I would appreciate some help finding a new dual socket board and case

[NoxiousOdor]

8 minutes ago, crzyces said:

That Lego builder is awesome. I need to reinstall autocad on one of my pc's. I have an old version a friend sent me as his "Back up" copy (it is an old business license for up to 30 pc's installed and he only uses it on 10 at work, and 3 at his residence I believe), so technically, it is legal.

 

I used it a little, but it was a bit much for what I needed (basic case designs, tree house for the kid, that kind of thing where a sketch pad and a pencil work just fine ;^) . So I kinda gave up w/the steep learning curve and all. Kinda like me wasting 75 hours of my life learning 3d  Studio Max for "Fun". I made some neat chess pieces faster than I could with a free POV Ray renderer, but I'm not super into making in depth graphic mods for games, when there are so many people who are more skilled, have the time, and already do it, then give it away for free (well I think registering at the Nexus let's you DL files over 2 gigabytes and rated M+, so it really costs about $3 usd for a lifetime of free mods to just about every game you can think of. Cool for older games where they remake them in high res, or games where you just want better looking hair, clothes, weapons, faces, bodies, whatever).

Nexus is great for mods, I agree that it is worth it to just get mods for free when someone else is going to do it better than me with less effort. Unless I already know how to use the programs then I could see making mods, but I don't know how to use them and it isn't really worth the time to learn when I'm already happy with what other people have made.

 

I found a potential board for my computer what do you think of this?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DTi-F.cfm

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TESTED-Super-Micro-X8DTI-F-Motherboard-with-I-O-Shield-and-Heatsinks-LGA1366-/262877625097?hash=item3d34ba3b09:g:G94AAOSw0QFXBp3-

[crzyces]

7 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

Nexus is great for mods, I agree that it is worth it to just get mods for free when someone else is going to do it better than me with less effort. Unless I already know how to use the programs then I could see making mods, but I don't know how to use them and it isn't really worth the time to learn when I'm already happy with what other people have made.

 

I found a potential board for my computer what do you think of this?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DTi-F.cfm

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TESTED-Super-Micro-X8DTI-F-Motherboard-with-I-O-Shield-and-Heatsinks-LGA1366-/262877625097?hash=item3d34ba3b09:g:G94AAOSw0QFXBp3-

I like the board, I like the included heatsinks as you can add top fans to both, which will probably cool better than the ones you have (The larger heat sink on the top left of the first pic sells for about $45 usd used by itself.

 

Now the problem. The Ram slots are so close to the cpu slot. That awesome heat sink is blocking the first two RAM slots, so you may have to scrap it (each cpu needs it's own RAM). Will your coolers fit without covering those RAM slots (The one at the top left?). Another issue. No SATA 3 (Which is not a huge deal as you can stick an ssd in a x4 or x8 slot), and no USB 3.0 support, which those boards should have.

 

I like the board, but it has 2 small detractors in the cpu/RAM spacing and the lack of SATA 3.0 or m.2, and one biggie in the USB 2.0, which I am 99% sure you will notice within a year when picking out peripherals. Not huge detractions by any means, but things you should be aware of before hand.

[crzyces]

31 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

Nexus is great for mods, I agree that it is worth it to just get mods for free when someone else is going to do it better than me with less effort. Unless I already know how to use the programs then I could see making mods, but I don't know how to use them and it isn't really worth the time to learn when I'm already happy with what other people have made.

 

I found a potential board for my computer what do you think of this?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DTi-F.cfm

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TESTED-Super-Micro-X8DTI-F-Motherboard-with-I-O-Shield-and-Heatsinks-LGA1366-/262877625097?hash=item3d34ba3b09:g:G94AAOSw0QFXBp3-

After looking for dual socket USB 3.0 boards, it's not worth it right now, as the price jumps into the high $200 range. What the heck. Single socket ones are inexpensive, but who wants a 1 slot Xeon board? Kinda defeats the purpose.

[NoxiousOdor]

15 minutes ago, crzyces said:

That awesome heat sink is blocking the first two RAM slots, so you may have to scrap it (each cpu needs it's own RAM). Will your coolers fit without covering those RAM slots (The one at the top left?). Another issue. No SATA 3 (Which is not a huge deal as you can stick an ssd in a x4 or x8 slot), and no USB 3.0 support, which those boards should have.

 

I like the board, but it has 2 small detractors in the cpu/RAM spacing and the lack of SATA 3.0 or m.2, and one biggie in the USB 2.0, which I am 99% sure you will notice within a year when picking out peripherals. Not huge detractions by any means, but things you should be aware of before hand.

The two ram slots that it looks like it is covering I am pretty sure is just because of the angle the picture is taken. I think if was taken squarely from the top it would look just like the spacing between the dimms and the heatsink on the right there is a small gap. If not though the heatsinks that I have would totally fit they have quite a bit of room for ram clearance.

 

How much would I notice the lack of sata 3? Is it a noticeable difference, if so I could get a pcie ssd but I have heard that many boards do not support booting to those slots which would suck a little but at least I could have fast storage. I just thought of this but I could probably find a USB 3.0 PCIe adapter I bet that is a thing I could look into that.

 

I do like how the heatsinks are short which would be awesome because I could cut the size of the case down a bit

[crzyces]

5 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

The two ram slots that it looks like it is covering I am pretty sure is just because of the angle the picture is taken. I think if was taken squarely from the top it would look just like the spacing between the dimms and the heatsink on the right there is a small gap. If not though the heatsinks that I have would totally fit they have quite a bit of room for ram clearance.

 

How much would I notice the lack of sata 3? Is it a noticeable difference, if so I could get a pcie ssd but I have heard that many boards do not support booting to those slots which would suck a little but at least I could have fast storage. I just thought of this but I could probably find a USB 3.0 PCIe adapter I bet that is a thing I could look into that.

 

I do like how the heatsinks are short which would be awesome because I could cut the size of the case down a bit

You can always plug an ssd into a sata 2.0, it just won't be as fast. Still faster than a typical SATA drive (SATA 2.0 drives say 3/Gbs but irl it's more like 1.5Gbs at best). Another thing that is concerning me with this board; I cannot determine if it is an X99 or not (I want to make sure it supports Win 10 64, 64 bit Linux etc, as there are a bunch of potential Xeon board compatibility issues. I think it's an X99 or X97, but am not positive. Worst case scenario is you get stuck with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, which I think is a better OS anyway. You'll just have to keep up with your drivers and security yourself (which is the way to go anyway).

 

Glad to hear about the heatsinks. Even better spaced boards with the same specs, from super micro, just larger in physical size, were running about twice as much $ to the $215 range. Nothing but more spacing (I haveto admit, seeing 10 extra heatsinks added did look pretty cool though).

[NoxiousOdor]

14 minutes ago, crzyces said:

I want to make sure it supports Win 10 64, 64 bit Linux etc, as there are a bunch of potential Xeon board compatibility issues. I think it's an X99 or X97, but am not positive. Worst case scenario is you get stuck with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, which I think is a better OS anyway.

I hadn't considered this, is this a real potential issue? I already have a Win 10 Pro key I was thinking of using it would be a waste to not be able to use it.

 

Those bigger boards are awesome but yeah they are just so expensive I don't really see why especially with it being as old of a socket as it is.

[crzyces]

7 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

I hadn't considered this, is this a real potential issue? I already have a Win 10 Pro key I was thinking of using it would be a waste to not be able to use it.

 

Those bigger boards are awesome but yeah they are just so expensive I don't really see why especially with it being as old of a socket as it is.

It's not supposed to be anymore (I mildly stress not supposed to be), but there are still a few RARE cases on LGA chipsets. They seem to have worked out the newer (old but not OLD) 1366, and I can't find any problems with the x5650 (I've never had any) or 5690. Still a bunch on LGA 775, but I'm prolly stressing about nothing. If I had no issues, and the latest real issue I can find was 3 years ago, I'm relatively sure they have it debugged now.

[crzyces]

1 minute ago, crzyces said:

It's not supposed to be anymore (I mildly stress not supposed to be), but there are still a few RARE cases on LGA chipsets. They seem to have worked out the newer (old but not OLD) 1366, and I can't find any problems with the x5650 (I've never had any) or 5690. Still a bunch on LGA 775, but I'm prolly stressing about nothing. If I had no issues, and the latest real issue I can find was 3 years ago, I'm relatively sure they have it debugged now.

Funny how after XP, doing any extra things seem overwhelming at first glance (not actually doing it, just thinking about it). People seem to forget how many things had to be installed on your own with Windows 98, or 95, or *gasp* Windows 3.1! Shoot, if you could not code in dos it would take 2 or 3 days to get into windows, never mind optimized with the correct drivers.

[crzyces]

1 hour ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

How much would I notice the lack of sata 3? Is it a noticeable difference, if so I could get a pcie ssd but I have heard that many boards do not support booting to those slots which would suck a little but at least I could have fast storage. I just thought of this but I could probably find a USB 3.0 PCIe adapter I bet that is a thing I could look into that.

I don't know about the latter, but just did a little research, and a PCie 2.0 x4 slot will handle any ssd currently on the market (ei. the ssd will bottleneck the PCie 2.0 x 4) and you can definitely use them as your boot device. 110% positive.

[NoxiousOdor]

2 hours ago, crzyces said:

It's not supposed to be anymore (I mildly stress not supposed to be), but there are still a few RARE cases on LGA chipsets. They seem to have worked out the newer (old but not OLD) 1366, and I can't find any problems with the x5650 (I've never had any) or 5690. Still a bunch on LGA 775, but I'm prolly stressing about nothing. If I had no issues, and the latest real issue I can find was 3 years ago, I'm relatively sure they have it debugged now.

Oh okay I can see why it would be something to be mindful of. I think I will risk it because if it works then that is great but if it won't work I will most likely find out before I ever put my product key.

[NoxiousOdor]

2 hours ago, crzyces said:

Funny how after XP, doing any extra things seem overwhelming at first glance (not actually doing it, just thinking about it). People seem to forget how many things had to be installed on your own with Windows 98, or 95, or *gasp* Windows 3.1! Shoot, if you could not code in dos it would take 2 or 3 days to get into windows, never mind optimized with the correct drivers.

That is exactly how I felt when I tried linux. I knew nothing about it and I didn't know how to code at all and I felt so lost. I knew it could be really cool if you knew what you were doing but I didn't know where to start. Looking back now linux isn't so scary especially with there being so much info on the internet it is really simple to solve most common problems I'm sure.

[NoxiousOdor]

2 hours ago, crzyces said:

I don't know about the latter, but just did a little research, and a PCie 2.0 x4 slot will handle any ssd currently on the market (ei. the ssd will bottleneck the PCie 2.0 x 4) and you can definitely use them as your boot device. 110% positive.

I did a little looking and I found these:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Description=usb 3.0 pci card&Submit=ENE

Which is good to know if I need them. I probably will end up getting something similar because I doubt that 2 usb 2.0 ports is goign to be enough.

 

That is really good to know about the ssd I might look into that I don't know how expensive they are but if I can get something for not too much then that could be a worth while performance investment. Like I said with installing windows with the motherboard compatibility, if it doesn't work for whatever reason I am sure I will find out before it becomes an issue.

[crzyces]

2 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

I did a little looking and I found these:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Description=usb 3.0 pci card&Submit=ENE

Which is good to know if I need them. I probably will end up getting something similar because I doubt that 2 usb 2.0 ports is goign to be enough.

 

That is really good to know about the ssd I might look into that I don't know how expensive they are but if I can get something for not too much then that could be a worth while performance investment. Like I said with installing windows with the motherboard compatibility, if it doesn't work for whatever reason I am sure I will find out before it becomes an issue.

That USB thing is awesome. I'm an idiot, as I was just looking at something similar a couple days ago. I wanted some 3.0 ports and a thunderbolt port in a front bay, so I needed an internal one, and low and behold, there they were on Newegg and Amazon. I needed the USB (Like you) and wanted the thunderbolt. They definitely had to be in front, inside my case as well. It would have screwed up my design otherwise. Plus, it looks cool.

 

As for PCIe ssd pricing, a 128 is around $100, a 256 around $165. A little more experience, but convenient if you don't have an m.2, and faster than an ssd on sata 3.0. Like I said, the PCIe actually bottlenecks the fastest SSD.

 

I was also thinking about tossing one of those $40 optane drives on my sata, as from Linus' review, and some research, they more than quintuple the speed of a normal sata. So if my sata reads/writes at 1.5, sata 2 caps @ 3, well doubling the speed for 40 bucks seems worth it *if* there are no surprises before the summer (Like the dishwasher breaking, the dog needing to go to the vet, the lawnmower crapping the bed...you know, real life!). It'll be nice to have access to money again and not live week to week.

[NoxiousOdor]

4 minutes ago, crzyces said:

That USB thing is awesome. I'm an idiot, as I was just looking at something similar a couple days ago. I wanted some 3.0 ports and a thunderbolt port in a front bay, so I needed an internal one, and low and behold, there they were on Newegg and Amazon. I needed the USB (Like you) and wanted the thunderbolt. They definitely had to be in front, inside my case as well. It would have screwed up my design otherwise. Plus, it looks cool.

 

As for PCIe ssd pricing, a 128 is around $100, a 256 around $165. A little more experience, but convenient if you don't have an m.2, and faster than an ssd on sata 3.0. Like I said, the PCIe actually bottlenecks the fastest SSD.

 

I was also thinking about tossing one of those $40 optane drives on my sata, as from Linus' review, and some research, they more than quintuple the speed of a normal sata. So if my sata reads/writes at 1.5, sata 2 caps @ 3, well doubling the speed for 40 bucks seems worth it *if* there are no surprises before the summer (Like the dishwasher breaking, the dog needing to go to the vet, the lawnmower crapping the bed...you know, real life!). It'll be nice to have access to money again and not live week to week.

Haha well there they are! I didn't realize until now that they almost all require power like sata or similar. Not that that really makes a difference but this is the first time I noticed. And you say that you have one on the front of your case? do you have all of the IO on the front?

 

$100-200 isn't too bad for something as fast as those are, I could look into that. Before I get one though I will have to do some research and see if there is anything I will be doing that will even maximize the speed of the drives that I currently have. While they and the optane drives are super cool, I feel the living week to week situation (I hate it when my lawnmower craps the bed). Thankfully most of my issues when I run out of money are self inflicted because I am not always responsible with the money I have (I am getting better though!) It will really help once I have the computer finished. If I finish it soon it will be just in time to save for a better monitor and for a trip that I am hoping to take in august

[crzyces]

2 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

Haha well there they are! I didn't realize until now that they almost all require power like sata or similar. Not that that really makes a difference but this is the first time I noticed. And you say that you have one on the front of your case? do you have all of the IO on the front?

 

$100-200 isn't too bad for something as fast as those are, I could look into that. Before I get one though I will have to do some research and see if there is anything I will be doing that will even maximize the speed of the drives that I currently have. While they and the optane drives are super cool, I feel the living week to week situation (I hate it when my lawnmower craps the bed). Thankfully most of my issues when I run out of money are self inflicted because I am not always responsible with the money I have (I am getting better though!) It will really help once I have the computer finished. If I finish it soon it will be just in time to save for a better monitor and for a trip that I am hoping to take in august

"And you say that you have one on the front of your case? do you have all of the IO on the front?"

No, I needed one for a build as it didn't have thunderbolt or USB 3.0.. I kept find external ones, and I'm thinking to myself, yeah, this helps, plug a 3.0 usb/tb into a rear usb 2.0? Then it occurred to me "Stupid, look for eide ones. That's when I stumbled across them. I'll most likely be getting either a 4 front usb 3.0 w/ a TB or a 6 USB 3.0. They are both the same price anyway (I think they were about $30 bucks, plug into a PCIe x, PCIe x2, PCIe x4, and PCIe x8. As you know, those Xeon boards tend to have a bunch of PCIe slots, along with 10 bleepin USB 2.0 headers. Who needs that many USB headers? Make for an easy wired circle Lan party I guess. Who needs wifi, I have 10 usb ports! Everyone tripping when they have to use the bathroom or grab a beer. The dog trapped in a spiderweb of wires...Good fun!

 

As for that Linux coding you mentioned earlier, I don't really have much use for it. When I network small businesses they usually use Windows server, and the home network is normally, well they don't need a main hub, they just want to be able to talk to each other, see the printer etc.. I'd probably have to have a tablet with walkthroughs on the screen if someone wanted me to set up a Linux OS right now. Ahh well, I'm sure at some point it will come up and I'll need to actually LEARN it. Getting the basics, then only using it every 3 or 4 years, well it makes it tough to retain. Lol, I hate saying "Yeah, I am ignorant about that" when I feel, given how I make a living and how much time I am on a computer, it should be a major part of my skill set.

[NoxiousOdor]

15 hours ago, crzyces said:

"And you say that you have one on the front of your case? do you have all of the IO on the front?"

No, I needed one for a build as it didn't have thunderbolt or USB 3.0.. I kept find external ones, and I'm thinking to myself, yeah, this helps, plug a 3.0 usb/tb into a rear usb 2.0? Then it occurred to me "Stupid, look for eide ones. That's when I stumbled across them. I'll most likely be getting either a 4 front usb 3.0 w/ a TB or a 6 USB 3.0. They are both the same price anyway (I think they were about $30 bucks, plug into a PCIe x, PCIe x2, PCIe x4, and PCIe x8. As you know, those Xeon boards tend to have a bunch of PCIe slots, along with 10 bleepin USB 2.0 headers. Who needs that many USB headers? Make for an easy wired circle Lan party I guess. Who needs wifi, I have 10 usb ports! Everyone tripping when they have to use the bathroom or grab a beer. The dog trapped in a spiderweb of wires...Good fun!

 

As for that Linux coding you mentioned earlier, I don't really have much use for it. When I network small businesses they usually use Windows server, and the home network is normally, well they don't need a main hub, they just want to be able to talk to each other, see the printer etc.. I'd probably have to have a tablet with walkthroughs on the screen if someone wanted me to set up a Linux OS right now. Ahh well, I'm sure at some point it will come up and I'll need to actually LEARN it. Getting the basics, then only using it every 3 or 4 years, well it makes it tough to retain. Lol, I hate saying "Yeah, I am ignorant about that" when I feel, given how I make a living and how much time I am on a computer, it should be a major part of my skill set.

Oh I see okay that makes more sense. I was thinking it would be a little strange to have all of the io on the front. I like that imagery of the usb cables haha. I noticed on my current workstation that is has 6 or 8 usb ports on the back. I can't think of a single use for that many ports unless you had a ton of thumb drives to plug in but if that is what it was indended for then why are they on the back of a 70+ pound machine? I feel like someone didn't think through the practicality of it very well.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about not knowing linux all that well. I feel like the people who generally prefer it aren't going to need help with it or if they do it will be for something so specific that it wouldn't be covered under "general knowledge" anyway. I might be 100% wrong though I don't feel qualified to speak for linux users as I have never effectively used linux for anything and if I did I would need a lot of help.

[NoxiousOdor]

@crzyces I just bought the motherboard, I'm pretty excited.

[crzyces]

56 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

Oh I see okay that makes more sense. I was thinking it would be a little strange to have all of the io on the front. I like that imagery of the usb cables haha. I noticed on my current workstation that is has 6 or 8 usb ports on the back. I can't think of a single use for that many ports unless you had a ton of thumb drives to plug in but if that is what it was indended for then why are they on the back of a 70+ pound machine? I feel like someone didn't think through the practicality of it very well.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about not knowing linux all that well. I feel like the people who generally prefer it aren't going to need help with it or if they do it will be for something so specific that it wouldn't be covered under "general knowledge" anyway. I might be 100% wrong though I don't feel qualified to speak for linux users as I have never effectively used linux for anything and if I did I would need a lot of help.

I did something really awful on lunch today. I had to go into Compnet to pick up a computer someone dropped off. It was a friend of the owner, all the benches were full,with about 30 waiting to go on. His "Buddy" lived about 3 miles from my house, so I said "I'll just take it. It'll be done tomorrow, and I'll just drop it at his house."

 

So I get back to my house around 12:30, 1 o'clock. I start the case, Dudes got 2 Titan XP's (The 3rd iteration that came out after the Ti's since the 1080 ti's were faster than a card people paid $1100 usd for). My Xeon system boots, but is in the basement specifically so I won't be tempted to play around with it until it is "done". Screw it. I throw the 1080 Titan in. The old 720p TV flickers to life, POSTS fine, goes into Windows, immediately asks for drivers. I dl the drivers for XP (Lol, that's what is installed, Win XP Pro 64). Blue screen. F*** stupid dumb. Err. Screw driver too pegs, starts to post again, gets to Windows, stops. OK, I switch the card out, figuring it is just too much to have two OC'd Xeon's in a board with a Titan, 3 hard drives, a card reader, and an optical bluray/dvd/rw on an old no name 700 watt psu that probably puts out an unsteady 550 watts.

 

Everything back to normal, but it seems, well wrong. I load up Fallout: New Vegas (The only game installed). Start futuremark. I'm running at 2.66GHz. Not good. I reboot, my profiles are all gone, and I can't get to a BLCK or multiplier option (The overclock settings). I am freaking out. I knew I had a custom BIOS that was modified for 1366 boards from supermicros 2011 boards. I had a copy on a DvD, and a website link the previous owner included. I can't find either (Maybe they are with my Windows 7 OEM disk, heh). So, now I have three options. Sell most board and processor, possibly the RAM as prices are through the roof right now, keep it at stock speeds, or buy an sr 2 board (They are about $450-$650) used. Well 3 options I guess, as I could buy a single cpu board, which all overclock for about $25, split the RAM, and make two systems I'm never going to use, then just sell those. This sucks. It's not like these are 5690's already clocked at 3.4 with a 3.8-3.9 turbo, these are 2.66 with a 2.99-3.0 turbo. I am so mad at myself right now.

 

Yay, post, Windows...

[NoxiousOdor]

10 minutes ago, crzyces said:

I did something really awful on lunch today. I had to go into Compnet to pick up a computer someone dropped off. It was a friend of the owner, all the benches were full,with about 30 waiting to go on. His "Buddy" lived about 3 miles from my house, so I said "I'll just take it. It'll be done tomorrow, and I'll just drop it at his house."

 

So I get back to my house around 12:30, 1 o'clock. I start the case, Dudes got 2 Titan XP's (The 3rd iteration that came out after the Ti's since the 1080 ti's were faster than a card people paid $1100 usd for). My Xeon system boots, but is in the basement specifically so I won't be tempted to play around with it until it is "done". Screw it. I throw the 1080 Titan in. The old 720p TV flickers to life, POSTS fine, goes into Windows, immediately asks for drivers. I dl the drivers for XP (Lol, that's what is installed, Win XP Pro 64). Blue screen. F*** stupid dumb. Err. Screw driver too pegs, starts to post again, gets to Windows, stops. OK, I switch the card out, figuring it is just too much to have two OC'd Xeon's in a board with a Titan, 3 hard drives, a card reader, and an optical bluray/dvd/rw on an old no name 700 watt psu that probably puts out an unsteady 550 watts.

 

Everything back to normal, but it seems, well wrong. I load up Fallout: New Vegas (The only game installed). Start futuremark. I'm running at 2.66GHz. Not good. I reboot, my profiles are all gone, and I can't get to a BLCK or multiplier option (The overclock settings). I am freaking out. I knew I had a custom BIOS that was modified for 1366 boards from supermicros 2011 boards. I had a copy on a DvD, and a website link the previous owner included. I can't find either (Maybe they are with my Windows 7 OEM disk, heh). So, now I have three options. Sell most board and processor, possibly the RAM as prices are through the roof right now, keep it at stock speeds, or buy an sr 2 board (They are about $450-$650) used. Well 3 options I guess, as I could buy a single cpu board, which all overclock for about $25, split the RAM, and make two systems I'm never going to use, then just sell those. This sucks. It's not like these are 5690's already clocked at 3.4 with a 3.8-3.9 turbo, these are 2.66 with a 2.99-3.0 turbo. I am so mad at myself right now.

 

Yay, post, Windows...

That sounds horrible! why on earth did it do all of that? I can't see why tryng the card would cause all of that to happen. I am so sorry. That really really sucks. I wish there was something I could suggest but I can't think of anything and you are already more qualified than I am.

 

The only possible thing I can think of is maybe if you can find someone on the forums who has the same board and could make a copy of their bios settings then send it to you. Is that something that could potentially work? I suppose even if it could it would be could be difficult to find someone with the same board.

[crzyces]

20 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

That sounds horrible! why on earth did it do all of that? I can't see why tryng the card would cause all of that to happen. I am so sorry. That really really sucks. I wish there was something I could suggest but I can't think of anything and you are already more qualified than I am.

 

The only possible thing I can think of is maybe if you can find someone on the forums who has the same board and could make a copy of their bios settings then send it to you. Is that something that could potentially work? I suppose even if it could it would be could be difficult to find someone with the same board.

No, tons of people have the board around the web. I'm getting the same answer. "Why would you buy dual Xeons to overclock? You know only the sr-2 boards support it." "I had a custom modded BIOS". "Sure you did. I have a Lamborghini. Just make another modded BIOS then and stop trying to sound cool." "I didn't write the damn BIOS. I'm not a fricken NASA programmer or MIT grad. I got it from a previous owner. It's based on a modified LGA 2011 and 1366 sr-2 BIOS that worked on Supermicro LGA 1366 models .....-.......-...... (It worked on pretty much all of them). "Sorry can't help". "Well that was dumb. Try to find it on the web, but I've never even heard of such a thing". This is from various boards. Level 1 forums, Level 1 Tech, Overclockers.net. Xeon OC forums, all over the place.

 

The whole reason I got these and not the E series was for really fun tinekering (and better performance. Like I said, I wanted to beat n OC'd 7700k). If I do single systems then I essentially have 2 6 thread overclocked Haswell systems (Which is good, but not what I wanted as it would be a gaming rig, not gaming/working/creating one. It also means buying another high mid range GPU as I'll have to sell one, if not both if I want to get another Xeon setup I *know* has factory supported dual socket support, but then we are talking stupid prices again (like equal to a Ryzen 1700x and motherboard build because the chips would be about $100 each, and the motherboard about $300, so $500 for the chips and board). IDK, I am at a loss.

 

As for how it was lost to begin with, I know exactly how. When a system is shutdown wrong, there is like a 1 in 1k chance it will corrupt something on your HD. 1 in 5k or so it will screw something important. 1 in like 10k it will corrupt a drive beyond repair save a wipe and install. 1 in 3 it will erase the things saved in RAM or your hd cache (ever have a crash and when you restart it doesn't give you the option to restore your window's session? That kind of no big deal thing). Once in a blue moon (I've seen it once. Twice now), in my entire life I've seen BIOS settings reset. And that's what happened. The freeze had to be an internal surge, the CMOS said "Oh crap", and at restart the CMOS and ROM went back to it's hard code.

 

I was going to build a Ryzen system (maybe) in June/July *if* I sold 3 Xeon builds (I sold one so far, 2 are partially built, one of which I was keeping, then I was going to get parts for 1 more while prices were still low and sell it as a lite gaming/server build; more $ and cheaper as it's mostly storage. Lots and lots of storage). At that point I should have access to all my money, this house will be in my name, the Condo in my wife's (The condo is paid for, the house has a mortgage, but it's only 8 and change per month). At the same time, I wanted to keep 3 systems total. The Xeon build for everything. The Ryzen for mostly rendering while I was on the Xeon, and my test setup as my son's computer, all paid for with money from flipping the Xeon builds, not actually touching savings or money I make through normal work.

 

I could keep the Xeon's and use those to render, and the Ryzen as a main gaming system, but in that case I may as well go with a 7700k setup, a the cost is about the same too, but everyone has them, and it's, well, boring. Lol, plus if I break it while tinkering I won't just be annoyed, I'll be out a bunch of money .

 

Could be worse, that proverbial lawnmower could have 5hi7 the bed. No, I'd rather have had that happen .

 

On a happy note, I am glad you got your board (well ordered it). Hopefully it is a quick and easy build. I'm just itching to see what you do with the case.

[crzyces]

1 hour ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

That sounds horrible! why on earth did it do all of that? I can't see why tryng the card would cause all of that to happen. I am so sorry. That really really sucks. I wish there was something I could suggest but I can't think of anything and you are already more qualified than I am.

 

The only possible thing I can think of is maybe if you can find someone on the forums who has the same board and could make a copy of their bios settings then send it to you. Is that something that could potentially work? I suppose even if it could it would be could be difficult to find someone with the same board.

Oh, I am going to talk to EnergyCore (One of the Board Mods at LTT) as we babble about OC'ing Xeons a bunch. Maybe he can think of something, or happens to have the skill to do it. I can't think of anyone else there who might be able to help as it is such a niche market. Xeons are niche enough, never mind Xeon overclockers.

 

The more I think about it, two systems and OC'ing one isn't that bad. It would essentially be equal to a 6700k/6800k, which is still really good for gaming. *Sigh* But I don't want a dedicated gaming PC.

 

I want this...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/EVGA-Classified-SR-2-270-WS-W555-A2-Motherboard-2xX5680-ES-CPUs-12GB-DDR3-FAN-/262929955091?hash=item3d37d8b913:g:AYQAAOSw~CFY6jWP

 

I'm going to try to sell the Xeon setup right now I think. I'll put it in a mid tower, switch PSU's, and see if I can get $650 for it. If it sells in the next couple of days I'll offer $500 on the above post. They will say "What are you high?", but hopefully come back with $600 or so (I'll have to buy an ass load of RAM if I leave half in the XEON build) so another $120 for 2 fricken 8 gig sticks of DDR3 now. Wait, now I won't as it has 12 already, so if I take 24 from the Xeon build I'll have 36 with 8 to leave in my son's/test setup for now.

 

Shoot, that is a lot of money for a used board and two 6 (almost 7) year old cpu's on ddr3.

[NoxiousOdor]

28 minutes ago, crzyces said:

Shoot, that is a lot of money for a used board and two 6 (almost 7) year old cpu's on ddr3

That is a super cool combo but Yeah honestly that is a ton of money I would mention exactly what you said here. It is a buttload of money for harware that is that old. Not to say it isnt good hardware but it is old none the less. You might be able to talk him down. You could also see if you could get it without the the two 5680's because if you can that should knock like at least $150-200 off the price

[NoxiousOdor]

52 minutes ago, crzyces said:

No, tons of people have the board around the web. I'm getting the same answer. "Why would you buy dual Xeons to overclock? You know only the sr-2 boards support it." "I had a custom modded BIOS". "Sure you did. I have a Lamborghini. Just make another modded BIOS then and stop trying to sound cool." "I didn't write the damn BIOS. I'm not a fricken NASA programmer or MIT grad. I got it from a previous owner. It's based on a modified LGA 2011 and 1366 sr-2 BIOS that worked on Supermicro LGA 1366 models .....-.......-...... (It worked on pretty much all of them). "Sorry can't help". "Well that was dumb. Try to find it on the web, but I've never even heard of such a thing". This is from various boards. Level 1 forums, Level 1 Tech, Overclockers.net. Xeon OC forums, all over the place.

 

The whole reason I got these and not the E series was for really fun tinekering (and better performance. Like I said, I wanted to beat n OC'd 7700k). If I do single systems then I essentially have 2 6 thread overclocked Haswell systems (Which is good, but not what I wanted as it would be a gaming rig, not gaming/working/creating one. It also means buying another high mid range GPU as I'll have to sell one, if not both if I want to get another Xeon setup I *know* has factory supported dual socket support, but then we are talking stupid prices again (like equal to a Ryzen 1700x and motherboard build because the chips would be about $100 each, and the motherboard about $300, so $500 for the chips and board). IDK, I am at a loss.

 

As for how it was lost to begin with, I know exactly how. When a system is shutdown wrong, there is like a 1 in 1k chance it will corrupt something on your HD. 1 in 5k or so it will screw something important. 1 in like 10k it will corrupt a drive beyond repair save a wipe and install. 1 in 3 it will erase the things saved in RAM or your hd cache (ever have a crash and when you restart it doesn't give you the option to restore your window's session? That kind of no big deal thing). Once in a blue moon (I've seen it once. Twice now), in my entire life I've seen BIOS settings reset. And that's what happened. The freeze had to be an internal surge, the CMOS said "Oh crap", and at restart the CMOS and ROM went back to it's hard code.

 

I was going to build a Ryzen system (maybe) in June/July *if* I sold 3 Xeon builds (I sold one so far, 2 are partially built, one of which I was keeping, then I was going to get parts for 1 more while prices were still low and sell it as a lite gaming/server build; more $ and cheaper as it's mostly storage. Lots and lots of storage). At that point I should have access to all my money, this house will be in my name, the Condo in my wife's (The condo is paid for, the house has a mortgage, but it's only 8 and change per month). At the same time, I wanted to keep 3 systems total. The Xeon build for everything. The Ryzen for mostly rendering while I was on the Xeon, and my test setup as my son's computer, all paid for with money from flipping the Xeon builds, not actually touching savings or money I make through normal work.

 

I could keep the Xeon's and use those to render, and the Ryzen as a main gaming system, but in that case I may as well go with a 7700k setup, a the cost is about the same too, but everyone has them, and it's, well, boring. Lol, plus if I break it while tinkering I won't just be annoyed, I'll be out a bunch of money .

 

Could be worse, that proverbial lawnmower could have 5hi7 the bed. No, I'd rather have had that happen .

 

On a happy note, I am glad you got your board (well ordered it). Hopefully it is a quick and easy build. I'm just itching to see what you do with the case.

Your whole situation is looking pretty dim  If even the xeon overclocking forums don't know what to do the only think I can think of would be to try and get in contact with the original owner but I am assuming that might not be a possibility. Did you buy it from someone on ebay? If so you probably could get in contact with them.

 

Thanks for the mutual excitement with my build, I feel a little bad now that your system is giving you such a headache. It will probably be a few weeks before I will have the case done but I will be sure to let you know when  I have it done

[crzyces]

8 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

Your whole situation is looking pretty dim  If even the xeon overclocking forums don't know what to do the only think I can think of would be to try and get in contact with the original owner but I am assuming that might not be a possibility. Did you buy it from someone on ebay? If so you probably could get in contact with them.

 

Thanks for the mutual excitement with my build, I feel a little bad now that your system is giving you such a headache. It will probably be a few weeks before I will have the case done but I will be sure to let you know when  I have it done

I was really upset at first (Yeah, actually upset. Not mad, not frustrated, like mini sad. Lie losing something sentimental almost. Like losing your first little league baseball glove sad, not "my dog got hit by a car" sad). Again, worst case scenario, I sell the board for $175 or so. I buy 2 $55 single chip boards. I put 16 gigs in one of them, OC it too 4.1 or so. Slap it in a cleaned up used case, slap a 580 in it. Maybe I'll stencil paint something *cool* on it to make it look more like a "Super fast teen gaming rig" type. Toss a few RGB strips in and a couple of $3 clear/reflection fans (to reflect the tacky RGB strips; I know, lame, but kids want a certain style, so the classic Honda window side with the fake quartz front, top and bottom, with a couple classic white rgb strips to give lite accents to contrast the black stainless steel skeleton and more modern art deco design (Plus I'm not giving a case like that to a random person I've never talked to before unless they want to spend an extra few hundred for the case; a friend or acquaintance is different, but, lol, just no) and no picture wall hang either. Well maybe a wall hang as with plexiglass they are cheap/free to build and only take a couple hours once the wood is cut, sanded, and stained).

 

See, I'm still pumped. I'll get my money back+, still get to build cases, and I'll have at least 2 to keep that I am happy with, even though 1 to do it all, plus my son's would have been optimal. Then the honda window/old chair case I'd probably put in the living room for gaming there (What, I can play fine on a 75 hz @ 1080p/1440p TV. Not as crisp, but I don't notice big difference, which is why I don't understand the huge price difference in TV's over monitors or the big deal people in forums make about it. I look at the specs on my 4k Phillips and they match a 55" 4k 144GHz LG UHD display spec wise without G-sync (It doesn't have freesync either obviously) to a "T", it's just $250 cheaper (actually it was really cheap as I got it on Black Friday for $279 at Walmart last year).

 

I actually think I am going to take a spin to the dump and look through the tossed PC's, then see if I can get to pick 'n pull auto scrapyard before they close at 9p. See if I can find some windows super cheap.

[NoxiousOdor]

On 4/28/2017 at 4:07 PM, crzyces said:

I was really upset at first (Yeah, actually upset. Not mad, not frustrated, like mini sad. Lie losing something sentimental almost. Like losing your first little league baseball glove sad, not "my dog got hit by a car" sad). Again, worst case scenario, I sell the board for $175 or so. I buy 2 $55 single chip boards. I put 16 gigs in one of them, OC it too 4.1 or so. Slap it in a cleaned up used case, slap a 580 in it. Maybe I'll stencil paint something *cool* on it to make it look more like a "Super fast teen gaming rig" type. Toss a few RGB strips in and a couple of $3 clear/reflection fans (to reflect the tacky RGB strips; I know, lame, but kids want a certain style, so the classic Honda window side with the fake quartz front, top and bottom, with a couple classic white rgb strips to give lite accents to contrast the black stainless steel skeleton and more modern art deco design (Plus I'm not giving a case like that to a random person I've never talked to before unless they want to spend an extra few hundred for the case; a friend or acquaintance is different, but, lol, just no) and no picture wall hang either. Well maybe a wall hang as with plexiglass they are cheap/free to build and only take a couple hours once the wood is cut, sanded, and stained).

 

See, I'm still pumped. I'll get my money back+, still get to build cases, and I'll have at least 2 to keep that I am happy with, even though 1 to do it all, plus my son's would have been optimal. Then the honda window/old chair case I'd probably put in the living room for gaming there (What, I can play fine on a 75 hz @ 1080p/1440p TV. Not as crisp, but I don't notice big difference, which is why I don't understand the huge price difference in TV's over monitors or the big deal people in forums make about it. I look at the specs on my 4k Phillips and they match a 55" 4k 144GHz LG UHD display spec wise without G-sync (It doesn't have freesync either obviously) to a "T", it's just $250 cheaper (actually it was really cheap as I got it on Black Friday for $279 at Walmart last year).

 

I actually think I am going to take a spin to the dump and look through the tossed PC's, then see if I can get to pick 'n pull auto scrapyard before they close at 9p. See if I can find some windows super cheap.

Hey sorry it was weeks between replies, I had gotten distracted and then I forgot. I thought you might be interested that I ended up buying a case last night. I was going to build one out of legos but it turns out that it is more expensive that I had originally thought. The case I got is the NZXT s340. It isn't anything super fancy but from what I have been able to find it is likely the smallest case that an eatx board will fit into.

 

Did you end up finding any windows that will work for your project? If you have any pictures of that project you should post them I am really intrigued with what you might do with them.;