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

[AXm77]

@confusis: AmiJIm unsuccessfully tested 8380 with 1.0.6 BIOS (post #743)

@kirk46: So you setting F@H cruncher? If so, fill all 16 memory slots with 667MHz memory, F@H love memory bandwidth, 512MB stick are fine, ( on -bigbeta usage is ~4GB).
Yes, you can use adapters 4to8-pin, but be sure your power supply can handle load. Looks to me as 16-pin connector supplying power to cpus.

My story was: When I started F@H on my original Arima setup (4x 8354's B2, 8x 1GB 400MHz ram's), on -smp only my PPD was around 10k.
I was like: WTH my dual L5420's (2x quads @ 2.5GHz) on Win7 doing ~16k, quad Barcelona's (4x quad @ 2.2GHz) under Linux can't be that bad.
Start digging: TheKraken ~ 150% boost!!! (~ 26k PPD!!!) - lets try go "big" - not enough - loosing bonus deadline by 6~8 hours.
What's next? faster cpu's or faster memory. Got 4x 8360's B3 cheap and 8x 1GB 667 ram's.
Ram was delivered first, so after switch - another nice boost! ~35k PPD on -smp only! Another try on "big" - yes!!! - ~57min/frame on 6901 = 3.96 day = bonussss! = ~54k PPD!!!
There is hope! 8360's are ~13% faster than 8354's so from 57min/frame I was hoping for 51imn/frame boost. Replaced cpu's and surprise: temps jump up from middle 40's to high 50's,
but frame time dropped only around 2min (~55min/frame - anyone have ideas why 8360's are so ineffective? Thermal throttling maybe?). It was not worth jump on power usage, so I switched back to 8354's. Big disappointment!
Well, the only thing left, was adding more memory. To be careful I just ordered 4x 1GB 667 - another boost around ~ 8k PPD!
In time when another set of 4x 1GB 667's got delivered, I was done with 6901, and was working on 6903 - with 16x 1GB 667 and 8354's running 24/7 - 82k PPD.

P.S When I installed last 4 memory sticks my system refused to boot. Great! Looks like I got bad memory, but I installed "bad" memory in another cpu slots - working, dropped "good" one in last slots - no boot.
Even better! Must be screwed motherboard! In last effort, I removed cpu from socket and to my surprise, I saw damage on edges. Replaced it with one 8360 and everything works correctly.
That is what you saw on screenshot in my previous post.