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

[retro77]

Awesome, thanks. I'm planning on moving the first Arima over to the laptop hard drive. Already told it to not take any new work.

[werdwerdus]

sparky, et al:

got the x550 finally installed, but still no post. i must have something that doesn't work, i'm suspecting ram but i have 8 sticks of 512MB 1Rx4 PC2-4200R-444-12-C3 and no combination of 4 sticks works. i've also tried each of the two 8347 cpus that i have.

[shoota]

try just one stick at a time and one cpu. in cpu0 and dimm0 of course

[retro77]

Your filling the first four banks that are labeled CPU0 DIMM0; CPU0 DIMM1; CPU0 DIMM2; CPU0 DIMM3?

[AmiJIm]

Problems again.
I was messing with the bios and i saw that the mem was set to 200mhz.Strangely enough the max option i saw given was 566mhz and as so, set it at 566mhz.Note that i am using 667mhz memories.Now the board does not post.I tried to clear the cmos by removing the battery for 3-4 hours.Any ideas?
Is it really needed to remove the battery and leave it overnight to get tha bios reset on this mobo?
any ideas?

[D_A]

There's usually a jumper you need to move. Also make sure you've removed all power to the board if you're going to do the pull the battery and wait method.

[shoota]

And that's why I don't mess with this board.. I hope you get it working. But where did you see the option to change memory?

[AmiJIm]

It was something like MPC frequency.It gave me the options of Auto,200mhz which was selected and 266 ,300,.......up to 566 mhz in 33mhz steps.
It seems i need a board.PM sent .

[D_A]

Another thing that might help: pull the power, pull the battery and take out the processors, THEN leave it for a while. I can't believe that changing a setting can hose an enterprise board with no way of recovery. There has to be a way to reset to defaults.

[shoota]

Another thing that might help: pull the power, pull the battery and take out the processors, THEN leave it for a while. I can't believe that changing a setting can hose an enterprise board with no way of recovery. There has to be a way to reset to defaults.

i hear ya DA but it seems these boards are very picky. when i was testing pci cards for functionality i would say every third boot wouldn't post. that goes for every pci gpu i have.

i'm wondering if that's why some people's boards don't post. like werdwerdus's, i think he's using 400mhz ram. but when i tested his board before i sent it to him i used 533mhz ram (i think). so maybe the setting only works for 533mhz ram??

Is there a correlation going on here or am i making it up in my head? either way there has to be a way to reset to defaults

[Sparky]

Something that may be worth noting about the RAM - it was set to 200, which is probably meaning DDR2-400. So setting it to 400 would be DDR2-800 perhaps, and setting to 566 is DDR2-1133? Maybe? just a thought

[Jacka]

It was something like MPC frequency.It gave me the options of Auto,200mhz which was selected and 266 ,300,.......up to 566 mhz in 33mhz steps.
It seems i need a board.PM sent .

MCP. I think you nearly tripled the frequency of a chipset.

Also, regarding the memory, Barcelona officially supports upto PC2-5300 (DDR2 667MHz).

[retro77]

Update: Finally installed fourth CPU into second Arima. Crunching nicely on a new 500w Earthwatts PSU.

[shoota]

well that's good news, glad you're all set!

[retro77]

Jacka: I don't think those cx400's are gonna be enough. A 430w would only drive three CPUs, an x550 video card and a laptop hard drive.

[AmiJIm]

Goodmorning form Greece.
Remember that when you have installed a 1000watt or any wattage psu,the consumption will only be what your specs will need.So i per instanse use a 1000watt psu and the wattometer says i am using 670watt with a flanctuation of 30 watts.

[D_A]

Yes, but if you use a unit that is substantially bigger than you need you will lose efficiency. Most power supplies operate at their best at about 80% of capacity, high enough so that the internal losses are not a significant amount of the input power but low enough to allow some head room for surges in draw from devices starting and stopping as well as keeping the internal components cool. Once the regulators and filter caps start to get hot they become less efficient, plus if the unit is already running hot and it starts to collect dust it will gradually lose it's ability to shed that heat, which in turn makes the unit less efficient and produce more heat, eventually cooking the internals.
Of course if your only choices are between one that's a bit too big and one that's a bit too small, you'd always err on the side of over capacity, but if you have the choice you want to spec your supply at that 80% mark.

[AmiJIm]

Problems again.....
My set up ia Alive,and boots OK.But i got two velociraptors hard disks and while they work OK in windows,they are identified in Arimas bios ,can be formated with ubuntus gparted software,i cannot install the OS.It gives me the option to install the boot loader in sda,but the installer does not gives me access to the raptor.
Smart reports a healhty drive and i have tried changing the sata port to IDE and RAID config.
Currently i have installed the OS to old trusty seagate and use the raptor for file storing.
but this has to change.
I even updated the firmware on the raptor with same results.
Any ideas?

[retro77]

Get a laptop hard drive. Those Raptors are going to suck up too much juice.

I picked up a pair of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148371

Not to mention heat. These Arima's put off some heat!

[AmiJIm]

Oh boy,things are very tight in the Tai Chi thermaltake tower.How about this HD azalia sound bios thing?Could we use usb powered speakers and have sound from the onboard Azalia?

[shoota]

there's on board sound?

[retro77]

What does one need sound for? It'll steal CPU cycles from its true purpose in life...

[D_A]

It's useful so you can hear Dave's Mom whoosh by you in the stats.

[shoota]

yeah really don't want sound now..

[AmiJIm]

Hi there,
Update.
After having updated the bios,i noticed that Ati radeon X700 no longer posts .
Also if you notice,you can see that you caN Enable sata sets of ports for 2 - 1 - 0,a total of six ports though our board has only two onboard for for mpc 55.I set the bios to set port Zero,and only the two onboard posts are available.And now i can boot from WD Velociraptor.
As for the onboard azalia sound ,i removed the creative soundblaster and i get no sound icon on the desktop.I run sysinfo and no chip is present.But i plugged in USB yamaha sound speakers and i got sound and the sound icon on the desktop.Notice that back in time with windows ,i would not get sound from a pc without sound board with the usb speakers plugged in.
Also i noticed that with the new bios , i can use Lsi scsi controller.Same for an adaptec i have.With the old bios, i was getting corrupted letters while posting tha efi loader.It now works OK.
I guess the board has many bugs in the bios.
Also.What speed you get for cpu and ofr the ram in bios?
Is there any sisoft sandra program like available for linux?