Congratulations to me for having $550 less than I did 10 minutes ago! I didn't get the 128mb of PC 2100, but I did add 3 NMBs (while I can still get them so cheap from bestbyte) and a Zalman Fanmate 1.

I had to get it all from three different companies; shipping ended up hitting me for about $33; could have been much worse.

Maybe after I get everything and set it up I can write it up for everyone else to make farms

Its also kind of ironic; a while ago I decided not to upgrade this system this year and instead build a new, cool, watercooled one. The only component I haven't upgraded since then will be the video card. And its not too old either.... I don't need a folding farm, I need a psychiatrist......

I've got it all planned out... right now my only costs are computer fun and anime rentals anyways; in a few months that will change a bit when I go to college, but with what I've already saved up and the time left in summer I am confident that I'll be fine...

I don't think I have the skills to render a stick figure movie, so no need for CPU power there... all I really need is to say I've got more cycles than that other guy

what if i say mine are quieter than yours?

I'll turn mine off and laugh at your noise!

you're gonna have a hard time hearing my 'cuda IV. there's nothing else that moves in my computer... yup, i've gone completely fanless.

hmm.. but i think my keyboard is a tad bit too loud though...

btw, you'll be sure to post pics of your mini farm, won't you

I'll post more than just pics

I've already learned one important lesson- never order on a saturday, it makes the wait more painful!

my SVC package just arrived; a bit surprising, I expected neweggs to come first since the usps never even updated their tracking page to acknowledge they'd received my package....

at least newegg's is on the truck to be delivered.

SVC never ceases to amaze me with the sheer size of the packages they send and the amount of peanuts they contain...

of course, the worst was when I orders AS3 and nothing else; that was ridiculously oversized for the contents.

I just got the newegg shipment!

Initial thoughts: the air conditionings running right now, so that limits my observation (I'm just about to go turn it off) but the fortron PSU seems to be very well within SPCR limits; its 12v start up jump is much quieter than the 300w version.

the MN31N has a 40mm fan on the northbridge; that's gonna be annoying.

The retail AMD heatsink's stock fan looks to be a horrible whiner, but I can't get that plastic packaging off yet....

The mobility radeon doesn't even have a heat spreader on the GPU, much less a fan

Slam a Zalman NB cooler in place of that NB fan. I just ordered that same mobo for $53 from Directron. How do you like it?

Seems I've got two 7th week AIUHB processors; one from batch 66 and one from batch 70.

And I have no idea what the hell any of that means.

Definitely TBred B. AUIHB is the best overclocker.

$53 from directron? I hate you! I paid $95 for it... or is that a typo? I see $93 on directron.

I haven't turned it on yet though

and the page told me it was a t-bred b too.

kudos to epox, there's plenty of room for large heatsinks on the board, though the northbridge heatsink can be a little bit in the way of the clips.

Don't hate me because I'm lucky!

It was $53 (no typo)

I think it was a pricing error. Unfortunately I think its over and they found the mistake. Too bad it was after they shipped mine.

I spotted it here:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php ... did=626375

I am always trolling for steals

I'm working on the 8rda+ now for my main comp, so I'll have to get off in a minute here, but first I wanted to post the warning on the I/O shield:

Caution:
Prevent to be hurt by the sharp I/O shield,
please MUST wear glove before you
want to install the shield into your chassis.

On another note, the stock AMD heatsink seems to be a skivved aluminum with thin, rough fins. The skivved part really surprised me... its just small; it has very good potential to be cut up for other heatsinks; its underside is even pretty well lapped.

Initial F@H benchmarks show 5% lower scores on the new architecture, but the same speed! Updating drivers though, and I haven't optimized the bios.... well see how it is once I finish with all that.

Results for overclocking the proc are very dissapointing so far- I'm at 10x166 with 1.74 vcore, CPU 39°C, and I can't go 1 minute without a prime95 error.

Edit: Its not the CPU; even 6x166, 1 ghz, errors out almost immediately... I may have to RMA something, since the RAM/Mobo are still well within spec.

Edit 2: its the RAM it seems. Some notes on the 8rda+: a couple of its downsides: vcore only goes down to 1.4v. This sucks b/c you can underclock your proc all the way down to 500mhz (the 3.0 and 4.0 multiplier options don't work) Also, it almost always crashes on a reboot. I'm gonna try a bios update soon though, maybe that will fix some things...
Also, I noticed 5x166 is slow!
Furthermore, on the current revision at least, speedfan's fan speed adjustment doesn't work.

The AX-7 is a beauty. proc slightly overclocked right now, default voltage, and I've got a Vantec Stealth at 2/3 speed, and its at a toasty 41°C full load.

Yet another followup: flashed the latest BIOS, vdimm doesn't work now, speedfan still doesn't, and it turns out that the board still uses a sensor and not the thermal diode for temp reporting.

Also I have a question for everyone. I read somewhere about using AS3 + superglue to mount a heatsink; I was thinking maybe I could do this on my vid card with the stock AMD heatsink; anyone have coments on this?

Next update... the MN31N is not entirely AX-7 compatable; I had to dremel a little bit, though I ended up taking off much more than is neccesary in the installed position, I had to take off 2 fins to install it.

Edit: Great, now I feel stupid. I won't be able to test or set up my folding farm until.... I go buy some network cables; I'll have to get at least 4 of them......

I'm also proud to announce the 8rda+ seems to have solved all of my linux troubles

Okay, just got all the network cables I need, I'll be trying to set up my farm now.

The "server" for the farm is very impressive, and if it weren't for the HD, it would be a prime silence candidate, because its running a Pentium M processor; passive cooling is trivial. And when I say Pentium M, I don't mean the new Banias processor... I mean a Pentium 1 M, a blazing fast 100mhz with a typical power dissipation of 3 watts and a peak of 6 watts.

The upgraded core that followed the one I'm using was the tiny .25 um technology!

suffice it to say, this machine won't be folding.

Edit: did I mention it runs on 2.9v?

And now you found out you also forgot to buy a hub.

lol my dad gave me an 8 port switch he didn't need anymore... so my farm gets the honor of being the only comps running at a whole 100 mbps.... the hubs for the rest of our network are only capable of 10mbps

Radeonman- don't put my switch down like that!

hmm, I'm really having trouble with DHCP; I only have 1 network card for the laptop so I can't set up a second isolated network..... though at least the extremeoverclocking guide helps.

Update: after only about 2 hours of trying, I have succesfully gotten the DHCP server to start!

Hee hee. Keep updating, Zhentar. We're all rooting for you!

this is a lot more than this linux newbie bargained for.... I'm really getting my $550 worth outta this! faster computer, overclocking fun, I'll be RMAing my RAM soon (it requires a 10% overvolt to acheive its rated speed on loose timings without errors) and now I'm trying to set up a diskless folding farm on an outdated linux distro on an incredibly outdated machine, so outdated I can't even use the GUI. and now, I've finally got the first node booting to the DHCP... and I'm getting a tftp error. I don't even know what tftp is....

I'm gonna have to take a picture of my work area here.... on one side of the table has my sisters computer; sitting rather nicely neatly organized with a scanner and a printer; and then there's mine with two caseless computer; two monitors; an unbeleiveable mess of cables, a few laptops and a mess of packages and computer parts

The caseless part has actually been a blessing; the dissected front panel reset button has been very convenient for starting the node.

I'm really afraid of what's going to happen with two DHCP servers....

i noticed on EMIII's website, a small linux distro that someone from [h] made, and its about 7mb, fits perfectly on a small usb drive. you may want to look into it

and admit defeat so easily? not a chance!

I'll do it somehow, even If I have to totally destroy my linux install on this computer in attempts to figure it out!

the extremeoverclocking howto seems to fall far short of whats neccesary.........

ayayay...

ah well, while you're having fun, i've added eight more boxen. i couldn't take it anymore, everyone else and their more than one active processors. granted, these extra boxes don't fold 24/7, got only 700-odd mhz of duron/celery power, and that i've managed to get only 6 extra points so far, i'm better off than before