General Intel HEDT Xeon/i7 Discussion

[the pudding]

[Guest]

3 hours ago, the pudding said:

That's just sexy. 

[the pudding]

9 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

That's just sexy. 

Isn't it just  there's just something about these industrial looking types isn't there, psu not so much though lul 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, the pudding said:

Isn't it just  there's just something about these industrial looking types isn't there, psu not so much though lul 

For sure. 

Had a Asus K8N-DRE board that I ran dual water blocks on first benchmarking.

 

Just has that POWERFUL look to it. 

[the pudding]

28 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

For sure. 

Had a Asus K8N-DRE board that I ran dual water blocks on first benchmarking.

 

Just has that POWERFUL look to it. 

Oh my, and yeah, they just look strong don't they 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, the pudding said:

Oh my, and yeah, they just look strong don't they 

Indeed, I never had mine in a case though. That's why I like this thread, you guys have these rigs all buttoned up looking good!!

[the pudding]

Oh, on a completely unrelated note, I grabbed an asrock X58 extreme 3 and an NH-D14 on ebay for 60 quid, going to throw my spare W3690 and 24gb ram at it and have a bit of fun, see if i can't take top spots on 3dmark for a W3690 and a 1660ti

[the pudding]

So, bit of a snag, I've since figured out the D14 won't actually fit on the X58 extreme 3 due to the massive vrm sink, I've already got a buyer for the D14 lined up for as soon as it arrives, but I'm not too sure what to go for, I'll want something that's somewhat on the pretty end, I'm stuck between something like a dark rock 4 (not the pro 4 mind you, would have the same issue as the D14 there) or something like the arctic freezer 2 280mm or something, though no official support for 1366 so it would require some botching but nothing I can't manage (xeon backplate and some M3 bolts would fix that, both of which I have already) but something like a W3690 I'm not sure really how much cooling I'll need tbh, I've run X5670s at 4.5GHz 1.4v on a 212 evo before so I can't imagiine it'd need too much 

[bimmerman]

Anyone read up on the SR-X?

 

Cuz.... Found these on le Ebay...

 

https://www.ebay.de/itm/254645854277

[the pudding]

9 hours ago, bimmerman said:

Anyone read up on the SR-X?

 

Cuz.... Found these on le Ebay...

 

https://www.ebay.de/itm/254645854277

Yeah, the SRX is interesting, it's a shame that Intel pulled overclocking on the sandy/ivy xeons otherwise it'd actually be useful :P 

[Zando_]

3 hours ago, the pudding said:

Yeah, the SRX is interesting, it's a shame that Intel pulled overclocking on the sandy/ivy xeons otherwise it'd actually be useful

Basically this ^^^. It was going to be a cool board, Intel locked the chips, so it was left in a weird state of limbo. Can't OC, but due to being built to do that it's poor as a server board. So it ends up not good at anything, plus being HPTX still so it's ass to fit in a case. 

@bimmerman also reee those blocks are still in the back of my mind. I'm slowly slowly getting stuff done, I actually accomplished a couple things last night so if I can keep that up for the rest of the week I should get through to finding the blocks. Mebbe I'll try searching around for them tonight, we'll see.

[bimmerman]

Yea, apparently it also has an even wonkier pcie layout than the sr2 does. It's kinda telling when EVGA announced the SR3 and just ignored the X.

 

@Zando Bob sounds great!!

[Zando_]

Also in HEDT news, some classic hardware:

Mac Pro 1,1 currently sporting two 2.66Ghz dual core Xeons, have 2.66Ghz quads on the way. EFI flashed to 2,1 so it should support them, and it has 32GB RAM:

Sadly it's not recognizing 2 DIMMs, I assume that's due to those two slots being free and thus getting dust in them for years. Price of a free Mac Pro, it's preeeeeetty dusty inside. Ran since at least 2008 (judging by the software/document dates from the previous owners) and then sat in a closet for a damn good while. It'll get a proper deep clean once I get my hands on more compressed air and tear it down to replace the CPUs. Current max temps are only 69C on the hottest core though, so pretty solid for 14 year old thermal paste. 

 

Slim keeb and the #2 HDD bay I was missing have been ordered as well. Display is an OG 24" Apple Cinema Display I got with the mac, chad 1920x1200 monitor from 2004. TFT so supposedly less crisp than an IPS, but I have a hard time telling the difference. Colors are off a bit but it's got a pleasing warmth to it so I don't think I'll mess with those. Far, far better than the TN panel on my G-Sync display, that's for sure. 

Still need to figure out what GPU I want to go with, but that can wait till I have the monies to worry about that. Eyeing a Quadro K5000 for now, but people still want $100-150 for those. Not as bad as the 30" Cinema Displays though (gorgeous 2560x1600 panels), people want $200-400 for those still, depending on condition and if they include the 150W power brick or not. Hefty price for a monitor from 16 years ago .

 

[the pudding]

1 hour ago, Zando Bob said:

Also in HEDT news, some classic hardware:

Mac Pro 1,1 currently sporting two 2.66Ghz dual core Xeons, have 2.66Ghz quads on the way. EFI flashed to 2,1 so it should support them, and it has 32GB RAM:

 

Sadly it's not recognizing 2 DIMMs, I assume that's due to those two slots being free and thus getting dust in them for years. Price of a free Mac Pro, it's preeeeeetty dusty inside. Ran since at least 2008 (judging by the software/document dates from the previous owners) and then sat in a closet for a damn good while. It'll get a proper deep clean once I get my hands on more compressed air and tear it down to replace the CPUs. Current max temps are only 69C on the hottest core though, so pretty solid for 14 year old thermal paste. 

 

 

Slim keeb and the #2 HDD bay I was missing have been ordered as well. Display is an OG 24" Apple Cinema Display I got with the mac, chad 1920x1200 monitor from 2004. TFT so supposedly less crisp than an IPS, but I have a hard time telling the difference. Colors are off a bit but it's got a pleasing warmth to it so I don't think I'll mess with those. Far, far better than the TN panel on my G-Sync display, that's for sure. 

Still need to figure out what GPU I want to go with, but that can wait till I have the monies to worry about that. Eyeing a Quadro K5000 for now, but people still want $100-150 for those. Not as bad as the 30" Cinema Displays though (gorgeous 2560x1600 panels), people want $200-400 for those still, depending on condition and if they include the 150W power brick or not. Hefty price for a monitor from 16 years ago .

 

there's really something gorgeous about the old mac pro's, I'd love a 4,1/5,1 with the dual socket tray, but they're still on the really expensive end for a dual 1366 system :<, like, for that money you could get something like a Z820, which is still a very pretty machine, but that'd take at the very least a pair of 8 cores, but if you get one with the right boot block then you can slap some 12 cores in there 

[Zando_]

47 minutes ago, the pudding said:

there's really something gorgeous about the old mac pro's, I'd love a 4,1/5,1 with the dual socket tray, but they're still on the really expensive end for a dual 1366 system :<, like, for that money you could get something like a Z820, which is still a very pretty machine, but that'd take at the very least a pair of 8 cores, but if you get one with the right boot block then you can slap some 12 cores in there 

Yeaaaah, the classic cheese graters are gorgeous, but the 1366 ones demand so much damn money. Still regularly see ones for over $1000, because people love them lol. But you can stuff up to two X5690s and a chonky amount of DDR3 in them, so I can see why. The PowerMac G5 used essentially the same chassis from the exterior, interior layout is different though. I can find those and Mac Pro 1,1s like this for around $50-100 locally, if I decided to do a case mod I'd probably get one to (carefully) tear down and do a custom rig inside. Though the PowerMacs can be even more of a bastard than the Mac Pros due to having some water-cooled models. 2007/8 Mac Pros with the dual 3.0Ghz Xeons shipped running LM from the factory too, so they can be funky to take apart. Some of the later ones also use delidded chips, strange because these Xeons were soldered to begin with, but IIRC it's something to do with cooler mount height. 

 

But yep, if you're looking to actually pay a fair price for the hardware in these, ole HP/Dell workstations are gonna offer way more bang for the buck. A lot of those look really gorgeous in their own right too, tbh. 

[Guest]

Hell yeah.

[bimmerman]

So, I did some work on the SR2.

 

For a few weeks it's looked like this due, all haphazard and testingesque.

 

 

I didn't really have fans for the case, woring wasn't thought through, etc blah.

 

So, amazon to the rescue! Step the first, organize wiring to go behind the motherboard. Took some convincing but managed to route stuff without having to remove mobo. Yes, the 900D has tons of passthroughs with grommets BUT the SR2 covers literally all of them. Stupid form factor.

 

Next step was to move the hard drives and ssds up to the 5.25 bays. This took some amazon magic to find trays that wouldn't be visible from the front.

 

Step the third was find a fourth GPU for testing.

 

Step the fifth, install fans!

 

Here's what it looks like right now. Currently has 3x R9 290s and 1x GTX 980.

 

 

So, hooray! Airflow achieved. The 4x gpu suuuucks for heat though, throttles like mad. I also bought a single slot waterblock for my 1080ti soooooo next steps are in motion ( @Zando Bob). Now that the case has airflow, time for some OC!

 

Also RIP power breaker. It keeps tripping for some unfathomable reason.

 

Next steps:

-Verify 2-4x virtualized simultaneous host works

-OC to unpotato

-water cooling cpu, mobo, gpus

- reinstall usb card and sas card once 2x single slot GPUs installed

-x5690 for higher multiplier to counteract low bclk ceiling of SR2

-96gb ram so each VM can have 16gb+ per modern standards.

-beers

[the pudding]

11 hours ago, bimmerman said:

 

Next steps:

-beers

undoubtedly the most important step 

[drevmcast]

Holy crap, that's a crazy SR2 and mac pro build. I love em. I do have a question regarding cooling on boards with integrated backplates. I want to use 2 CM Hyper 212 black coolers as I already have one already, but I don't think it's compatible with the backplate that comes preinstalled I can see that the backplate is removable on the board I just purchased (Intel s5520sc) but I would have to remove the retention mechanism as well. Any ideas? I could use the H60 that im using on my 980 X on my current build but I would have to purchase another one at 80 dollars for two sockets. Any ideas?

[the pudding]

19 minutes ago, drevmcast said:

Holy crap, that's a crazy SR2 and mac pro build. I love em. I do have a question regarding cooling on boards with integrated backplates. I want to use 2 CM Hyper 212 black coolers as I already have one already, but I don't think it's compatible with the backplate that comes preinstalled I can see that the backplate is removable on the board I just purchased (Intel s5520sc) but I would have to remove the retention mechanism as well. Any ideas? I could use the H60 that im using on my 980 X on my current build but I would have to purchase another one at 80 dollars for two sockets. Any ideas?

The 212 black is decent for this but you may have to remove an E-clip to get it to work iirc, but if you can remove the screw part of the mounting mechanism you can just use some M3 bolts to screw straight into the the stock xeon backplate and you're all set, I've done stuff like that before, but you will have to be careful not to snap the mounting wings, but you're armed with the information you need now, just keep in mind though that getting that E-clip, screw and spring assembly back together would be difficult if you were to ever sell the coolers on, though coolermaster may replace them if your coolers just happened to not come with them  but the threads on the integral xeon backplate things are just bog standard M3 so do with that what you will  i actually bought some M3 hex bolts in order to botch an arctic cooler on a 1366 platform (since they don't officially support 1366) using one of these xeon backplate things i have spare but i've since managed to sort some trades for some threadripper kit with a friend so that project is kinda gone now 

 

Edit: actually in this instance you may be best off with arctic coolers if you can get some, something like a freezer 34 esports should do nicely, saves having to mess around with removing e-clips and stuff from the mounting hardware sincce you can just go M3 screw straight into the xeon backplate thing and have done with it (i mean their official 2011 mounting is literally just an M4 bolt straight through like that too) 

[drevmcast]

6 minutes ago, the pudding said:

The 212 black is decent for this but you may have to remove an E-clip to get it to work iirc, but if you can remove the screw part of the mounting mechanism you can just use some M3 bolts to screw straight into the the stock xeon backplate and you're all set, I've done stuff like that before, but you will have to be careful not to snap the mounting wings, but you're armed with the information you need now, just keep in mind though that getting that E-clip, screw and spring assembly back together would be difficult if you were to ever sell the coolers on, though coolermaster may replace them if your coolers just happened to not come with them  but the threads on the integral xeon backplate things are just bog standard M3 so do with that what you will  i actually bought some M3 hex bolts in order to botch an arctic cooler on a 1366 platform (since they don't officially support 1366) using one of these xeon backplate things i have spare but i've since managed to sort some trades for some threadripper kit with a friend so that project is kinda gone now 

 

Edit: actually in this instance you may be best off with arctic coolers if you can get some, something like a freezer 34 esports should do nicely, saves having to mess around with removing e-clips and stuff from the mounting hardware sincce you can just go M3 screw straight into the xeon backplate thing and have done with it (i mean their official 2011 mounting is literally just an M4 bolt straight through like that too) 

Very interesting. I didn't realize I would have to drop as much on cooling as I do as CPUs. Thank you so much for that reply super helpful. I'll let you know what I end up doing.

[the pudding]

8 minutes ago, drevmcast said:

Very interesting. I didn't realize I would have to drop as much on cooling as I do as CPUs. Thank you so much for that reply super helpful. I'll let you know what I end up doing.

Well, since there's no overclocking you shouldn't need much in the way of cooling in all honesty, but it never hurts to have more than you'll need, especially if you're going for quiet and all that jazz, with that said though, something from arctic would be easier, but it's not the same look I guess, but I'm certainly glad to help in any case, this is all information I wish I had when i was first getting into dual socket 1366 stuff so best share that and all  

[GrockleTD]

I have purchased the perfect case for my x58 sabertooth... Hopefully shipping is swift

[Zando_]

@bimmerman 

Will track down the top VRM block tonight after work. 
 

@GrockleTD what case

[YT_DomDaBomb20]

18 hours ago, drevmcast said:

Holy crap, that's a crazy SR2 and mac pro build. I love em. I do have a question regarding cooling on boards with integrated backplates. I want to use 2 CM Hyper 212 black coolers as I already have one already, but I don't think it's compatible with the backplate that comes preinstalled I can see that the backplate is removable on the board I just purchased (Intel s5520sc) but I would have to remove the retention mechanism as well. Any ideas? I could use the H60 that im using on my 980 X on my current build but I would have to purchase another one at 80 dollars for two sockets. Any ideas?

I’m building an x58 system soon, and I’m using a deepcool gammaxx 400 v2, not sure if it’ll work for your board, but just a suggestion