How to: Arima AMD Opteron Quad Core Socket F 3000 series

No, its in the basement, I had to run out and get lunch/solder. I will be going to reboot it in a few minutes. I'll also be switching out 2 of the heatsinks of the 212's and possibly starting to mod the PSU for the proper plugs.

update: Bios flashing worked perfectly fine. I also hate minijr plug pins *atx pins*. Next time I'm buying a Crimper and pin remover, I could have saved so much time unpinning the plugs and using the factory pins vs cutting everything and doing all the pins.. with out a crimper.

http://i.imgur.com/outfZl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/GjEN7l.jpg

Lookin' good!

I'm almost done with my heatsink brackets- should have the system ready to go this weekend.

So, I finished up as much as I could this morning. Still waiting on a 2 heat sinks and the 667 ram to get here. Full Album is here: http://imgur.com/a/zETot#0

http://i.imgur.com/abJOml.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/z6uvjl.jpg
The LED is hooked to the Power Supply so I know when its "On"

http://i.imgur.com/R1H3Rl.jpg

Nice work dude!

Mine's on hold till after I rebuild my ITX rig - My notebook died, leaving me without a stable/working rig -_-

Success! Kind of. I finally got the heatsink mounting brackets fabricated and assembled the system on my test bench- and it boots!

Bad news? I can't access the goddamn BIOS, which means I'll need to dig up a B2 CPU somewhere and the CPU0 heatsink runs into my GPU (8800GT with double-wide heatsink) so I'll have to sort that somehow.

^*&$$*{$)@#! :shakes:

Off to the grocery now, perhaps consuming some wine and an entire box of frozen waffles will help this dilemma...

Hmm... Got a thought. This board automatically tries to PXE boot- I bet I could set up a PXE server on one of my other machines with DOS and flashrom. Stay tuned.

This could get interesting :up:

It'll have to be Linux and flashrom; I don't think DOS will work with EFI actually. I need to sleep so this will have to wait.

But the later OS's do like Server 2008.

My PSU arrived and by golly it is loud! Mods will have to occur before I use it -_-

Quote:

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Originally Posted by retro77

But the later OS's do like Server 2008.

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I could never get 2008 to boot however, though I didn't try PXE.

@ Confusis- which PSU did you get?

@ Sparky- I don't think PXE vs Locally booting would make a difference- AFAIK, the process is the same; just the source of the system image is different.

That's what I figure.

@HTownDowner - one of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/130669938008...84.m1439.l2649 Pure 12v output :) Loud though. 50x50x30mm fan, 36dbA at 16.5CFM :(

Yikes! That's a pretty awful airflowflow/noise ratio. Shouldn't be too hard to add an 80mm+ fan though. My PP&C unit is pretty loud as well- once I've tested it more under load I may replace it's 80mm fan with a bottom-mounted 140mm that I salvaged from the DOA 600W PSU I initially bought.

All the ram got here today.. now running 16 2gb pc2-5300r sticks of ram.

http://i.imgur.com/5R17Al.jpg

So far, I'm disappointed with the performance of the thing. I am considering parting it out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Veeb0rg

So far, I'm disappointed with the performance of the thing. I am considering parting it out.

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Performance at what?

f@h. I've decided, it is getting parted out, if anyone wants anything contact me, everything but the 212+ heat sinks, the hdd and the pci vid card are going..

I'll take that mobo :up: PM me

Nice score retro.

The ram is 2gb sticks? How much for those? PM me

What are you using it for? These *are* 5-year-old systems, keep in mind. For things that don't use an absurd amount of RAM and/or have fewer than 6 threads, a single modern multi-core CPU will be faster. Dual 6-core Opterons (can be had for fairly cheap; check out HP XW9400 for a platform) would also probably be faster for many things. Adding a modern GPU to these rigs will give a significant performance increase for non-crunching tasks but again, these are 5-years old. Myself, I'm doing it for the challenge! Even if it's slower than my overclocked Core 2 rig (which it will be for some things), the challenge and satisfaction of the project is worth it for me. YMMV :)

Hello,

Always wanted to play with a very fast system. These motherboards are inexpensive - so I will try to get one running for system makes in visual studio 2010. Any help will be appreciated.
Arima Motherboard: 40gcmg020-d400-100

Status:
1. Understand the 12 volt power supply - found 4 pin to eight pin transition pins at frys.com and on ebay. Both for the two 12 volt four pin plug and the old hard drive plug to eight pin plugs.
2. Made a motherboard backplane from sheet metal which fits sideways on the outside of an old six bay atx box. Will add enclosure when all works.
3. Bought an 8382 Opteron to see if i can get anything going.
4. Bought the heat sink bracket for am2 and used a Dremel to shape it. Did not try to bend latch - just cut the edge off the bracket.
5. Using an 500 watt power supply until it works with one cpu.
6. Bought 2 x 2 gb of ddr2 240 pin DIMM 667MHZ ECC Registered PC2 5300 memory sticks. They must not be buffered. Buffered will not fit.

ISSUES:

Under "Setting up"

Step 2:
"Turn on the psu by jumpering a black and green wire on the 24 png with a paper clip." I assume this means the 24 pin plug that connects to the motherboard on a workstation? I assume this means leave the jumper in place and use the "On/Off? button on the power supply to turn the power on and off.

Step 3:
"During the boot press and hold Del to enter the bios." And where is "del?" If it is on a keyboard, how is the keyboard connected? Is it on something like a Lantronix over the LAN boot? HELP!

Once I get this far, I am sure I will have more questions.

fred

I think you wasted your time and money:

a - this board will not run any Windows - Linux only (unless you planning running it as VM)
b - as for today Opteron 8382 will not work with board (8360SE is the highest number)
c - you need 4 sticks of memory to make it work

step2: you are correct.
step3: Del = Delete, USB keyboard

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arima-Quad...item19bf6abd98

came across this and wondered if folks were still doing these.... the point being that it comes with a psu so I wondered if the last of the pins might be identified (the last time I read this thread there were still some unaccounted for)

I asked if they are willing to sell the PSU seperate.