So, I had a bit of trouble with my X99 system.
At the same time I had a lot of fun with my first dual 2670 build.
And that is how the idea came up to sidestep and trade in single core for multicore performance.
I am switching from an E5 1650 v3, ASRock X99 WS and 64GB Kingston registered ECC DDR4 2133.
If everything goes to plan, these are the specs of my updated system:
2 x Intel Xeon E5 2670 Revision C2
2 x Noctua NH-U12DX i4
Asus Z9PE D8 WS (SSI EEB form factor)
8 x 8 GB Hynix 1866MHz registered ECC DDR3
Sapphire R9 Fury Nitro
Intel X540 T2 dual port 10GBit
Asus PCIe USB 3.1 card (type A, two ports)
Hyper X Fury M.2 240GB on the PCIe adapter card (scratch)
Intel series 730 SATA SSD 240GB (main OS)
SanDisk SSD plus 960GB (games)
and a few small corsair SSDs to play around with stuff
2.5" drives are hold in the ICY DOCK ToughArmor MB996SP-6SB
also I have a Startech 3 bay 3.5" dock that is currently empty
last 5.25 slot is housing the Asus BW-16D1HT blu ray writer
Seasonic Platinum 1050 modded with Noctua NF-S12A PWM
6 x Noctua NF-A14 ULN on the fan controller of the...
Nanoxia Deep Silence 5, removed all HDD cages for airflow
I already have the CPUs, the board, the coolers and the PCIe USB 3.1 card here. The memory is on it's way from Korea.
Update:
Finally the memory arrived.
Build time!
The new parts fit together perfectly. So far so good.
CPU-fan cable management. :P
I am a bit ... "low on health" at the moment so the build takes a bit.
Its dead! ... I gutted my rig today.
I totally forgot to take a shot of my system before I murdered it. Sorry.
Parts that will go back into the updated rig:
And here is a comparison between old and new.
Still sick. It's gonna be a step by step thing...
It fits ... just.
A very nice surprise: The case has all the necessary holes for mainboard standoffs. No tape, no zip ties, no MacGyver needed.
I just had to put it in and screw it........... yeah, that is how I want to say that.
I connected all four power plugs to the mainboard (24 pin, two 8 pin and one molex, all at the very top), front USB2, front USB3, slot brackets for serial ports, USB2 and firewire, the fan of my PSU (mod) and the panel switches and LEDs. I am not using HD-audio so that cable will end up tucked away somewhere.
I also threw in most PCIe cards (USB3.1, M.2 SSD and 10GBit NIC) leaving only the GPU out for now.
I decided not to use the top slot for that so the CPUs are not completely cut off the fresh air from the front fans.
I had to rip out most of the drives from the 5.25" bays, only the bluray writer remained. I will have to use angled SATA connectors for my HDD bay because of this:
Yeah, it is tight. So that is up next.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.........
Before I could even think about installing any SATA stuff I had to get rid of the fan on the back of my HDD bay.
Pretty easy since I already modded it and used a noctua fan. (I'm a whore, I know.)
After that I went for a test boot. Installed the Fury and hooked the rig up to a monitor.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand nothing.
Onboard power switch, reset and an unknown LED light up when I switch on the PSU. Than's it. Pulled all the PCIe cards out, disconnected all breakout brackets and front panel stuff, tried multiple sticks of memory (also different kinds), reseated CPUs, then tried only one CPU with one stick of memory, then the other CPU......
Nothing. Not even a hint of movement on the fans.
It is either both CPUs are dead or the motherboard. .... Or ...
I found a post in a forum about incompatible PSUs with this board. (Have to find out if there is a UEFI update for that)
I'm stuck. Probably have to buy a PSU to test and after that it is RMA time and I'm back to zero.
If anyone has additional ideas, fire away. Maybe I'm an idiot and it is something totally obvious.
Well, I wanted to be done with the system now..... Bummer.
"Houston, we have a post!"
Turns out that my second EPS cable (silverstone) has a different layout than the one that came with my seasonic.
I have a silverstone PSU and the cables between that and the seasonic are identical. So I assumed that those brands are compatible in general. Stupid me.
Despite that nothing bursted into flames and all components are fine. I just confirmed that both CPUs are recognized in the UEFI and all 64GB of memory are there as well. I have to force the board to run them with 1866MHz because the 2600 v1 only supports 1600MHz officially. So I will test the memory but I am optimistic that this will work fine.
SATA cabling all the things!
After dealing with the PCIe cards, breakout brackets, front panel stuff and so on (again), I got around to connecting all the drives to SATA and power. This is something that shouldn't take more than a few minutes under normal conditions. But given the tight space all the cabling had to go through, it was a bit of a challenge.
Now the only thing left to do is the annoying cable management behind the motherboard.
But because I'm lazy it will look terrible and therefor I won't show that to you. :P
The end is near.
It is done.
I had a few more issues today, mainly fiddling with the UEFI and stuff and I have still not done anything with software but I will leave the build log at this. The hardware is put together, everything works so far, cables are good enough for me. But take a look for yourself.
Here is another look at how there is barely any space for cables between the drives and the CPU heatsink.
The shiny Noctuas.
And the final overview on all the guts.
What do you think? Do you hate it? Did I do dumb? Is it ok?
Anyway, I hope this log didn't bore you to death and if you are from the future and wanna build something like this, there is an overview for all the Xeon E5 2670 builds in the forum.
OK.
Bye.
p.s.: I just realized that I never showed front or back of the system. So before I hooked it up to all the cabling I took two quick shots.
OK, that's it.
Bye.