Building advice requested: Linux, Athlon X2 3800+, ECC, 2D

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Epaminondas
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Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2006 6:49 pm

Building advice requested: Linux, Athlon X2 3800+, ECC, 2D

Post by Epaminondas » Thu Mar 02, 2006 8:44 pm

Greetings!

I have been lurking and learning for a little while.

First build. Help would be appreciated.

I am trying to put together a fairly quiet dual core computer exclusively running Linux, utilizing ECC RAM, primarily for using 2D applications.

I would like to use a passively cooled motherboard that supports ECC RAM with a passively cooled nVidia video card in a fairly well-ventilated case (120 mm lower front intake fan).

Typical applications for this computer: Firefox (Web browser), Thunderbird (email), The GIMP (Photoshop clone), and Internet telephony. Largely 2D. No interest in gaming. More interest in undervolting than in overclocking.

I would like to run this computer for perhaps four years or so. Running Linux, it would be best to avoid ATI and ASUS hardware (nothing against these companies, there just tend to be some incompatibilities with Linux).

So far I am looking at the following:

CPU – Retail AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ / stock HSF $300 -$330
Motherboard – Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI $104
RAM – 1 GB of ECC RAM $?
Video card – One GIGABYTE Geforce 6200T 16X PCIe (64 MB) $46
Zalman adjustable bracket (for a fan) for chipset/MOFSET cooling $6
Fans – 120mm, 92 mm, 80mm (in hand) $0
Zalman fanmates X3 (in hand) $0
Hard drive - Samsung SpinPoint SP2504C 250GB SATA-II $93
Case – EverCase E4252BB-53 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower $35.50
Power Supply – SeaSonic S12-330 ATX12V 330W $59
CDRW – Plextor 48/24/48 (in hand) $0
Floppy – Samsung (in hand) $0
Monitor – Samsung Synchmaster 957MB 19” CRT (in hand) $0
(to be later replaced at some point by a DVI LCD)
Keyboard and mouse – (in hand) $0

Total: about $640-670 for this build plus the cost of 1GB of ECC RAM plus shipping.

Planned airflow: input via an undervolted 120 mm bottom front intake fan, output via the Seasonic power supply's 120 mm fan. Other fan holes to be taped closed. I am considering putting in one big slow quiet internal fan run off a Zalman PCI bracket, aimed at the passive chipset heatsink, the MOSFET area, and possibly at the videocard.

I plan to decouple the hard drive by placing it on a “Blue Ice” bag on the front floor of the case just behind the front intake fan.

QUESTIONS!

(1)Will this motherboard support ECC RAM? If not, what ECC non-ASUS passively-cooled motherboard might be a good choice?
(2) What ECC RAM to buy?
(3) Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ - Manchester vs. Toledo core??
(4) What case modification does it take to put a 120 mm fan as a lower front intake fan in the Evercase 4252? Drill screw holes? Tin snips? Impossible? Alternatives?
(5)Any reason to get any different Seasonic power supply than the 330W? (PCIe connection? Possible future cheap SLI ?)
(6)For the above stated usage - primarily 2D – including some GIMP (Photoshop clone) work - would upgrading from the Gigabyte GeForce 6200 to a Gigabyte Geforce 6600LE 128MB DDR PCIe X16 Video Card ($76) make any particular sense?
(7) Any thoughts on a PCI slot input cooling fan (undervolted?) to help cool the passively-cooled Gigabyte 16X PCIe videocard?


Help would certainly be appreciated.


Thank you,

Epaminondas

geekbanter
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Post by geekbanter » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:47 pm

I'm sure others can give you a better idea on what CPU to get, but I have some questions of my own.

(1) Why an SLI board? It seems that 3d acceleration isn't important in this system so an SLI board wouldn't make a lot of sense.

(2)There is a potential problem with boards using mcp chipsets. I know that my particular distro had issues with a number of chipsets utilizing mcp for a while, and I don't know if the issues would relate to this particular board, or if the problems are still occurring. Just a caveat.

(3) A recommendation really. I mad the mistake of buying a "cheap case" once. Bottom line is that I found out that spending a little extra to get a better case is worth it, the shipping is going to kill you either way.

(4) What is with needing ECC? It didn't seem like this would be a server.

(5)Looks to me like the video card won't need extra cooling. Looks OK to me anyways.

(6) Manchester vs. Toledo Core - Toledo has a bigger cache and is E6. Both seem about the same to, but I'm not a CPU aficionado.

Just some thoughts...

frostedflakes
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Post by frostedflakes » Fri Mar 03, 2006 12:29 am

I think geekbanter brings up some valid points. Because your 3D demands are minimal/non-existant, you may want to consider a board based off the nVidia 6100 or 6150 chipset. Passive, onboard video, and because it's nVidia, Linux support should be very good.

As far as ECC goes, I'm not even sure if consumer motherboards support this feature, and even if they do I doubt its helpful for average Joe. Just grab 1GB of normal RAM, Corsair Value-Select is name-brand and super-cheap (last time I checked around $70 for 1GB).

Instead of the Zalman fan bracket, you may want to consider a Thermalright SI-120 heatsink and 120mm fan. Should be more effective and quieter than the stock AMD heatsink, and airflow from the large 120mm fan should help to cool the chipset and power circuitry.

Also, Antec SLK3000-B is a good quiet case and can be found for around $50. Antec SLK3700-BQE is similar in design but includes a 350w Antec PSU. Believe they can be picked up for around $80 or so.

Epaminondas
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Post by Epaminondas » Fri Mar 03, 2006 6:56 am

Geekbanter. Frosted Flakes.


Valid questions.

Thank you.

Please feel free to shoot down the following:

ECC RAM. Because I am a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy. I have always wanted ECC RAM for that warm and fuzzy feeling it would give me. Hey - some people like fast cars, fast horses, fast women - I like the idea of error-correcting RAM. I would like it if I do not have to compromise this one away, but reality does have a way of interfering with life. If I can't have it, I can't have it.

SLI. The SLI board is not for the SLI - agreed, I do not need SLI at all - it is for the zillion other features currently stuffed into SLI boards. I do lose a PCI slot that way, but with all the features built-in on board, I do not anticipate ever needing much in the way of add-on cards, anyway.

MCP chipsets. I do not know the term. Google is my friend - I will look into "mcp chipset" and "Linux."

Cheap Evercase 4252. Well, I have thought about this a wee bit: (1) The EverCase E4252 is #4 on the SilentPCReview list of recommended cases. The higher-rated Antecs either have had door-warp problems or force you to buy an Antec power supply with the case when I would prefer a separate Seasonic power supply. The #3 Silverstone Temjin TJ06 is lager than I need, places the drives vertically, and the bottom tunnel may interfere with my placing a hard drive on the front floor of the case in my preferred configuration. That leaves me at choice #4 of the Evercase 4252, which seems to do everything I need. The low cost of the 4252 is merely a pleasant and surprising bonus. (2) I only need one CDRW, one floppy, and one hard drive - I do not really need a case that holds eleven drives. (3) With a single hard drive on the front bottom of the case decoupled from the case via it sitting on top of a "Blue Ice" bag, I do not need grommeted hard drive bays or a rubber band suspension set-up for my hard drive. Just room on the front floor of the case, preferably sitting in front of a nice big quiet undervolted 120 mm intake fan. (4) I have had excellent quiet cooling results with a 1.2 MHz Celeron setup in my current case (a Fong Kai 604) with an undervolted 80 mm front intake fan blowing directly on a quiet Samsung hard drive sitting on the front floor of the case on a "Blue Ice" bag, with the 120 mm exhaust from my Fortron 350 PSU as the sole exhaust - all other fan holes taped shut. I would like to try to repeat the success of that air-flow pattern with the hotter dual core CPU with a similar case layout, but with a larger (120 mm) intake fan. Unfortunately, my Fong Kai 604 does not have room for a front 120mm fan.

6100 and 6150 boards - I have looked at the 6100s and the 6150s - with my 2D video needs, they initially seemed a perfect fit. However, I will need DVI out for the future DVI LCD monitor - that knocks out some boards - I believe the Biostar and the Gigtabyte do not have DVI outputs. As I understand it, ASUS is the only one of these boards supporting ECC RAM - and with Linux, I had best not go ASUS. MSI's looks like the best of the bunch with their new 6150 supporting DVI out, but the MSI 6150 does not support ECC RAM and, as with most brand new hardware, there are negative reports in regards to Linux support at this point. So I figured that I would give up on the 6100 and 6150 boards while they mature and go for a mature platform - i.e., an ATX board that has been out for awhile. Plus a cheap ($46) video card that has been out for a while so Linux support has had time to catch up with it.

Video card cooling. None extra needed - great! - thank you.

Manchester vs. Toledo care - I still haven't figured that one out completely. Anyone know which runs cooler? If they both run the same heatwise, I guess I might as well get the one with the larger cache.

Antec SLK3000-B - that is my next consideration after the Evercase 4252. I need to look at which one is smaller (I don't need much case, sizewise) and heavier (I do prefer heavier construction).

<< Instead of the Zalman fan bracket, you may want to consider a Thermalright SI-120 heatsink and 120mm fan. Should be more effective and quieter than the stock AMD heatsink, and airflow from the large 120mm fan should help to cool the chipset and power circuitry. >>

You have me thinkin'!

I think that I will try stock CPU cooling first and see how it goes. If that doesn't work for me, I will look into the Thermalright SI-120 heatsink and 120mm fan.

Thanks.


Last call - anyone know of a good passively cooled non-ASUS motherboard that will support the Athlon X2 3800+ and ECC RAM? Failing that, an ECC Athlon X2 3800+ board where the chipset fan can EASILY be switched with a passive heatsink or a quiet HSF or HSF combination?

If not - non-ECC it is.


Thank you for your help -

Epaminondas

jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:32 am

Hey - some people like fast cars, fast horses, fast women - I like the idea of error-correcting RAM.
:lol:
Manchester vs. Toledo care - I still haven't figured that one out completely. Anyone know which runs cooler? If they both run the same heatwise, I guess I might as well get the one with the larger cache.
Yup, they seem about the same in terms of heat dissipation, so the one with the larger cache is the obvious choice.

X2 Review
In theory, with double the cache, Athlon64 X2 processors based on the "Toledo" core are more complex (and therefore, more expensive) compared to their "Manchester" counterparts. However, AMD is being uncharacteristically vague about the differences between these two architectures, stating all members of the Athlon64 X2 have a die size ranging in the ~200mm range with about 233 million transistors, fairly large for a single CPU, but not terrible considering the amount of processing power available with dual cores.

What this hints to us is that Manchester cores are likely Toledo cores with half the cache disabled on the die itself. This is typically done to improve chip yields - whereas if the cache on the processor isn't perfect, it gets disabled and sold as a lesser product. This would seemingly match up with our CPUID shots above, as you can see the Toledo core is has newer stepping codes compared to the Manchester core. This also matches up with our power and heat tests which you'll see later, where we see almost no differences between the two processors in these areas - whereas one would think a processor with half the cache would consume slightly less power.
I have to agree with the two previous posters, going for ECC RAM will unnecessarily limit your choice of motherboard and probably provide little if any real-world benefit for your purposes.

Erssa
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Post by Erssa » Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:38 am

jaganath wrote:I have to agree with the two previous posters, going for ECC RAM will unnecessarily limit your choice of motherboard and probably provide little if any real-world benefit for your purposes.
I have to disagree here. Going for ECC RAM will not limit options by much. However going for registered ECC memory would severely limit the options and increase the costs.

geekbanter
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Post by geekbanter » Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:09 am

SLI. The SLI board is not for the SLI - agreed, I do not need SLI at all - it is for the zillion other features currently stuffed into SLI boards. I do lose a PCI slot that way, but with all the features built-in on board, I do not anticipate ever needing much in the way of add-on cards, anyway.
Nforce4 Ultra chipsets are the same, but with SLI disabled. I'm not sure what exactly you need onboard, but I've found these boards which might fit the bill.

EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra
Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9
ASRock 939Dual-SATA2
MSI K8N Neo4-F
ABIT KN8 Ultra
DFI nF4 Ultra-Infinity
AOpen nCK804Ua-LFS

I can personally vouch for the Epox 9NPA+Ultra and Asrock Dual Sata II. I own both boards and have been happy with both. The Asrock lacks onboard firewire, the Epox needs a zalman nb47j. Both of these systems have been rock solid (48hr prime95 on both). The Epox board overclocks a little better. With the same CPU and ram Epox overclocks (for me) to 242fsb, while the asrock eeks out 235fsb. My Epox board is using the very popular Corasir Value ram, running PCLinuxOS. My max uptime so far has been 56 days, but I had to power off for a scheduled power outage. I don't know how long the uptime could be for the asrock as it gets shutdown at night, but I'm sure it would do quite well.

You can click my sig to see my system. 8)
MCP chipsets. I do not know the term. Google is my friend - I will look into "mcp chipset" and "Linux."
I checked on this and it was a number of nforce2 boards with the mcp problem. Mcp is pretty much just integrated audio I think, at least that was the issue others were facing in Linux.
Just room on the front floor of the case, preferably sitting in front of a nice big quiet undervolted 120 mm intake fan.
I don't know if your case would need an intake, but its always a good idea to get extra fans, even if they just get shoved in a box for later use. I highly recommend Yate Loons and Nexus, I've been happy with both when used in conjunction with a fanmate.

The SI-120 should be a great heatsink, but I feel obligated to throw out the obligatory "get a Ninja" as an alternative to at least consider. At Jab-tech.com the ninja is about $35 while the SI-120 is $45, but make sure to get whatever you will be more comfortable having in your system.

For the video card, feel free to get whatever you want, so long as its a nvidia card.

As for the ECC RAM, I don't think you will ever see a difference. One of my other computers had ECC registered ram (came with it), but I replaced it with higher capacity non-ecc ram and I haven't had any stability problems, but the increased capacity sure helped.

Cheers,

Epaminondas
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Post by Epaminondas » Sat Mar 04, 2006 9:23 am

Well - the ECC idea seems to be biting the dust.

And it was such a nice idea, too.

Looks like I will never be President for Life of the World Council, either. :-(

_________________________________________

Geekbanter wrote:
(2)There is a potential problem with boards using mcp chipsets. I know that my particular distro had issues with a number of chipsets utilizing mcp for a while, and I don't know if the issues would relate to this particular board, or if the problems are still occurring. Just a caveat.
Thanks for the heads-up.

Never noticed the term "MCP" before, but Google reveals most: “MCP” seems to be nVidia marketspeak for all the nForce chipsets.

MCP = “Media Communications Processor.” The term “MCP” is associated with the chipsets on at least the nVidia nForce2 through the nForce4 boards: “MCP incorporates cutting-edge networking, security, and storage technologies.” “Native Gigabit Ethernet, NVIDIA Firewall, Advanced RAID and Storage Support.” Etc., etc., etc.

Linux troubles seem to have been reported on all new nVidia MCP chipsets - until the Linux kernel catches up and things (mostly) get fixed. This is typical of Linux and much hardware out there: currently, for example, there are problems with Linux and the MCP chipset in the new nVidia 6100 and 6150 boards – but the upgrades in the kernel are reported to be on their way.

So - I figure I will stick with hardware that has been out a while. For example, the Gigabyte motherboard I have been looking at is getting to the f8 or f9 BIOS update - they have been squashing bugs for a while.

_____________________________________________________

<< Retail AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ >>

Manchester vs. Toledo core.

Most confusing. Most confusing.

Thank you, Jaganath, for the gamepc write up (7/13/2005) - it gave me a good place to start reading. Good information, but it looks like the X2 3800+ may not have been out when that was written - the X2 3800+ does not seem to follow the conventions of the faster Toledo and Manchester Athlon X2s.

From what I can gather here (8/01/05):
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q3/at ... dex.x?pg=1
the Manchester core is probably the way to go with the X2 3800+.

As to the differences between the E4 and the E6 steppings - I do not have that figured out, yet.

I guess I will order a Manchester from Newegg and hope for the best.
________________________________________________________

Thanks for the motherboard suggestions - much appreciated - I am lookin' and thinkin' about what might be the best fit for my needs and giving the user reviews on Newegg a close gander.

I note that most of the suggested motherboards have chipset heat-sink fans.

Question - how difficult is it to replace the stock chipset fans on these motherboards with the Zalman chipset cooler?

Does doing so void warranties?

I have been aiming at the Gigabyte boards and Gigabyte video cards due to Gigabyte's focus on passive (quiet!) cooling - but if changing out chipset fans isn't too much trouble, that would open up a lot of other possibilities.
___________________________________________________

Just by way of explanation:

Reasons for my preferring something like the Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI over the Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9. despite the higher price and the presence of the superfluous (for me) SLI, has been:

Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI:
Passive (quiet) chipset cooling
1000MHz Hyper Transport (2000 MT/s) (perhaps slightly faster)
SATA II (including Native Command Queuing) (perhaps slightly faster)
Lotsa bells and whistles

Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9:
Passive (quiet) chipset cooling
800MHz Hyper Transport (1600MT/s)
SATA I
Fewer bells and whistles
_____________________________________________

Oh - the fans I have lying around are mostly different sizes of Panaflo LIAs.

Why the preference for Yate Loons and Nexus?


Thanks for the guidance-

Epaminondas

geekbanter
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Post by geekbanter » Sat Mar 04, 2006 12:27 pm

Thanks for the motherboard suggestions - much appreciated - I am lookin' and thinkin' about what might be the best fit for my needs and giving the user reviews on Newegg a close gander.

I note that most of the suggested motherboards have chipset heat-sink fans.

Question - how difficult is it to replace the stock chipset fans on these motherboards with the Zalman chipset cooler?

Does doing so void warranties?

I have been aiming at the Gigabyte boards and Gigabyte video cards due to Gigabyte's focus on passive (quiet!) cooling - but if changing out chipset fans isn't too much trouble, that would open up a lot of other possibilities.
Yes, changing out the heatsink does void the warranty, so make sure the board boots up and runs fine before changing out any heatsinks. Changing out the heatsinks is pretty easy, on my Epox 9NPA I just had to sqeeze the plastic clips off the back of the board, twist (very carefully!) the heatsink off the NB, clean the area and attach the NB47J. It was nerve-racking since I had never changed out a NB heatsink before, but it was really simple to do.
Just by way of explanation:

Reasons for my preferring something like the Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI over the Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9. despite the higher price and the presence of the superfluous (for me) SLI, has been:
I'm not sure how much a difference a 800MHz vs 1000MHz HT will make, all I know is that when I overclocked I had to drop my HT from 5x (1000MHz) to 4x(8000MHZ), here is an example how the hyper transport works:

My board: 242fsb X 9x mulitplier = 2178MHz (total CPU speed, stock is 1.8GHz)
242fbs X 5x HT = 1210 is far over the 1000MHz limit, so I had to drop my HT down to 4x. 242fsb X 4x = 968. I guess this is related to the maximum throughput of the chipset.

I followed this guide The Somewhat Complete AMD 64 Overclocking Guide, it does a good job of explaining what all the motherboard jargon is, I highly recommend taking a look at the guide.

As for the previously mentioned motherboards, here is a list of all the missing goodies on each board.

Epox 9NPA+ Ultra: 1394b (but it does have 2x 1394a)

Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9: SATA II / 1000MHz HT (but it does have 3x 1394b / 4x SATA I)

ASRock 939Dual-SATA2: 1394 a or b / gigabit lan (only 10/100mbps) (but it does have passive heatsinks, 2x SATA I, 1x SATA II)

MSI K8N Neo4-F: 1394 a or b / SATA II (but it does have 4x SATA I)

ABIT KN8 Ultra: 1394 a or b (but it does have 4x SATA II / max 8Gig RAM)

DFI nF4 Ultra-Infinity: unsure about integrated audio (but it does have 2x 1394a / 4x SATA II )

AOpen nCK804Ua-LFS: 1394 a or b / SATA II (but it does have 4x SATA I)

Of these boards it seems the Epox, ABit, and DFI have the most goodies.
Oh - the fans I have lying around are mostly different sizes of Panaflo LIAs.

Why the preference for Yate Loons and Nexus?
If you've got some panaflo L1as laying around I'm sure thats fine, its just always a good idea to switch out stock fans anywhere you can with better quality quieter fans. I only recommended YL and Nexus because YL are a faster, but cheaper version of the Nexus (the #1 quiet case fan). YL=$6, Nexus =$15

Epaminondas
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Post by Epaminondas » Sun Mar 05, 2006 8:08 pm

The more I learn the more tempted I am to get the Antec SLK3000B over the Evercase 4252.

The SLK3000B is only eight dollars more (delivered) than the 4252, includes a 120mm fan (the 4252 at the lower price level does not), is a little bigger and is apparently heavier than the 4252, and Newegg reviews are much more favourable in regard to the SLK3000B than the 4252. Plus, of course, there is the information on SPCR.

I will probably end up buying the SLK3000B.

Thanks for aiming me in the right direction.

________________________________________________

Geekbanter,

The overclocking guide is most interesting - thank you. I now understand the 800 vs.1000 HT issue much better than I did before. Of course - I did not understand the issue at all before. ;-)

I have been thinking more towards undervolting than towards overclocking, but I am beginning to get tempted - it might be fun to have the flexibility to be able to learn a bit about both (though perhaps not at the same time). But in the final analysis, quiet is the overriding factor for me.


Question – can you overclock without heating up a passively-cooled chipset? I.e., can you overclock the CPU without it affecting the chipset? Or does CPU overclocking and heating up the chipset go hand-in-hand?

If the choice is between quiet and overclocking in regards to the chipset cooling - I would rather have the quiet.

Thoughts?
_____________________________________________

More questions:

(1) Which thermal paste would you recommend for a first-timer - who is probably not going to get it right the first time?

(2) Which overclocking/benchmarking/temperature/stress testing/burn-in software do you recommend for use with Linux?

(3) What memory timings are you running Corsair Value RAM at on your current motherboards? 2.5-3-3-7? Or do your motherboards even give you that degree of fine-tuning in the BIOS? (the BIOS on my current computer just gives RAM settings as “Standard,” “Fast,” and “Turbo” - but I have no idea at what numbers the RAM actually runs – the computer was set “Fast” by default, so I have left it there).

(4) On your current Epox and Asrock boards, can you flash the BIOS without using Windows or DOS? I do not have either Windows or DOS on my current machine, nor do I plan to have put Windows or DOS on my planned build. I do not really know how to use those OSs - just Linux (and pre-OSX Macintoshes).
_____________________________________________

I am looking at the boards that you have recommended, with particular attention to the readers' comments on Newegg. I also need to look at Linux compatibility – everyday usage plus updating the BIOS when needed – plus I need to think as to whether or not I am up for replacing the chipset HSF, or whether it would be best for me to just go with a MB that comes with passive cooling.

The Epox, Abit, DFI and Gigabyte boards are now all on the short list.


Slowly putting ideas together: Non-ECC RAM. Antec SLK3000B.

Figuring out the motherboard seems to be the next challenge - I have more work to do to reach that decision.


Thanks for the help -

Epaminondas

hravn
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Post by hravn » Mon Mar 06, 2006 12:11 am

Epaminondas wrote: Question – can you overclock without heating up a passively-cooled chipset? I.e., can you overclock the CPU without it affecting the chipset? Or does CPU overclocking and heating up the chipset go hand-in-hand?
The chipset temperature shouldn't be affected by the overclock (maybe slightly) as long as you don't increase the chipset voltage (can be needed for high overclocks). Another advice when it comes to overclocking would be to get the Opteron 165 instead of an X2.
Epaminondas wrote: (1) Which thermal paste would you recommend for a first-timer - who is probably not going to get it right the first time?
I guess everyone will recommend Arctic Silver. It's not that hard to work with, just don't use too much. A good rule of thumb is to just put so much on that you can almost read the lettering on the CPU.
Epaminondas wrote: (2) Which overclocking/benchmarking/temperature/stress testing/burn-in software do you recommend for use with Linux?
Not knowing a lot about Linux, I'd still say that you should check out the ultimate boot CD. It has CPU burn, Memtest86 and Prime95 (and is actually based on Linux!).

geekbanter
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Post by geekbanter » Mon Mar 06, 2006 12:33 am

I will probably end up buying the SLK3000B.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
I have been thinking more towards undervolting than towards overclocking, but I am beginning to get tempted - it might be fun to have the flexibility to be able to learn a bit about both (though perhaps not at the same time). But in the final analysis, quiet is the overriding factor for me.
You can undervolt and overclock at the same time, you just won't be able to reach as high a level as you can with stock or higher voltage. My board only allows me to undervolt my AMD64 3000+ Venice to 1.4V, Epox has yet to offer lower voltages in their bios. My bros machine has the same CPU @ 1.25V and I could overclock to about 230fsb. It all depends on your setup.

As for NB temps I've no idea how they work out, they seem to follow the beat of their own drummer. You would think CPU intensive processes, such as gaming would raise the NB temps, but in my testing my temps did whatever they felt like at the time. So the CPU-overclock relationship is fuzzy, but setting a higher voltage on the NB would surely lead to higher temps.
More questions:

(1) Which thermal paste would you recommend for a first-timer - who is probably not going to get it right the first time?

(2) Which overclocking/benchmarking/temperature/stress testing/burn-in software do you recommend for use with Linux?
1) Get yourself a big ol' tube of Ceramique (22g). Its cheap, easy to work with, plentiful, and is a good performer. It took me three attempts to mount my Ninja right the first time, I was glad I didn't get AS5

2)stress testing- CPU prime95 (sprime statically linked), GPU QJuliaGPU (has depends, havn't run it), monitoring GKrellM and superkaramba, and OF COURSE FOLDING@HOME :D. I don't know of any benchmarking software

check my screenshot for my monitoring setup

3) Memory timings:
Mine (Epox 9NPA+) 1T-2.5-3-3-7@DDR400 (242fsb)
Bros (Asrock DSII) 2T-2.5-3-3-8@DDR400 (230fsb)
Both boards allow for fine tuning, Asrock has some "weird" options like "compatability mode" and "flexibility mode" or something like that. It just takes some tinkering to get it set optimally.

4) I'm pretty sure both allow you to build bootable disketts in Linux, though I'm not sure. I've always used the Windows flash for my board since I don't have a floppy on my machine.

Cheers, :D

Edit: hravn submitted before me, I also recommend the utlimate boot cd, only drawbacks are some tests and tools won't run depending on hardware, and no temp monitoring. Advantage P95 on linux, start it in a console and go about business as usual. :)

Epaminondas
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2006 6:49 pm

Post by Epaminondas » Wed Mar 08, 2006 4:41 pm

Hravn. Geekbanter.

Thanks for the help!

Sorry that this is long but I have been looking into all your suggestions - it has taken a little while.

(1) Arctic Silver 5 vs. Arctic Silver Ceramique.

I'll be buying the smaller volume since I only expect to put one computer together every four years or so, and the smaller volume is still probably more than I need for multiple applications. I note that there is only about a dollar's difference between Arctic Silver 5 and Arctic Silver Ceramique when ordered in the small volume that I need.

Reading Newegg reviews, people seem to be very happy with either.

Enthusiast review sites indicate that Ceramique typically runs heatsinks a couple of degrees cooler than Arctic Silver 3 did (circa 2003). And that Arctic Silver 5 typically runs heatsinks a couple of degrees cooler than Ceramique. This would suggest that Arctic Silver 5 is now the more effective product.

If cost is not a significant part of the equation, is there any reason to go with Ceramique over Arctic Silver 5?

Ease of use? Ease of cleanup? Better for the novice?

If not I will probably go with Arctic Silver 5.

Thoughts?

(2) The information about chipset heat being fairly independent of mild overclocking is most helpful. Thank you.

(3)
Another advice when it comes to overclocking would be to get the Opteron 165 instead of an X2.
I think I understand.

As I understand it, the Opteron 165 overclocks particularly well, even at stock voltages. However, with it's greater cache size the Opteron 165 is a 110 Watt chip while the Athlon X2 3800+ Manchester is an 89 Watt chip. I understand that the larger cache on the Opteron 165 does not seem to equate to substantially higher performance in most settings.

Even at similar prices, since quiet (e.g. cool-running) is more important to me than overclocking, I figure that the Athlon X2 3800+ is probably that better chip for my purposes.

Yes? No?

Thoughts?

(4)
I'd still say that you should check out the ultimate boot CD. It has CPU burn, Memtest86 and Prime95 (and is actually based on Linux!).
Alrighty.

I downloaded the latest - UltimateBootCD 3.4 - and have been playing with it on my current machine (my faithful $199 Walmart 1.0 GHz Celeron Linux special - circa 2002) for a day and overnight.

Incredible CD! Thank you.

Still exploring.

The Samsung HD utilities are very nice to have on board.

I ran Memtest86+ x5 without error overnight. That and the other five memory test applications on the UBCD should be useful for testing RAM overnight at different voltages and timings and such when I get my new build put together.

The four CPU stress applications on the UBCD, however, give me pause. As Geekbanter notes, I cannot run any of them while monitoring the temperatures on my motherboard, and I am a little leery of running something called "Lucifer" without being able to monitor the temperature while doing so. And I need to do the stress testing with temperature monitoring to see whether or not my cooling strategies are actually working. So I need another solution for stress-testing the CPU while monitoring temperatures.

(5)
The Somewhat Complete AMD 64 Overclocking Guide,
I have read the above and now understand most of it.

Good stuff! It has me oriented. Thank you.

(6) Any idea where to get 120mm Yate Loons with motherboard monitoring of RPMs? Nice and slow- around 1000 RPM or so would probably be fine (or I guess that I can just slow them down with Fanmates).

(7)
stress testing- CPU prime95 (sprime statically linked), GPU QJuliaGPU (has depends, havn't run it), monitoring GKrellM and superkaramba, and OF COURSE FOLDING@HOME Very Happy.
Running Fedora Core 4, I was able to download GKrellM via YUMEX using the standard Fedora repositories (base, updates-released, extras) plus the livna repository.

These others applications you mention do not seem to be available in the Fedora repositories,

How did you get these onto your computer?

-8- On the positive side, exposure to GKrellM in Fedora has inspired me to explore lm-sensors and KSensors and hddtemp and
smartctl and all sorts of other monitoring software - yes I have been a busy fella. I find a bit to like in each, KSensors is particularly nice in that I can place the constantly updating temperatures of the CPU, System, South Bridge and hard drive in the menu bar - always easily visible in the upper right hand corner no matter which application I am using beneath it. More convenient in this regards than gkrellm, though gkrellm beats out KSensors in other ways.

I am getting these four temperature readouts via the various sensors:

CPU - 38 C (100.4 F)
System - 32 C (89.6 F)
South Bridge - 21 C (69.8 F)
Samsung HD - 31 C (87.8 F)

(Ambient temperature in the house is approximately 21 C / 69.8 F - it's winter!)

There is slightly warm air coming slowly out of the back of the computer (undervolted 80 mm fan front intake, Fortron 350 Watt power supply with 120mm fan as the sole output)

The CPU and Samsung hard drive temps above I understand.

What do you suppose the "System" temperature is actually measuring?

What do you suppose the "South Bridge" temperature is actually measuring (same as room air???)? I find that one difficult to believe.

(9) I am now getting so that I almost have temperature monitoring down - a whole lot more than I did before, anyway - but the stress testing applications just don't seem to be coming together for me on the Fedora Core 4 platform. Not that I can find in the usual repositories, anyway. Besides the applications that have been suggested I cannot fine CPUBurn, GIMPS, BOINC or Seti on the Fedora platform, either. I am running out of ideas in regard to Fedora.

So - I downloaded the live Linux CD Overclockix 3.79 - which has GKrellM plus a bunch of stress applications on board - but I could not get any of the temperature sensors working in GKrellM in Overclockix.

So close . . . :-(

Will I have to go to PCLinuxOS to get both temperature monitoring plus stress testing in one place at one time?

Is PCLinusOS RPM or Debian-based?

Should I just try any Debian-based distro (I know Mepis and Knoppix pretty well) and cobble something together using apt-get/Synaptic?


I think I am getting somewhere - really! - but it looks like I still have a way to go.


Thanks for the help -

Epaminondas

jimveta
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Post by jimveta » Wed Mar 08, 2006 6:02 pm

Hello, WRT memtest.. IMO I would run it for a few days straight, especially if you're going to run your machine 24/7. I have encountered a couple errors before on some memory just off by a single bit, at a single location, on a couple of the iterations, only *after* 2+ days of running. Who knows, maybe it was due to cosmic rays..

Also, I personally have had bad experiences with Gigabyte BIOSs on a two different NF4 boards and non-MS OSs. They always seem to break something.

geekbanter
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Post by geekbanter » Wed Mar 08, 2006 6:17 pm

(1) Arctic Silver 5 vs. Arctic Silver Ceramique.

I'll be buying the smaller volume since I only expect to put one computer together every four years or so, and the smaller volume is still probably more than I need for multiple applications. I note that there is only about a dollar's difference between Arctic Silver 5 and Arctic Silver Ceramique when ordered in the small volume that I need.
Get what you want, but make sure to get enough so you will have extra (don't want to run out if you mess up) and read the directions for each. I recommended Ceramique because it is easier to use, and I surely would have ran out if I bought a small little tube of AS5. Also note that the ceramique is easier to clean up and that AS5 is slightly capacitive, so you don't want to get it anywhere but on the CPU. You can use the paste on other things too, such as NB and VGA heatsinks.

Directions for Arctic Silver 5 here.
Directions for Ceramique here
The four CPU stress applications on the UBCD, however, give me pause. As Geekbanter notes, I cannot run any of them while monitoring the temperatures on my motherboard, and I am a little leery of running something called "Lucifer" without being able to monitor the temperature while doing so. And I need to do the stress testing with temperature monitoring to see whether or not my cooling strategies are actually working. So I need another solution for stress-testing the CPU while monitoring temperatures.
I ran Lucifer for a while, and I don't think the CPU even got as hot as when running Prime95.
Prime95 for linux: here - extract it to a directory and run it from the console, should be some directions included with it, and you can always use the --help option.
QJuliaGPU: here requires Cg and GLUT, I've never used it, you could also try a game like Doom or something similar on Linux.
Software doesn't just have to come out of the repositories :wink:
What do you suppose the "System" temperature is actually measuring?
What do you suppose the "South Bridge" temperature is actually measuring (same as room air???)? I find that one difficult to believe.
System is likely measureing ambient inside the case (case temp), and the southbridge is likely a sensor near your southbridge. I would guess that the System and Southbridge sensors maybe swithed around by your monitoring program.
Not that I can find in the usual repositories, anyway. Besides the applications that have been suggested I cannot fine CPUBurn, GIMPS, BOINC or Seti on the Fedora platform, either. I am running out of ideas in regard to Fedora.
No CPUBurn for Linux (Prime95 better anyway), Gimps is a project revolving around prime95, BOINC is seti (here looks a bit difficult to set up).
You just have to search around for the software you want, and learn how to compile it in some cases. Prime95 and Folding@home should be the easiest to set up.
Will I have to go to PCLinuxOS to get both temperature monitoring plus stress testing in one place at one time?

Is PCLinusOS RPM or Debian-based?
Its currently up to the user to get temp monitorting working correctly, all I know is GKrellM worked out of the box for me. You can download the pclinuxos live cd and try it our to see if you like it before installing. PCLinuxOS is an RPM based distro, but it uses apt4rpm so while it uses rpm packages, it works exactly like apt-get, and uses synaptic as a package manager. The choice of distro is up to you, but I've used about 20 distros over the last 5-6 years, and PCLinuxOS is the one that I finally settled on.
jimveta wrote:IMO I would run it for a few days straight, especially if you're going to run your machine 24/7. I have encountered a couple errors before on some memory just off by a single bit, at a single location, on a couple of the iterations, only *after* 2+ days of running. Who knows, maybe it was due to cosmic rays..
I've found Memtest to be hit-and-miss (when you have a hard to diagnose problem). Run Prime95 for 24-48 hours, but if you run into problems then run Memtest to see if the RAM is the source of any system instability.
Last edited by geekbanter on Wed Mar 08, 2006 7:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

JJ
Posts: 233
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Location: US

Post by JJ » Wed Mar 08, 2006 6:44 pm

I built my current system with 1GB of ECC memory (see below) and I have no real way of telling whether or not the ECC made the system any more reliable, but I _can_ say it is absolutely the most stable system I've ever owned. After I built the system shown below for my home system, I built two more at work for myself and a coworker. The work systems aren't nearly as loud, since they're in a different case, but they're every bit as solid.

I haven't found a definitive answer as to whether or not NForce 4 systems can make use of ECC. The memory controller is on the CPU, so it would mostly be a function of what has been implemented on the chip. I don't know whether or not the motherboard design or the system BIOS come into play at all. The AMD documents below very clearly state that the memory controller on the Athlon 64 and 64 X2 _do_ make use of error detection and correction with ECC.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content ... /24659.PDF

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content ... /33425.pdf

IsaacKuo
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Post by IsaacKuo » Wed Mar 08, 2006 7:30 pm

For whatever it's worth, IMHO Ati is better for your purposes than nVidia. My computer usage is similar to yours; I very happily use two low end Ati Radeons while my low end nVidia card is sitting unused in its box. At the low end, Radeons are less expensive and more capable than nVidia, and have better out-of-box compatability due to the high quality open source Ati drivers. The out-of-box 3d graphics capabilities are good enough for me (crystal GL, transparency effects, some 3D graphics). The out-of-box nv open source driver for nVidia doesn't even support any 3d graphics acceleration.

For me, the thing which put the nail in the nVidia card's coffin was the fact that it couldn't handle interlacing. Interlacing lets me output HDTV compatable 1080i, and it also lets me output extreme high resolutions to my CRT monitors.

In your position, I'd go with an AGP motherboard and a low end AGP Ati Radeon.

BTW, Overclockix is Debian based. A hard drive install would be relatively compatable with Debian. I use traditional Debian stable exclusively now, although I've used hard drive installs of Knoppix, Overclockix, and Mepis in the past.

I can't help you with GKrellM, though. I'm not a fan of excess crap cluttering my computer display.

Morse
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Post by Morse » Wed Mar 08, 2006 7:58 pm

Hi Epaminondas;

Don't give up on ECC yet. The Tyan 2865 series mobos support it in non-registered form. I've got a pair of Tyan's running now in a mini-cluster (server/workstation) and it's a terrific board (though pricey and it is NOT an overclocker - it's for the "stable as heck" business crowd).

One advantage of the Tyan is that it's NForce 4 chipset is passively cooled. Though the heatsink looks pretty tiny, it does the job over here for file serving and video editing.

This is a lengthy thread and I've not had a chance to examine it all to see if there were particulars that would limit you from choosing the Tyan, but just thought you should look into it.

On the topic of a quiet video card, in the next day or two (tomorrow please, Fedex!!) I should be getting in an Asus EN6600 for the server. I've already got a Gigabyte 6600LE on my SFF - and it really did help the noise there. Unfortunately the Gigabyte's passive radiator conflicted with my CPU cooler.

All the best and good luck,
Morse

geekbanter
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Post by geekbanter » Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:04 pm

I think its a bad idea to get a board that has an AGP slot (unless its an asrock dual sata II w/pcie) now that agp is slowly being phased out in favor of PCIe. The low end nvidia cards utilizing turbo cache will be more than enough since Epaminondas likely won't be running high-end games (please correct me if I'm wrong). Also, according to Newegg, the cheapest agp and pci cards are held by nvidia, not ati.

If anybody is building a linux system it is generally a bad idea to get an Ati card. While the out-of-the-box driver for Nvidia cards may not support 3D graphics, the driver installation is really easy, and some distros (like PCLinuxOS) come with the drivers preinstalled or offer DKMS (dynamic kernel modules).
IsaacKuo wrote:For me, the thing which put the nail in the nVidia card's coffin was the fact that it couldn't handle interlacing. Interlacing lets me output HDTV compatable 1080i, and it also lets me output extreme high resolutions to my CRT monitors.
I don't know about you, but on my 6600GT I was able to run my native resolution (1680x1050) just fine with the defult drivers. BTW, why didn't you install the video drivers? Support for video output for both ati and nvidia is better with 3rd party drivers.

Epaminondas, what exactly do you need from the video card? D-sub, dvi, dual head, acceleration?

Matt
Posts: 16
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P150 + A8V + Kingston KVR ECC

Post by Matt » Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:25 pm

Antec P150: ATX case, NeoHE 430 PSU
Asus A8V: Socket 939, AGP, ECC support
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM KVR400X72C3A/512 x2

I know you prefer non-Asus boards, but mine works fine with SuSE and Knoppix. I think it has some over/under-clocking/volting options I haven't explored. You can download the manual (PDF) from the Asus website to learn more.

IsaacKuo
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Post by IsaacKuo » Thu Mar 09, 2006 5:23 am

geekbanter wrote:I think its a bad idea to get a board that has an AGP slot (unless its an asrock dual sata II w/pcie) now that agp is slowly being phased out in favor of PCIe.
So what? People like us who don't do computer gaming simply don't upgrade our video cards. There's no point. And I find that phased out technology tends to create a LOT of really cheap quality used equipment.
Also, according to Newegg, the cheapest agp and pci cards are held by nvidia, not ati.
Ah, this does change from time to time. Last I was in the market, I had to pay more for nVidia. Bad call though--the crappy MX4000 goes unused!
IsaacKuo wrote:For me, the thing which put the nail in the nVidia card's coffin was the fact that it couldn't handle interlacing. Interlacing lets me output HDTV compatable 1080i, and it also lets me output extreme high resolutions to my CRT monitors.
I don't know about you, but on my 6600GT I was able to run my native resolution (1680x1050) just fine with the defult drivers. BTW, why didn't you install the video drivers? Support for video output for both ati and nvidia is better with 3rd party drivers.
When I tried out my nVidia card, I did install the drivers. Repeatedly, and hoping beyond hope that the next revision would support interlacing. Eventually, I learned that the MX4000 hardware simply doesn't support interlacing.

In the meantime, my cheaper Radeon 7000 could do everything better, and it DID support interlacing.

All of my video cards support high resolution non-interlaced modes, but few of my monitors do. What good is it if my video card is pushing 2048x1536@60 if my monitor only outputs "OUT OF RANGE"? With interlacing, even my old monitor which can barely handle 1024x768@60 can accept 2048x1536@60i.

Also, I prefer running at 2048x1536@85i rather than a non-interlaced mode. The flicker at 85hz is imperceptible, but interlacing halves the bandwidth generally resulting in sharper images. The horizontal sync rate is also halved, keeping it far away from the monitor's limits.

One of my video cards, an old Ati Rage128, doesn't even officially support 2048x1536. It simply can't handle the dot clock required for 2048x1536@60. However, with interlacing it can handle the resolution. It suffers from the "half height overlay bug", but that's okay if I'm not using that computer for playing videos.
Epaminondas, what exactly do you need from the video card? D-sub, dvi, dual head, acceleration?
He explains in his first post that he's using it for 2D applications and no 3D gaming. He's currently using an old CRT monitor, but plans to replace it someday with a DVI LCD. Thus, DVI output would be good.

geekbanter
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Post by geekbanter » Thu Mar 09, 2006 11:44 am

IsaacKuo wrote:So what? People like us who don't do computer gaming simply don't upgrade our video cards. There's no point. And I find that phased out technology tends to create a LOT of really cheap quality used equipment.
Epaminondas is going to be using an AMD X2 processor, this rules out any nforce3 boards, and most motherboards utilizing AGP unless a VIA K8T800 or uli based board is used. This Gigabyte board would fill that niche, but it lacks SATAII and Firewire. This Abit board has firewire, but lacks SATA II. Both of these boards don't seem too bad, but I might have heard about ACPI issues under Linux on boards with VIA processor, I'll have to dig around to find out.

Edit: The Abit board has the uGuru chip that isn't supported under Linux, and according to This Page, Ethernet driver doesn't work, and onboard hardware monitoring is lacking. ACPI issue on Gigabyte board seems to be an isolated incident

quikkie
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Post by quikkie » Thu Mar 09, 2006 3:32 pm

I admit I haven't checked this fact recently, but I was under the impression that all socket 939 boards would support X2 processors although some mainboards may need an updated BIOS first. So an NForce 3 could support an X2, no?

As for SATA-II (which doesn't actually exist as a standard, but that's a nitpick) no drive, not even the raptor comes close to saturating the bandwidth available from ATA-100 (the 'old' PATA standard) never mind the 150MB/s or 300MB/s available from SATA. So lack of SATA 300 support on the mainboard is no big deal.

geekbanter
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Post by geekbanter » Thu Mar 09, 2006 4:06 pm

quikkie wrote:I admit I haven't checked this fact recently, but I was under the impression that all socket 939 boards would support X2 processors although some mainboards may need an updated BIOS first. So an NForce 3 could support an X2, no?
I dunno, I was under the impression that nf4 boards would need a bios upgrade (I know this was true before X2 came out), but that nf3 boards wouldn't support X2's or SATA II. Please let me know if I'm wrong, I did some google searches and couldn't find much. Of course if Epaminondas goes with an opteron I think this issue would probably be moot, but I don't know too much about opterons (other than they have a large cache and overclock really well :) )
quikkie wrote:As for SATA-II (which doesn't actually exist as a standard, but that's a nitpick) no drive, not even the raptor comes close to saturating the bandwidth available from ATA-100 (the 'old' PATA standard) never mind the 150MB/s or 300MB/s available from SATA. So lack of SATA 300 support on the mainboard is no big deal.
Yeah, aside from the new connectors, SATA isn't a big deal (at least to me). AFAIK the only major differences between SATA I and II are that SATA II has a higher theoretical throughput, and Native Command Queuing.

Epaminondas
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Post by Epaminondas » Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:08 pm

Gentlemen,

Wow!

Thank you for the guidance. Much appreciated.

My apologies for the length of my posts. They don't start out long – they just end up that way.

(1) It looks like Ceramique for the first build - ease of use and cleanup (thank you, Geekbanter!). If I do not make too much of a mess of things. it may be Arctic Silver 5 (or 6 or 7 or Ceramique 2 by that time) for the next build, hopefully years from now.

(2) Geekbanter writes:
Software doesn't just have to come out of the repositories ;-)
OK. I'm game.

Poppa didn't raise his boy to be no coward.

Prime it is - or bust!

I spent most of yesterday evening reading the Fedora bulletin boards (nothing on mprime/sprime that I could find) and the www.mersenne.org bulletin boards (some on mprime/sprime), learning of the difference between mprime and sprime (Linux equivalents of Prime95) and beginning to learn what to do with this. Advice on the www.mersenne.org boards was to try mprime first, and then try sprime if mprime did not work. I did download both onto my desktop in the tar.gz format, double clicked on mprime (hey - I am an ol' Macintosh guy), and fileroller popped up. Not knowing what to do next, I placed the six newly-created mprime files into a newly created file on my desktop which I labeled << Prime >>. I read all the instructions provided - unfortunately, they assumed that I know how to download applications outside of the package manager system of Fedora Core 4 (which I do not) and that I know where to put the pieces - glaring gaps in my limited Linux knowledge.

I then attempted to access the mprime program by typing it's file location in a terminal. And I found myself in mprime.

Surprise! Surprise!

But there were problems.

I did succeed in getting mprime doing something on my computer - I am not sure if it was torture testing or if it was just at a normal functioning level - CPU utilization went to 100%, with the computer remaining normally responsive. CPU temperature jumped from the normal 38 degrees C on this computer to an astounding 41 degrees C! (The 1 Ghz Celeron is supposed to be kept under 69 degrees C - it looks like I have plenty of headroom).

If this is stress testing, it looks like my little Celeron is overcooled with it's stock heatsink and fan with the fan undervolted via a Zalman fanmate to a quiet 5V (1231 RPM).

That's the good news.

Unfortunately, I could not later get back into mprime. When I tried the same path in the command line that I used to start mprime, just typing in it's file location and hitting << enter >> - I just got a note that mprime is already in use. I couldn't find any other way to get into mprime - no icon in any menubar or anything like that - no way to change settings or to turn it off - so I was blindly mpriming for the rest of the evening with no control over the thing or any direct information about what it was doing.

<< man mprime >> turned up no manual.

I attribute my problems with using mprime to my inexperience in trying to put a Linux application on my computer outside of the usual download manager/repository method. Not knowing where to put all the pieces of mprime, I just put the whole download on my desktop - not in any of the /sbin or /bin or whatever directories. I know that this may be painful (fingernails on the blackboard?) to the ears of knowledgeable Linux folk (sorry), but I do not really know how to set these things up manually. Extensive searching of the www.mersenne.org web site and the www.mersenne.org bulletin boards was of no help in this regard.

I am certainly willing to learn - if someone is willing to teach.

If anyone would be kind enough to take a stab at giving me guidance in how to download mprime (or sprime) into the correct places within the Linux file system and how to get control of the program, I would greatly appreciate it.

As it is, the only way I could figure out to turn mprime off was to trash it while it was still running - hey, I could not turn it off - and that still did not work - so I restarted the computer (that worked). Not exactly very smooth Linux-style operating on my part.

I now have the << mprime2414.tar.gz >> and the <<sprime2414.tar.gz >> sitting patiently on my Fedora Core 4 gnome desktop - tempting me for another go.

Guidance is respectfully requested.

(3) In the process of all this, my upper-right-hand menubar clock and calender that are part of the base Fedora Core 4 Gnome desktop have disappeared.

Have any of you seen them?

Uh - I feel like I tripped and struck my shin - quite the bumbler! No sign of the clock/calender anywhere in the gnome menus. If anyone knows some sort of command line intervention to get them back again, I would appreciate the guidance.

Now I have to look out the window to tell whether it is day or night.

(4) jimveta writes:
Also, I personally have had bad experiences with Gigabyte BIOSs on a two different NF4 boards and non-MS OSs. They always seem to break something.
Jimveta ,

What alternatives have you had better luck with in using non-Microsoft OSs?

Thanks.

(5) JJ writes:
I haven't found a definitive answer as to whether or not NForce 4 systems can make use of ECC.
From what I have read over the last couple of months, some nForece4 boards do support ECC RAM and some do not - it seems to be dependent on the company making the motherboard.

As far as I can tell the ASUS nForce4 boards typically support both non-ECC and ECC RAM and the Tyan nForce4 boards all support both non-ECC and ECC RAM. I cannot find any other companies that support ECC RAM on nForce4 motherboards.

I did email Gigabyte specifically on this topic. Gigabyte Sales Support writes back that all the Gigabyte nForce4 boards support both non-ECC and ECC RAM. Gigabyte Technical Support writes back that the Gigabyte nForce 4 boards I am looking at specifically do not support ECC RAM. Plus - none of the RAM merchants list ECC RAM for the Gigabyte boards I am looking at, though they do list both non-ECC and ECC for the Tyan nForce4 motherboards.

I hope all that is clear.
Current (loud) System: Intel P4 3.0C Northwood
I am looking for something that is probably a bit quieter.

Milady has a "silent" Dell XPS 400 ("silent" is what Dell calls it) dual core Pentium rig that is not very quiet. The fans are noticeable to both of us. The two mirrored RAID 1 drives chatter a bit, despite the box being on a soft carpet pad inside a nice large desk compartment (closed front door / back of the desk compartment fully open to ventilation perhaps 8" from the wall).

I would like dual core as well but I would prefer to go with a better/faster/cooler (quieter) AMD solution.

Oh - anyone know where to get sound-absorbing Styrofoam (or whatever it is) for the back wall behind Milady's computer? You know - the stuff with the 4" pyramid pattern that they line anechoic chambers with?

I have been meaning to put some on the wall behind her desk to try to partially muffle the reflected noise coming out the rear if I can just find some.

We could use about 6 square feet of the stuff (a little less, actually).

(6) IsaacKuo writes:
Ati is better for your purposes than nVidia.
In your position, I'd go with an AGP motherboard and a low end AGP Ati Radeon.
In the meantime, my cheaper Radeon 7000 could do everything better, and it DID support interlacing.
Isaac, I think you are going to be amused by my reply on this one.

And as far running Linux fine on obsolete cards - I think may I have you beat!

I have an ATI Radeon 7500 PCI (that's PCI!) video card which is relatively well-supported in Linux - fairly close to the Radeon 7000 AGP card of which you write, though perhaps a little older considering the PCI interface on my card.

To get into the spirit of things, I did buy it used.

My Radeon 7500 PCI card works fine in Linux when it works - but that has been the problem.

The problem is probably not the video card. The problem seems to be that my current motherboard also has integrated onboard video. When I change the video source in the BIOS from the onboard integrated video to the Radeon PCI card, the computer recognizes it. But Linux installs do not recognize it and try to install to the onboard video. Result - blank screen on standard installs.

This has lead to an intimate knowledge of boot-up cheat codes and xfree86 and now x.org hand editing - and a determination that my next motherboard will not have onboard video to confuse matters. Nope. Uh-uh. Never again. No way.

Now I am running just on the onboard video (plenty of computer RAM) - I was experimenting with different Linux distributions for a while and setting up the video time and again was just too painful.

A weird note or two - when using the faster Radeon 7500 PCI video card, various computer benchmarks - including hard drive benchmarks (hdparm) actually scored faster than when the onboard video is running. Internet (particularly Newegg) also goes faster on the Radeon 7500 than on the integrated video. I dunno why. Any ideas?

A few questions:

A. What does your Radeon 7000 AGP benchmark at on glxgears?

I vaguely remember getting something like 343 (373?) FPS on my Radeon 7500 PCI card - (could be wrong - where are those old Linux notebooks, anyway?). I wondered if my limitation on this was the Radeon 7500 or the PCI bus. Chromium ran 45-50 FPS at high quality/full screen (19" CRT), Tux Racer was very playable. Hey - I only checked out the games to benchmark the card. I am not a gamer. Really.

My current integrated onboard video - just checked - 56 FPS on glxgears. Chromium runs around 1 frame every 2 seconds (unplayable). Tux racer just freezes.

(Yes, I know that glxgears is a 3D benchmark, but no one seems to bother with a 2D benchmark, so we deal with what we have).

Anybody have any other glxgears benchmarks on specific video set-ups that they might be willing to contribute?

B. Since Linux people often note that nVidia cards work better for them than ATI cards, I am willing to try out an inexpensive nVidia PCIe card ($46). If it does not work, I figure that I might be able to limp along on my tried and true ATI Radeon PCI card until I develop a Plan B.

Make sense?

Anybody know whether or not in a pinch you can do a BIOS change of the video source over to a PCI slot from the PCIe slot on the newer PCIe motherboards?
One of my video cards, an old Ati Rage128
OK - you beat me fair and square.

Glxgears, he asked, greedily?
I can't help you with GKrellM, though. I'm not a fan of excess crap cluttering my computer display.
From what I can see after one day or so, GKrellM has it's good points and it's bad. I am keeping it in the - uh, I don't have the Linux vocabulary - at the ready in the bar at the bottom of my computer and I pop it up when I am curious and back when it seems in the way.

Just typing in << sensors >> into the command line gives a lot of the same data as in GKrellM, though not as easily demonstrated.

I am particularly liking KSensors for its ability to put all that data plus the hard drive temperature data in one place - the hard drive temperature data is missing from the other two above (on my computer, anyway). With KSensors I can put the CPU, System, South Bridge and Hard Drive temperatures on my top menu bar and they are unobtrusive but always available no matter what program I am in. But looking at all the graphs in KSensors is not as easy on then eyes as GKrellM.

So - I am learning to use KSensors and GKrellM to complement one another.

(7) Morse writes:
Don't give up on ECC yet. The Tyan 2865 series mobos support it in non-registered form.
You would tempt a starving man with food?

Is that kind?

OK.

As the alternative to the passively cooled Gigabyte boards I have also considered the passively cooled Tyans. Solid reputation! Stability! ECC RAM! What's not to like?

Then I started looking at the recommended RAM (specific brands) and power supply (specific brand or brands) and I felt a little lost. I dunno nuthin' about server boards. My planned quiet Seasonic was not on the suggested power supply list.

The lack of overclocking is a minor concern to me - my priorities are quiet and stability. And the Gigabytes I am looking at are apparently limited in their overclocking abilities, anyway.

Undervolting might be nice - for quiet - if available. But not necessary.

Could you please discuss your rigs in detail?

Did you go Athlon X2 or Opteron? HSF? Cooling? Temperatures? Quiet?

Did you go with the Tyan-approved RAM and power supply or no?

Case?

Video - I am thinking in terms of a passively cooled Gigabyte nVidia 6200 (2D- I don't need much in the way of 3D). It looks like you tried a similar Gigabyte passively-cooled card and it did not work out for you. Are you going to be able to come up with a quiet video card alternative? That could be a killer for me.

I figure that the passively-cooled Gigabyte video cards have almost have to be fully compatible with the Gigabyte motherboards. Same manufacturer and all.

But nothing is certain.

-8-
Epaminondas, what exactly do you need from the video card? D-sub, dvi, dual head, acceleration?
Just a basic 19" CRT monitor for now (1024x768) - a DVI LCD monitor at 1280x1024 soon.

Internet, word processing, The GIMP (Photoshop clone), Internet Telephony.

Not much 3D at all - nothing beyond what I will need to have for OSs and Internet browsing over the next four years or so. Not a gamer. No interest in watching DVDs from the computer - we have the living room DVD player and television for that, and the couch is comfortable, thank you. Not sure of the legality of DVDs and Linux at the moment, anyway.

I have played with dual monitors before but didn't really like that set-up - a nice quiet dark (not silver!) single 19" DVI LCD, nonreflective screen, with the emphasis on precise print, will do me fine.

(9) Matt writes:
Antec P150: ATX case, NeoHE 430 PSU
Asus A8V: Socket 939, AGP, ECC support
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM KVR400X72C3A/512 x2

I know you prefer non-Asus boards, but mine works fine with SuSE and Knoppix. I think it has some over/under-clocking/volting options I haven't explored. You can download the manual (PDF) from the Asus website to learn more.
Matt,

Thank you for the input.

If I were going Microsoft I would probably go ASUS. No problem.

On Linux, however - over the past few years I have read of a number of cases on Internet bulletin boards where people who have been running Linux fat and happy as can be on ASUS motherboards lose the ability to do so after a BIOS update. Contact with ASUS gets the reply that ASUS motherboards do not claim compatibility with Linux - i.e., it is not our problem and you are out of luck. The people involved may not be able to return to the prior working BIOS. There are some very unhappy posts out there - I don't look for them, I just stumble across them from time to time.

I have not seen similar posts about any other motherboard maker. Other boards may not work with Linux, true - but I haven't seen any pattern of Internet posts about motherboards that do work with Linux and then do not after a BIOS update, you are out of luck - except with ASUS. From what I can see, ASUS seems to have developed a reputation in regard to this.

Since I like to keep my BIOS somewhat up to date (a few months behind is no problem), I think it best for me to avoid ASUS motherboards until ASUS loses this little quirk or I may end up never updating the BIOS over concern over what might happen. And this just would not work for me.

I am glad your Asus A8V is working for you in Linux, and I hope that it continues to do so.

(10)
Edit: The Abit board has the uGuru chip that isn't supported under Linux, and according to This Page, Ethernet driver doesn't work, and onboard hardware monitoring is lacking. ACPI issue on Gigabyte board seems to be an isolated incident
Thanks again for the motherboard info - most helpful!


Best regards, All -

Epaminondas

geekbanter
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Post by geekbanter » Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:00 pm

Alright, Mprime help it is. I'll be using the smprime (statically linked version) since I'm familiar with it. The static version can be run similarly to a regular exe in Windows.

Mprime

1. Copy the sprime2414.tar.gz into a folder (ex. /home/*user*/prime95/)

2. In the File Manager, Right-click the file, (in kde it gives the option to extract, been too long since I used gnome) and extract it to that directory. If you need to use fileroller make sure to point it to the directory you are extracting it to.

3. Open up a console or terminal on your desktop, and navigate to your prime95 directory (cd /home/*user/prime95) and type "./mprime -t"

4. Now its running, to stop it hit [Ctrl]+[C]

5. If it get stuck running in the background (like it did for you) open up the process manager and kill it. In KDE the proc manager can be started with [Ctrl]+[Esc], but in Gnome I'm not sure, should be in the menu somewhere regardless.

KSensors
Sorry, I can't help you here, KSensors doesn't work on my machine so I haven't used it. I think GKrellM makes use of lm_sensors, I would expect that Fedora should have that in the repos. Using both is probably a good idea when stress testing.
(3) In the process of all this, my upper-right-hand menubar clock and calender that are part of the base Fedora Core 4 Gnome desktop have disappeared.

Have any of you seen them?
I think you should be able to right-click the taskbar and it should have a menu where you can choose what applets you want on your taskbar.
Oh - anyone know where to get sound-absorbing Styrofoam (or whatever it is) for the back wall behind Milady's computer? You know - the stuff with the 4" pyramid pattern that they line anechoic chambers with?
You can probably find some egg-crate shaped foam at a local fabric store on the cheap. I dunno how well it'll work, but I feel your pain :P. Trying to silence my computer the only place in my room I could hear it was sitting at the desk, since the sound bounced off the back wall. I went whole-hog and built some mufflers for the exhaust. If you get the egg-crate foam try using it to redirect the sound rather than absorb it. I got some acoustic foam for my mufflers, but it surley doesn't work like magic :(
This has lead to an intimate knowledge of boot-up cheat codes and xfree86 and now x.org hand editing - and a determination that my next motherboard will not have onboard video to confuse matters. Nope. Uh-uh. Never again. No way.
Arrg, I hate it when that happens :evil:
A. What does your Radeon 7000 AGP benchmark at on glxgears?
My laptop has a GeForce2 Go and I think it used to get 400-600 FPS (Woot! 10fps in HL-2). My 6600GT gets about 6000fps, and I've got a gajillion things running in the background.
I am willing to try out an inexpensive nVidia card ($46). If it does not work, I figure that I might be able to limp along on my tried and true ATI Radeon PCI card until I develop a Plan B.
Plan sounds fine to me, I don't think the nvidia card will give you any problems. To install the drivers manually head over to the Nvidia sire, search for drivers and it should have a linux version listed. Download it, use a console to navigate to the directory its stored in, su to root and type "./NV[Tab]". It should display the whole file name, hit [Enter] and and the installer will guide you through the process of building driver modules and configuring your X server. I'm sure the Fedora forums probably have a good walkthrough somewhere.
Anybody know whether or not in a pinch you can do a BIOS change of the video source over to a PCI slot on the newer PCIe motherboards?
Not sure what you mean, but in both the Epox and Asrock bios I can manually define which card to use as primary vga card.

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Post by IsaacKuo » Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:04 pm

Epaminondas wrote:Unfortunately, I could not later get back into mprime. When I tried the same path in the command line that I used to start mprime, just typing in it's file location and hitting << enter >> - I just got a note that mprime is already in use.
If you suspect there's some runaway process somewhere, you can type in the command "ps -A" to get a process listing. Then, you can try to kill a process with "kill -9 1234", replacing "1234" with the process id.

(I'm not familiar with mprime, so I can't help you figure out how to get it to do whatever it is it's supposed to be doing.)
Uh - I feel like I tripped and struck my shin - quite the bumbler! No sign of the clock/calender anywhere in the gnome menus. If anyone knows some sort of command line intervention to get them back again, I would appreciate the guidance.
I don't use GNOME, but I think it's under the "panel" configuration dialogs.
My Radeon 7500 PCI card works fine in Linux when it works - but that has been the problem.

The problem is probably not the video card. The problem seems to be that my current motherboard also has integrated onboard video. When I change the video source in the BIOS from the onboard integrated video to the Radeon PCI card, the computer recognizes it. But Linux installs do not recognize it and try to install to the onboard video. Result - blank screen on standard installs.
I guess this depends on how smart your linux distribution's installer is. I think most installers take a stab at autodetecting the graphics hardware but then gives the user a list of driver options in case it guessed wrong. So far, I've used the on-board video whenever it's available, so I haven't run into that predicament.
A weird note or two - when using the faster Radeon 7500 PCI video card, various computer benchmarks - including hard drive benchmarks (hdparm) actually scored faster than when the onboard video is running. Internet (particularly Newegg) also goes faster on the Radeon 7500 than on the integrated video. I dunno why. Any ideas?
On-board video typically consumes some main memory and in the act of displaying the display it's continuously reading pixel data from main memory. Anything else which also accesses main memory potentially has its performance impacted. Pretty much everything you do with a computer involves accessing main memory!

In contrast, a videocard typically has its own video memory seperate from main memory. When simply displaying the display, the graphics chip simply reads pixel data from dedicated video memory--main memory is unaffected.
What does your Radeon 7000 AGP benchmark at on glxgears?
There are way too many variables contributing to the glxgears FPS to make it a useful benchmark. It's not even consistent on the same computer, depending on various factors. I find that when I've got 3d acceleration working, the FPS is in the several hundreds. That's with any of my 3D capable video cards and on-board video (Radeon 7000, Radeon 7200, Rage128, nVidia MX4000, i810 onboard).
Since Linux people often note that nVidia cards work better for them than ATI cards, I am willing to try out an inexpensive nVidia PCIe card ($46). If it does not work, I figure that I might be able to limp along on my tried and true ATI Radeon PCI card until I develop a Plan B.

Make sense?
Sounds like a good plan. At some point, you'll probably want to upgrade from a PCI graphics card for image editing and watching videos. PCI bandwidth is too low for smooth high resolution video, and high resolution image editing can be sluggish through PCI.

I withdraw my advice in favor of Ati on price grounds--I simply hadn't noticed the prices lately.

IsaacKuo
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Post by IsaacKuo » Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:09 pm

geekbanter wrote:
Oh - anyone know where to get sound-absorbing Styrofoam (or whatever it is) for the back wall behind Milady's computer? You know - the stuff with the 4" pyramid pattern that they line anechoic chambers with?
You can probably find some egg-crate shaped foam at a local fabric store on the cheap. I dunno how well it'll work,
Egg-crate foam doesn't absorb sound very well.

Morse
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Post by Morse » Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:43 pm

Hi Epaminondas;

Sorry I got cut a little short earlier (lightning storm started suddenly here, so it was time to log off and unplug).

To finish out the thought on the Gigabyte card, it didn't fit my Tyans or ECS KN1's due to the back side heat sink interfering with the cooler on the CPU (tyan) and the northbridge (KN1), but it fit the micro-atx in a small form factor pc I built up (it's a Foxconn board in an Aspire Q-Pack case) for portable use. It's a great card IF it fits. That backside cooler will definitely cause problems with some installs so be careful before you shell out the $$ on one.

Anyway, the Asus EN6600 Silencer showed up today and it's been running fine. Dropped right in with no problems. Smaller, less exotic looking heatsink so maybe it wouldn't handle a heavy load as well. I can't say since I've done no heavy duty gaming - this is a media server after all.

For quieting your case, it depends on how much $$ you want to spend. On the low end, Spire makes a foam pad that newegg sells for about $9/kit. At the high end, you've got things like butyl rubber laminated with lead (look at the mcmaster-carr online catalogue under 'sound dampening') that can cost several hundred dollars to damp a case. I'm using the Spire foam and it seems okay for damping out case resonances (but it will NOT affect the sound of an internal fan). Would that I could afford the exotic dampening solutions, but I'd rather spend the money upgrading another pc to a Manchester core (DEFINITELY go with a Manchester core for a media pc - you'll not regret the better multitasking and faster encoding that can be done in AV work). If all you can afford is a 3800+ Manny, you will be very happy with it IMHO.

My current fave quiet fan is the Scythe 120mm with Sony fluid bearing. They run about $20 each and I've got 3 of 'em now (the slow speed one is darn' near silent in my opinion....).

If you're after "sound studio" style foam, go to partsexpress.com online. They stock parts for DIY sound systems and that includes prosound (acoustic damping foams and such). I've dealt with them many times over the years (I used to design and build loudspeakers and amps) and they've never done wrong by me.

All the best,
Morse

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Post by geekbanter » Thu Mar 09, 2006 9:33 pm

IsaacKuo wrote:Egg-crate foam doesn't absorb sound very well.
Meh, neither does acoustic absorbing foam. I got some acousticpack and put it in my case, didn't really make a difference in noise or sound quality, it just cut down my airflow. So I pulled it out and used some thin 2mm stuff and made a muffler for my PSU and one for my case exhaust. The mufflers didn't eliminate the sound, but they did muffle and redirect it, making my computer a little quieter.

Getting silent or quiet parts is by far a better solution than dampening, its easier and more effective. I'm really surprised the XPS 400 is even audiable, looks like a good design actually. Do you know if the noise if coming from the CPU or PSU fans? Any particular direction? (from the front, back, etc) You could try using some fan mates or quieter fans, but that could be tricky since the Dell PC I have has a proprietary fan connector. Might be worth a look though.
IsaacKuo wrote:If you suspect there's some runaway process somewhere, you can type in the command "ps -A" to get a process listing. Then, you can try to kill a process with "kill -9 1234", replacing "1234" with the process id.
You can also use "top" and it will list your processes by CPU usage. Type "k" and the number of the process to kill, and "q" to quit.

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