All images and history of my dual xeon SR-2!

[shactheorb15]

A few months ago I saw an interesting listing on my area’s equivalent of craigslist. 

 

I decided screw it, it’s vague but it looks interesting. iirc I got it for either $50 or $60, and when i picked it up I realized it was huge. 

 

The seller was super nice and even gave me a DVI to HDMI adapter that’s actually been super useful. 
 

I got it home and managed to not pass out or hit any walls trying to cary it in by myself, and couldn’t wait to open it up. I was very happy when I saw the insides

 

 

Immediately I could see massive noctua coolers, and the biggest motherboard I’ve ever seen. I was expecting an old server board project someone was done with, which would’ve been cool on its own, but this was so damn cool.

 

Everything was in great condition, almost no dust. I took the gtx 480 out and cleaned it and it was basically perfect.

 

I replaced it with a spare gtx 970 so it would be more compatible and performant while drawing less power.

 

I more recently took it apart a bit to replace the CPUs and memory. The CPUs are cheap (got two x5687s for $20) and the ECC ddr3 memory was similarly priced ($35 for 80gb). I’m a dumbass and couldn’t figure out how to take the coolers off, and ended up taking the motherboard out to access the backplate, which was super unnecessary.

 

 

I also took some pictures to make sure the cables were all plugged back into the right slots, and realized one of the cables was for PCIe power which was necessary for SLI. I had my suspicions that there was once a pretty hefty SLI setup in here, but this was decent confirmation.

 

Anyways I’ve had a lot of fun with this build and can’t wait to do more. Any suggestions for upgrades or experiments are welcome, as are questions.

 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, shactheorb15 said:

A few months ago I saw an interesting listing on my area’s equivalent of craigslist. 

 

I decided screw it, it’s vague but it looks interesting. iirc I got it for either $50 or $60, and when i picked it up I realized it was huge. 

 

The seller was super nice and even gave me a DVI to HDMI adapter that’s actually been super useful. 
 

I got it home and managed to not pass out or hit any walls trying to cary it in by myself, and couldn’t wait to open it up. I was very happy when I saw the insides

 

 

Immediately I could see massive noctua coolers, and the biggest motherboard I’ve ever seen. I was expecting an old server board project someone was done with, which would’ve been cool on its own, but this was so damn cool.

 

Everything was in great condition, almost no dust. I took the gtx 480 out and cleaned it and it was basically perfect.

 

I replaced it with a spare gtx 970 so it would be more compatible and performant while drawing less power.

 

I more recently took it apart a bit to replace the CPUs and memory. The CPUs are cheap (got two x5687s for $20) and the ECC ddr3 memory was similarly priced ($35 for 80gb). I’m a dumbass and couldn’t figure out how to take the coolers off, and ended up taking the motherboard out to access the backplate, which was super unnecessary.

 

 

I also took some pictures to make sure the cables were all plugged back into the right slots, and realized one of the cables was for PCIe power which was necessary for SLI. I had my suspicions that there was once a pretty hefty SLI setup in here, but this was decent confirmation.

 

Anyways I’ve had a lot of fun with this build and can’t wait to do more. Any suggestions for upgrades or experiments are welcome, as are questions.

 

Well it’s 16/32 with lots of memory now.  VM madness comes to mind.  Throw a bunch of el crappo single slot GPUs in there and fold with it.  Or just fold with the cpu(s)  16/32 is 16/32. Could be a monster for that
 

the size is unsurprising btw.  It’s a full height tower.  Probably an eatx board.  Neither of those are made much anymore.  They still happen though.  Full height towers are coveted for their custom loop capacity,  but the innards of this thing are in such good shape.  Perhaps wait till wi10 dies before ripping them out.  I dunno.  That PSU is possibly waaaay past bingo though. Might do to take a look at that and maybe swap it out if you want to throw a bit of money at the machine.  You made money btw even if all that is left at the end is the case.

[shactheorb15]

21 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Well it’s 16/32 with lots of memory now.  VM madness comes to mind.  Throw a bunch of el crappo single slot GPUs in there and fold with it.  Or just fold with the cpu(s)  16/32 is 16/32. Could be a monster for that
 

the size is unsurprising btw.  It’s a full height tower.  Probably an eatx board.  Neither of those are made much anymore.  They still happen though.  Full height towers are coveted for their custom loop capacity,  but the innards of this thing are in such good shape.  Perhaps wait till wi10 dies before ripping them out.  I dunno.  That PSU is possibly waaaay past bingo though. Might do to take a look at that and maybe swap it out if you want to throw a bit of money at the machine.  You made money btw even if all that is left at the end is the case.

The seller actually mislabled the CPUs, the originals were 4 cores 8 threads each and the new ones are the same with higher clock speeds

 

I've considered playing with telsa GPUs in this thing just to try it out

 

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, shactheorb15 said:

The seller actually mislabled the CPUs, the originals were 4 cores 8 threads each and the new ones are the same with higher clock speeds

 

I've considered playing with telsa GPUs in this thing just to try it out

 

Yeah that hit me in the shower.  Don’t know what was wrong with me there. Still, it might beat a 1700

[Damascus]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

the size is unsurprising btw.  It’s a full height tower.  Probably an eatx board.  Neither of those are made much anymore.

More than just E-ATX, the SR-2 is a monster HPTX board iirc.  Top left in the bottom image is one of it’s successors.

[Damascus]

4 hours ago, shactheorb15 said:

I’m a dumbass and couldn’t figure out how to take the coolers off, and ended up taking the motherboard out to access the backplate, which was super unnecessary.

Take the fans off, then you can easily access the mounting screws with a Philips screwdriver.

 

You got an absolute steal with this thing!

[Zando_]

8 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Top left in the bottom image is one of it’s successors.

Mean the ill-fated SR-X, IIRC Intel killed off OCing on 2011 Xeons shortly before they released, so EVGA had this all ready to go and it just became an overly expensive server board with no IPMI or anything, so therefore didn't sell well at all. 

7 minutes ago, Damascus said:

You got an absolute steal with this thing!

^^ Incredibly so, mine was around $475 IIRC, the cheapest I've seen working ones go for was $250, my broken one was $99. 

 

That case looks really wonderful as well, I like having 5.25" slots available, and cases that fit HPTX are rare, especially nowadays (there's one recent case that does, an Anidees model on Amazon that flits in and out of availability IIRC). 

[shactheorb15]

10 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Take the fans off, then you can easily access the mounting screws with a Philips screwdriver.

 

You got an absolute steal with this thing!

That's what I ended up doing, luckily it wasn't too much of an issue to put it back

 

[shactheorb15]

25 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Mean the ill-fated SR-X, IIRC Intel killed off OCing on 2011 Xeons shortly before they released, so EVGA had this all ready to go and it just became an overly expensive server board with no IPMI or anything, so therefore didn't sell well at all. 

^^ Incredibly so, mine was around $475 IIRC, the cheapest I've seen working ones go for was $250, my broken one was $99. 

 

That case looks really wonderful as well, I like having 5.25" slots available, and cases that fit HPTX are rare, especially nowadays (there's one recent case that does, an Anidees model on Amazon that flits in and out of availability IIRC). 

oh yeah the case has actually been great. It's the Lian Li PC-P80, I like the minimal exterior but a part of me wishes it was the garish red version with the giant spider cuttout

 

 https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811112159

 

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811112174

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, shactheorb15 said:

oh yeah the case has actually been great. It's the Lian Li PC-P80

Oooh nice, Lian Li means the OG Owner likely paid through the nose for it, but it's also built incredibly well. 

1 minute ago, shactheorb15 said:

I like the minimal exterior but a part of me wishes it was the garish red version with the giant spider cuttout

Yeah the red one probably would match better, and it being over the top matches the theme of the SR-2. 

[shactheorb15]

On 9/22/2022 at 3:37 PM, Zando_ said:

Oooh nice, Lian Li means the OG Owner likely paid through the nose for it, but it's also built incredibly well. 

Yeah the red one probably would match better, and it being over the top matches the theme of the SR-2. 

Just found an AVA direct sticker on the front, which is likely the computer builder that sold it. Looking at their website now this is the closest thing I can find https://www.avadirect.com/custom-pc-showcase/Lian-Li-Armorsuit-PC-P80-Black-Case-EVGA-Classified-SR-2-Super-Record-2-Intel-2-x-Xeon-X5680-Kingston-24GB-6-x-4GB-DDR3-1600-EVGA-GeForce-GTX/8102409

[RollinLower]

aah the SR-2, what a terrible beast it was for it's time. Very sad to see this kind of high performance computing is no longer being done. 

if you keep everything looking nice and tidy tese SR-2's can fetch a nice price with collectors too!