB ECC 10600 / 1333mhz DDR3 [ Workstation Component ] GPU | Gigabyte GTX 960 4GB [ Workstation Component ] SSD | x2 250GB Samsung Evo 850 [ Gaming PC Component ] HDD | x3 1TB + X1 2TB WD Caviar Green [ Gaming PC Component ] PSU | 1KW Cooler Master [ Gaming PC Component ] Case | TBA a quiet but well cooled E-ATX Planned Adaptions / HaX To get the system rebuilt and upgraded I've been doing a little research. Motherboard Power After digging around and researching I came across a hack build of the Z800 motherboard from http://andybrown.me.uk/2014/11/01/z800/ Reading into Andy's workshop I found that HP where evil enough to swap around some of the power pins for the PSU of the board so you had to buy their exclusive products, meaning my 1KW PSU is not compatible with the board. Although from what I have read I could either build my own cable "which I have little to no experience with doing" or get an adapter cable. Motherboard Mounting An HPTX Format case has been suggested from research to hold this motherboard, I could try and use the HAF X for this build, But I plan to get a new case with sound cancellation or reduction. To fit the motherboard into the case there will have to be a slight modification of the mounting holes to support the motherboard. SSD Support With only sata II available I was considering a PCI-E sata III controller to take advantage of the samsung SSD's speeds leaving any sata II ports open for the 5TB of HDD's USB 3.0 Support The motherboard only supports USB 2.0, Luckily its an easy and cheap upgrade with PCI USB 3.0 card. Progress TBA System Usage Work & Business Gaming Game and web servers Learning VM's