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My Dual Opteron Build thread

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hunterjwizzard

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At VCFSoCal I found a gorgeous dual opteron motherboard with 32GB of RAM on the free table. Lover that I am of all thinks SMP, I had to have it.

I am finally now making some progress on using it for something, and creating this thread to document my experiments and tests.

First thing, I had to find heat sinks for it, which proved VERY challenging. Most because I am a cheap SOB and did not want to spend $60 each.

Once I had some HSFs($36 for a pair of coolermasters) I finally got the machine to POST. Turns out this is the mainboard out of an HP xw9400 workstation. Quite an interesting device.

So far getting it to boot consistently is proving to be something of a challenge. As was getting it to take an operating system. At this point I can't say for sure if the machine will ever be reliable enough for what I want to do with it. But at the end of the day I'm just happy to be using such a supremely monsterious board.


Future goals for the project: I have GOT to find a better case for it. At present I've fit it juuuuust barely in an old Chieftec Dragon, and I have not got a better case for what I want to do anywhere in my collection. Finding EATX cases is proving a challenge.

Up next: my furtive searches indicate this board might actually do SLI. Having a dual socket SLI system is very high on my wishlists, so this excites me. However I want space for peripheral cards, so most probably I will be finding some single slot quadro cards for SLI. I'm very excited about this not quite retro machine.
 
I had one of these HPs, or a very closely related model, at work sometime around 2010-ish? I think it had eight total cores, but it’s been a long time.

Not to be a buzzkill, but I remember that thing as being a bit of a slug; it replaced an original 2006 4-core Mac Pro with the “cheap” 2.0ghz Xeons, but despite the extra cores and a higher clock speed there were times where I’d swear it was slower. In its defense that may have been partially Linux’s fault; the dual-socket Opteron was a more complex NUMA design and I don’t think all the kinks in the scheduler and memory management to optimize tasks to run on “local” cores were fully worked out yet.
 
Oh I have no expectations of this system actually *being* fast. If I wanted "fast" I'd use a modern system. We don't build vintage(ish) PCs for real-world performance. My first and foremost reasons for this build are: the board was free, and this is fun. Some kind soul left it on the free table hoping someone would appreciate it and I do. Plus I'm only looking to put about 75 bucks into this thing, so its not exactly breaking the bank.

These xw9400s seem to have had particularly long legs despite not the best performance. I can find sales ads for the same model as far back as the XP 32 bit era and forum posts of people still using tem in the early 2010s. Its got a huge RAM capacity and apparently the later models could even take the hexa-core Opterons. My guess is they were reliable despite the slowness.

I just have to find a better case for it. Which I won't count towards the total cost of the build because ATX cases are forever.
 
I built a system with similar specs back in 2007 using an ASUS KFN5-D SLI motherboard as a friend was given a pair of Opteron 2220SE CPUs but didn't have the money to build a system with them. It was my main system until 2011, originally with a pair of 8600 GT GPUs and later with a pair of GTX 260s. It was built in an Antec P180 case with Antec 650W True Power PSU.

It's still working today, with a pair of Barcelona 2360SE CPUs for 8 cores at 2.5Ghz (I overclocked the 2220SEs to 3.0ghz), 32GB of RAM and a GTX 295 GPU (which is a pair of GTX 260s on a single card). There's a 4x400GB SATA RAID setup in it, and a SATA SSD to boot from. Not fast, but still works well. I upgraded to the quad core CPUs and 32GB of RAM in 2016 when they were dirt cheap.

I still have the 2220SEs and 8 GB of original memory around somewhere.
 
Dual socket boards always seem to have long legs. My dual PIII Tualtin still works great except I broke the AGP socket.

I am planning to try and run this board in SLI, since a dual-socket SLI system has been on my wishlist for years. Except I want access to all the peripheral card slots. To that end I am shopping for elder Quadro cards that are single-slot and SLI. It probably won't perform as well as a GTX 980 that's in there right now, but it will feel cool.
 
Narrowing down graphics card selection I am leaning towards the Quadro K4000. While it is significantly newer than the board in question it has several things going for it:

-Single-slot so able to use all peripheral card slots
-SLI(obvi)

And probably most important: working examples can be had for as little as $20.

My budget doesn't have to be that small but won't be very big. If someone's got a better suggestion I'm all ears.
 
So the K4000 is out, along with the infinitely older regular 4000. Apparently these cards support "Multi OS Technology", but it not "SLI Mosiac Technology" yet nvidia describes both of these as 'sli'.

Of course the 5000 and 6000s do do sli, but take up two slots each.

And so the quest continues.
 
Since its very late and I will probably forget this, I am making my note here. It looks like the quadro k4200 appears to support sli, has a a windows XP driver, and can be had for about $30. I may be back in business.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
Dual socket boards always seem to have long legs. My dual PIII Tualtin still works great except I broke the AGP socket.
Click to expand...

Those slots are a PITA to change, but they can be replaced. I've done DDR, DDR2, DDR3 and PCIe slots, which are far worse to contend with.

hunterjwizzard said:
I am planning to try and run this board in SLI, since a dual-socket SLI system has been on my wishlist for years.
Click to expand...

You may have trouble with that. In NUMA systems, each CPU is more or less its own independent computer with some shared resources. NUMA motherboards can have several different PCIe configurations, all of the PCIe slots can be on one CPU, or more commonly, split between multiple CPUs.

If you have SLI on a split PCIe system, that's going to be a whole lot of traffic backed up over the NUMA bus as both CPUs move all of that data between them to keep both cards across different PCIe buses working.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
You may have trouble with that. In NUMA systems, each CPU is more or less its own independent computer with some shared resources. NUMA motherboards can have several different PCIe configurations, all of the PCIe slots can be on one CPU, or more commonly, split between multiple CPUs.

If you have SLI on a split PCIe system, that's going to be a whole lot of traffic backed up over the NUMA bus as both CPUs move all of that data between them to keep both cards across different PCIe buses working.
Click to expand...
I was able to find contemporary reviews for the system this motherboard came out of describing benchmarking on the system in SLI, so it is at least physically possible(though according to some sources - only with Quadro graphics cards).

I'm not overly concerned with actual performance. I'm looking at spending maybe 60 bucks on a pair of cards that are ~10 years old. If I wanted performance I'd build a modern system :p
 
I'm having some rather series trouble finding a case for this build. Its EATX and big for EATX. I have it in a chieftec dragon but it barely fits. Like I can't use the IDE port on the board or the 3.5" bays in the case. Hard to tell if Anny EATX case is gonna hold it.
 
EATX was never standardized, which is why you're having problems. You'll need to find the maximum board size supported by the case in physical dimensions, and compare it to your motherboard.
 
Well that should make for some real fun shopping used cases on eBay.

Maybe I just build my own. I saw an EATX tray a while ago. Grab that. Some tube steel. Salvage a few other bits and bobs. Then again remmbering the last time I tried to build my own case...
 
I'd recommend looking up old case reviews, you can usually do some sleuthing and find the maximum motherboard dimension supported.

I regret tossing some of my monster cases decades ago. You seldom need them, but when you do, nothing else can substitute them.

Glad I kept almost all of my Antec cases from that time, they're basically the same as the Chieftec Dragon.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Glad I kept almost all of my Antec cases from that time, they're basically the same as the Chieftec Dragon.
Click to expand...
There's a reason for that. Early 2000 antec cases were literally re-badged Cheiftec dragons. That was the big "life hack" among my high school friends and I. Antecs were the must-have hotness but cost a lot. Meanwhile if you played your cards right you could easily pick up a Chieftec Dragon for about $40. Exact same case. Exact same colors. Exact same features. I've been using my two original Dragons for 22 years now; tough to find another $40 case with those kinds of legs.

The cases I really regret throwing out are these gigantic ugly 4U rack-mount machines. The entire front of the machine was 9x5.25" vertical drive bays. Inside had room for an EATX motherboard and still about 4 inches between the end of the board and the back of even a very deep CD drive. I had adapters that let me turn some of the bays horizontal. The amount of space in these cases was INSANE. And I had 3 of them!

But I didn't own a single 4 post rack. So I finally convinced myself to toss them.

I regret it every single day. I have NEVER seen another cases with that much room inside.
 
Reminds me of a box I called Bigfoot...

Yup, there it is. Dual Athlon MP, 21.5"x8"x18" (HWD) with 3 5.25 bays, one 3.5 bay and one floppy faced 3.5. If memory serves, I had 6 IDE drives in it.

Want it? I'll drag it out of the closet and get a better inventory of it, but yours for the taking if you're interested. :)
 
And... I believe it is an Antec. No identifying marks on it, but there's a Tyan Dual Socket A (462) eATX motherboard in it, appears to be a S2462 (matches Newegg Tyan S2462). A pair of Athlon MP 2800+ are on board, matching copper HSFs are removed for storage but present. Found 3 sets of drive rails, there are 4 bays that need them. No power supply or expansion slot covers, has mounts for 4 80mm case fans plus one at the front of the HD bay, two are loaded (no PWM, just 4-pin molex).

30.2 pounds as-is, I'd guess another 5-8 for packing. Ships from 98226.

All yours!!! :)

20240709_145420.jpg20240709_145429.jpg20240709_145437.jpg20240709_145509.jpg20240709_145520.jpg
 
Ah that one is definitely an Antec. Hmmm, well since there's no peripherals and I have no shortage of cases, how would you feel about pulling out the motherboard/CPUs + heatsinks and sending just that out to me?
 
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