Weird. Overnight without batt and power should do it! Maybe 48 hours? These boards are fussy beasts
Weird. Overnight without batt and power should do it! Maybe 48 hours? These boards are fussy beasts
My RAM arrivedWorking on heatsink layout and brackets at the moment, hence the aeroslots holding the coolers down >.>
I like your fan setup
Waiting on the other two to arrive so I can get on with it.
Using Deepcool Ice Edge Mini FS coolers - 80mm fans. Have used them before, they're good coolers. And that's an nVidia chipset cooler on the chipset
Hey guys, Figured I'd introduce myself. I ran across this board on eBay a while back and with a little googling found this thread. The info provided here has been invaluable. I've made some stupid mistakes though and because of that my setup has sat unplugged and unloved in the corner for far too long.
I'm glad to see there has been some progress on the boards, I'd like to get my hands on a copy of the 1.0.6 bios but the link provided has gone dead. I'd be happy to put it up on my hosting if I am able to get my hands on a copy.
Now, I mentioned stupid mistakes.. well where to begin..
Mistake one. I bought cheap eps conversion parts. They were wired completely wrong, backwards and one of the 12v lines was wired into the 5v part of the plug. Nothing I couldn't handle but I'm glad I caught it before I plugged it all up.
Mistake two. Unaware of the b2 Stepping/TLB Patch issue, I bought 4 8354 b2 stepping opterons. They were dirt cheap and I thought I had gotten a real deal on them. They work, but I believe the real capabilities are hurt due to the issues with them. I am looking to get my hands on a nice set of 8360se's or the like to replace them with.
Mistake three, sort of.. Heat sinks, I have a fine collection of 939/940/socket F heat sinks now. I tracked down, traded and bought a bunch of various heat sinks only to have none of them properly fit the 2 closest sockets. I ended up running 4 stock Phenom heat sinks, after have taken a sawzall to one of them to make them fit. The hacking didn't hurt the performance of the heat sink but it does look fairly ugly. I am looking to remedy this and have contacted AXm77 to see if he can help me with some 212+ mounts.
Now, Onto everyone's favorite part.. Pictures.
And the "Modified" phenom heatsink.
I plan on modifying a PSU with the correct plugs 16 and 18 pin, no more adapters. I'll also be adding a toggle switch to it so I can turn the psu off with out reaching around and unplugging it. Anyone know/have a source on which plugs I'll need in order to do this? I saw someone else had done it earlier in the thread.
Kayin sourced them IIRC. You can get the 16 pin on eBay, but no idea on the 18.
I'll grab a copy of my 1.06 BIOS and upload it to my host, as well as an update manual when I get my new PSU wired up (http://www.ebay.com/itm/130669938008...84.m1497.l2648)
Updated manual will have more GPU compatibility data, as well as a few tweaks. I need to get some photos of the BIOS to do that section.
I'll be buying a blue board soon and swapping my 1.06 chip over - my green board doesn't match my colour scheme for my build
Updated manual:
http://www.aurora-design.net/ARGO11-Manual.pdf (3.29MB)
Whoa! That poor heatsink :P
As for the PSU mod; I'm not sure where to get 16 or 18 pin Molex-type connectors that would be keyed right for this board. I would recommend using the connectors from the EPS adapters you already have. If you're up for it, pop the PSU open and de-solder everything from the ATX harness except the 3 +12v lines, 4 Ground lines and the Power-ON line. The EPS adapters will use the same pins as the ATX (20/24-contact) and P4 (4-contact) connectors so you can either use a pin extractor to swap the lines out of the defunct ATX connector, or cut and splice. Do the same with some 4-pin Drive connectors for extra +12v lines. It's probably safe to have only two +12v lines from the PSU actually going into each 8-connector block; just get some appropriately-coloured 16 or 18-gauge wire and run splices between the pins so they're all powered. If you want the connectors to look more streamlined you could just crazy-glue them together into 16-pin and 14-pin blocks. I'd recommend leaving the last 4 pins on the 18-connector block empty since they're not documented right now. Wire the Power-ON line and one Ground line into a connector like This and install a conveniently-located toggle switch in your case with a corresponding plug and you'll have a power switch!
Anarcho-Hippie Hackasaurus Rex!
Great job on the manual, confusis! As far as accessing the BIOS, does the bug with it not being accessible with some processors still stand in the 1.0.6 firmware? I'm building my system with B3 stepping CPUs and it would be a hassle to have to get a different CPU just for accessing the BIOS setup.
Last edited by HTownDowner; 09-13-2012 at 01:13 PM.
Anarcho-Hippie Hackasaurus Rex!
Not sure - I've only tested with b3's. I.E. can get into 1.0.6 BIOS setup with B3'sOriginally Posted by HTownDowner
Re: manual
If anyone has tested any CPUs or GPUs not listed in the manual, let me know with your results, and I will update the manual. Will also update it with the BIOS stepping issue. I should get a stack of 10 or so BIOS chips flashed with 1.0.6 and onsell them to folks at cost
I spent some time poking around mouser and i think i bought the right plugs.. for the 3 bucks i dont mind being wrong. Ill find out when they get here.
I do plan on modifying a psu and removing unneeded plugs, wires and what not. I'll post pictures as I go along.
Last edited by Veeb0rg; 09-13-2012 at 08:20 PM.
If any one looks for that connectors, Molex part no. 39-01-2160 - 16 pins and 39-01-2180 for 18 pins.
Mouser - 16 pins = $1.17
Mouser - 18 pins = $1.03
confusis i like the use of the pci-e bracket
Yup those are the ones I ordered
$2.20 worth of plugs, $30USD shipping to me! Ummmmmm... damn. Maybe not
it was like $5 shipping for the 2 plugs and 40 of the pins for them *I bought extra because I'm an idiot and will certainly ruin a few*
Yeah, I'm in New Zealand though.
09-10-2012 10:32 PM #925
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No reaction... Maybe another method ? I've set wrong freq for memory and mobo not booting.
I did the same thing. Could never get it to boot again. Had to have a guy flash me another bios chip. The link to him is in one of my previous posts on this thread.Then some time after that I hooked up another power supply which for some reason hosed the board. (it was the right power supply, should have worked.) I ended up getting another board from the guy on ebay for $40. These boards are flakey as hell.
Last edited by CaliTech; 09-14-2012 at 05:32 PM.
Try http://nz.mouser.com/ ?
Same shipping charges :/
I don`t know if the BIOS is nulled but I get sight of the memory was damaged when I changed the position of the modules several times. Sonow I am waiting for the new RAM and mobo is without the battery now. Maybe this period will be sufficient for resetting the BIOS.
They have plenty at New Zealand Farnell.
http://sideparting.com/1.06.bin
1.06 BIOS that was posted earlier.
Finally have (almost) all the parts for my build!
- 4x Opty 8350 HE
- 4x Coolermaster Hyper 101 Heatsinks
- 8x 2GB Micron (IBM OEM branded) PC-5300 ECC/REG 1.8v
- Geforce 8800GT 1GB
- Cheap PCI soundcard with CMI-8138 chipset (well-supported in Arch Linux with ALSA)
I was able to get everything except the CPUs locally through little resellers/recyclers. Go Houston!
To Do-
- Buy a new power supply- the cheap 600W unit in the photo was DOA- which I didn't find out until AFTER I'd started to modify it. Oops. I think I'll be more comfortable with >750W anyways.
- Modify power supply to remove 24-pin connector and old-style Molex 4-pin drive connectors, add more EPS connectors and wire PWR_ON to hard switch. I think I'm going to keep the 5v Standby as well for powering a status LED or something.
- Fabricate retention brackets for heatsinks. I could just buy the proper plastic ones, but where's the fun in that?
- Hack off a bit of the slot cover on the GPU to clear the power/reset switches. I've already test-fit the card with the cover off and it does clear the Capacitors behind the slot, barely.
- Eventually fabricate a custom case!
I'll make separate posts for the PSU and Heatsink jobs as I work on them. So excited to finally get this beast running!
Last edited by HTownDowner; 09-16-2012 at 09:36 PM.
Anarcho-Hippie Hackasaurus Rex!
I'd go simple. Just hotwire a regular PS for now until you get the system up, running and stable. Then get fancy. I like where you're going though. That's pretty sweet. You should check out the team work going on in the badge hunter thread. Makes me want to dig up my Arima just add more cores for the cause....it probably won't boot and will require me to sit in front of it cursing for 3 to 5 days before it decides that this time that I power it on, it'll POST
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