Equipment Crew Tech Thread

[Synthetickiller]

Thank you for that post. The info is invaluable. I have some googling to do when I have the time.

[CanadaBuilder3]

Nice. So RAID-Z3 is definitely something I should consider. I'm still using external drives mirrored manually. I do have my one server with 6 2.5 inch hot-swappable bays available, what can I do with that? I would probably run a VM with either Linux or FreeBSD to take care of those drives, since my main OS is Windows Server 2012 R2.

[Synthetickiller]

Nice. So RAID-Z3 is definitely something I should consider. I'm still using external drives mirrored manually. I do have my one server with 6 2.5 inch hot-swappable bays available, what can I do with that? I would probably run a VM with either Linux or FreeBSD to take care of those drives, since my main OS is Windows Server 2012 R2.

How fat is your wallet? lol
You could also do dev work with a large array of SSDs.
Seagate makes 3tb & 4tb 2.5" drives*. They aren't horribly expensive.
You could specifically do benchmarking under Win OS, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. I guess that's just dev work, too, lol. I just love benchmarks.

Raidz3 is overkill for a 6 drive array. Might as well do Raidx10 & not suffer the slowdown. I only have a raidz2. I'm right on the cusp of moving to z3, but I really wanted the extra storage. It's also a backup. You could just run a raidz (single parity) & back everything up manually to your externals & unplug when done. That's a fairly safe method.




* The dives are 15mm high. They might not fit in a hot swap bay. That would be something to check out.

[KBKB]

Nice. So RAID-Z3 is definitely something I should consider. I'm still using external drives mirrored manually. I do have my one server with 6 2.5 inch hot-swappable bays available, what can I do with that? I would probably run a VM with either Linux or FreeBSD to take care of those drives, since my main OS is Windows Server 2012 R2.

I think SK provided a good answer.

I think I should check to see where VM technology has gotten to lately.

I used to use VMs for a few years ending perhaps six or seven years ago. I used Fedora (Linux) for the host. I only had a few guest OSes, Windows Server 2008 being one of them. Having Linux guests worked okay, because I would interact with them via a shell through ssh. For some stuff, I was able to do pretty much the same kind of thing for Windows - I had Cygwin installed, so a familiar command line was available - but there were more than a few times when I had to do something using a GUI.

As I recall, the GUI solutions used VNC, which works okay, but don't really provide the same kind of experience as what you get on the host with direct hardware access. Also, back then, I was never able to make the guest OSes directly access things like USB devices.

I'm guessing (hoping) that some of this has changed in the intervening years.

[ I stopped using VMs mainly because I built a (personal) machine that ran Windows. I was able to use this machine for work during the (thankfully) few times that I needed to investigate a customer issue on Windows. Also, there were other solutions available to me when I needed a guest (Fedora or RHEL) OS of a different version from what I was running locally. ]

Anyway, access to disk hardware would have been one of my concerns about managing those disks from a guest OS.

[Synthetickiller]

Don't ask what it cost...
I will say that it's more than what some people are dropping on power cages, though.

[KBKB]

Don't ask what it cost...

Too late. (I googled it when you mentioned it the other day.)

[Synthetickiller]

Too late. (I googled it when you mentioned it the other day.)

Prices on 1080s are all over the board. I ordered it from Amazon. 12 hours later, the card was $101 more. I think the Amazon price is correct now. Newegg wants more than Amazon.
I have no interest in fighting Newegg for an RMA if the card is DOA. That's why I didn't even consider ordering from them & held out till Amazon had stock at a fair price.

I'll get a few pics while doing the install. The card dwarfs my GTX 690. At least I'll be able to play games at 1440p with high settings. I was stuck at 1080p & it drove me crazy. Now I just have to convince myself to not get a 4k monitor.

[KBKB]

Prices on 1080s are all over the board. I ordered it from Amazon. 12 hours later, the card was $101 more. I think the Amazon price is correct now. Newegg wants more than Amazon.
I have no interest in fighting Newegg for an RMA if the card is DOA. That's why I didn't even consider ordering from them & held out till Amazon had stock at a fair price.

I'll get a few pics while doing the install. The card dwarfs my GTX 690. At least I'll be able to play games at 1440p with high settings. I was stuck at 1080p & it drove me crazy. Now I just have to convince myself to not get a 4k monitor.

Good to know.

I've only RMA'd a few things with Newegg. For the one I just did (motherboard and CPU), it was harder than I remember. (And it's not done yet either - package should be arriving back at Newegg today.)

I used to think that Newegg was pretty good, but my recent experiences with returning things to Amazon has been at least an order of magnitude better. For the most recent return to Amazon (wrong CPU cooler), they credited my account as soon as they noticed that I had dropped the package off at my UPS Store! That's really impressive and really good service too!

Just off the top of my head, the issues that I had with Newegg were:

• I had trouble getting their RMA page to work. I think it took me something like eight attempts before I got it to work.
• 500 character limit in problem description was barely enough to explain my problem. (Though to be fair, I do understand why they want to keep it brief.)
• Return label was sent via email. With Amazon, I get the return label right away in my browser.
• I got two separate emails for the RMA, one which basically said that I had an RMA along with some instructions, and the second which had a link to the return label via FedEx. There was just enough of a gap between getting these emails that I nearly contacted Newegg support complaining that I hadn't received a return label. (I was starting to fill out a complaint; while looking for the order number and RMA number in my email, I saw the second email come in.)
• That first email was really confusing. It said to print it out and put part of it in the box. I gather that some other part was supposed to be a bar code or some such which was meant to be affixed to the outside of the box, but it didn't exist. I looked for an attachment, but there wasn't any.

Regarding monitors, I'm wondering when OLED monitors will become available. I'm very impressed by the display my Samsung tablet and phone, both of which have an AMOLED display and, despite being smaller, have a better resolution than my desktop monitors. I've looked around for a desktop OLED monitor, but so far have come up empty. I'm wondering if burn in and longevity is a problem. Or, perhaps manufacturing costs are too high for large panels?

[Synthetickiller]

Good to know.

I've only RMA'd a few things with Newegg. For the one I just did (motherboard and CPU), it was harder than I remember. (And it's not done yet either - package should be arriving back at Newegg today.)

I used to think that Newegg was pretty good, but my recent experiences with returning things to Amazon has been at least an order of magnitude better. For the most recent return to Amazon (wrong CPU cooler), they credited my account as soon as they noticed that I had dropped the package off at my UPS Store! That's really impressive and really good service too!

Just off the top of my head, the issues that I had with Newegg were:

• I had trouble getting their RMA page to work. I think it took me something like eight attempts before I got it to work.
• 500 character limit in problem description was barely enough to explain my problem. (Though to be fair, I do understand why they want to keep it brief.)
• Return label was sent via email. With Amazon, I get the return label right away in my browser.
• I got two separate emails for the RMA, one which basically said that I had an RMA along with some instructions, and the second which had a link to the return label via FedEx. There was just enough of a gap between getting these emails that I nearly contacted Newegg support complaining that I hadn't received a return label. (I was starting to fill out a complaint; while looking for the order number and RMA number in my email, I saw the second email come in.)
• That first email was really confusing. It said to print it out and put part of it in the box. I gather that some other part was supposed to be a bar code or some such which was meant to be affixed to the outside of the box, but it didn't exist. I looked for an attachment, but there wasn't any.

Regarding monitors, I'm wondering when OLED monitors will become available. I'm very impressed by the display my Samsung tablet and phone, both of which have an AMOLED display and, despite being smaller, have a better resolution than my desktop monitors. I've looked around for a desktop OLED monitor, but so far have come up empty. I'm wondering if burn in and longevity is a problem. Or, perhaps manufacturing costs are too high for large panels?

Sounds par for the course. That's how newegg always was, in my memory. I've been shopping at newegg since their inception way back in 01'. I remember RMAing an ATI 1900xt & I had to write out what the issue was. Back then, they didn't give me any issues. Their return policy & standards have changed drastically.

Do you remember the auction site, egghead.com? Those were the days when the internet was still newish & no one knew what they were doing, lol.



On the topic of OLED, they just cost too much, still. Dell has a 30" 4k monitor that will come in at $5000. I can wait a bit & live with AH-IPS till then
http://www.pcworld.com/article/30187...on-bezels.html

[KBKB]

Sounds par for the course. That's how newegg always was, in my memory. I've been shopping at newegg since their inception way back in 01'. I remember RMAing an ATI 1900xt & I had to write out what the issue was. Back then, they didn't give me any issues. Their return policy & standards have changed drastically.

Do you remember the auction site, egghead.com? Those were the days when the internet was still newish & no one knew what they were doing, lol.

I remember Egghead, but I don't think I ever bought anything from them.

According to my order history on Newegg, my first purchase there was in 2003. Prior to that it was trips to Fry's Electronics and mail order through Computer Shopper. I haven't been to Fry's Electronics in quite a few years now. It may be different now (though I doubt it), but it seemed that a good percentage of the stuff on the shelves were restock of returned items. For some items, you had to look hard to find one that was new-in-box.

On the topic of OLED, they just cost too much, still. Dell has a 30" 4k monitor that will come in at $5000. I can wait a bit & live with AH-IPS till then
http://www.pcworld.com/article/30187...on-bezels.html

Yeah, at that price, I can wait too.

I'm still using two Dell U2412Ms on my desktop. I have a four port KVM switch for switching between machines located on or near my desk.

[KBKB]

For those of you currently using virtual machines, what are you using for hosts and guests?

Don't know if it's of interest to anyone else, but a quick search got me a link to this page...

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Virtualization

...which describes the currrent virtualization options in Fedora. I imagine that things are similar for other Linux distros.

As a result of all of my ZFS reading, I'm also curious about virtualization in FreeBSD (or any other BSD). (ZFS has some nice features which make it useful for using with virtual machines.)

Edit: I'll say a bit more about this...

My most recent Fedora update(s) didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked. I spent several days attempting to figure out why some of my NFS mounts weren't working.

Anyway, if there were an efficient way to run Fedora in a VM, perhaps over some OS running ZFS, I could try new installs with no worry about disrupting my already working environment. I could also (efficiently - that's where ZFS comes in) clone the VM, do an update and try it out. If it doesn't work out, I could simply revert to using the original (non-updated) version.

[CanadaBuilder3]

Well, For Microsoft there is Hyper-V. You can grab just the Hyper-V Server for free; this works if you don't intend to run any Windows or if you already have individual licenses for each OS. It's competing nicely against VMWare.

If you can somehow get your hands on Windows Server (either 2012 R2 Datacenter or 2016 Technical Preview, both of which have "free" evaluation versions) ... The "Datacenter" edition gives you unlimited virtualization rights because the server OS itself costs $6000 USD. The companies that want this usually have those new 20+ core Xeons, with 4 TB of RAM.

The cheap way to get this is to become a student and get on DreamSpark. This allows you legal licensed copies of almost everything Microsoft for free, including old MS-DOS. I think most students also get Office 365 for free, which allows you to download and install MS Office 2016 Pro on up to 5 desktops / laptops / machines.

The eval versions let you play with it for 180 days. You can re-arm them 3 times, so that gives you one and a half years. Then you can do a clean reinstall and start over, just backup or export your VMs.

The Hyper-V stand alone product is free with no time limits.


The last time I tried VMWare was more than a decade ago. I hear it is much improved since then. Esx-i or something. I'm using Hyper-V because I'm attempting to get a certification from MS.


Now, as to hardware access, you can assign individual hard drives and NICs and other things to a VM exclusively for the VM. Or shared by others. I ran Debian in a VM on Hyper-V. Should be the same with Fedora.

Windows 8 (and 8.1) and Windows 10 do come with "client" Hyper-V, and it works the same way, but it's simply not the "server" version. Usually used for testing purposes, but you could run as many as your machine has ram and space and cores.

[KBKB]

Well, For Microsoft there is Hyper-V. You can grab just the Hyper-V Server for free; this works if you don't intend to run any Windows or if you already have individual licenses for each OS. It's competing nicely against VMWare.

If you can somehow get your hands on Windows Server (either 2012 R2 Datacenter or 2016 Technical Preview, both of which have "free" evaluation versions) ... The "Datacenter" edition gives you unlimited virtualization rights because the server OS itself costs $6000 USD. The companies that want this usually have those new 20+ core Xeons, with 4 TB of RAM.

The cheap way to get this is to become a student and get on DreamSpark. This allows you legal licensed copies of almost everything Microsoft for free, including old MS-DOS. I think most students also get Office 365 for free, which allows you to download and install MS Office 2016 Pro on up to 5 desktops / laptops / machines.

The eval versions let you play with it for 180 days. You can re-arm them 3 times, so that gives you one and a half years. Then you can do a clean reinstall and start over, just backup or export your VMs.

The Hyper-V stand alone product is free with no time limits.


The last time I tried VMWare was more than a decade ago. I hear it is much improved since then. Esx-i or something. I'm using Hyper-V because I'm attempting to get a certification from MS.


Now, as to hardware access, you can assign individual hard drives and NICs and other things to a VM exclusively for the VM. Or shared by others. I ran Debian in a VM on Hyper-V. Should be the same with Fedora.

Windows 8 (and 8.1) and Windows 10 do come with "client" Hyper-V, and it works the same way, but it's simply not the "server" version. Usually used for testing purposes, but you could run as many as your machine has ram and space and cores.

All good info. Thanks!

I used VMWare for a few years when it first came out. (I ran Windows NT on it as a guest.) Later on, I used Xen, then libvirt / KVM. I was on a project for a while which required a different version of Linux than what I was running on my desktop. It was handy for running Windows too, in those rare instances when I needed to debug something there.

At work, I keep hearing about "containers". It appears to me that these are just spiffy chroot environments. I used to use this kind of environment when I had to debug glibc or the dynamic linker (and did not want to break everything else on the system). On FreeBSD, I think they're called "jails".

[CanadaBuilder3]

Windows Server 2016 will have something called "containers" but I am still not sure what exactly they are. I mean, aren't VMs already doing that? I guess it's the next step in the virtualization evolution. Each "container" is supposed to act like a clean VM and your app is the only one running. Or something like that.

[KBKB]

Windows Server 2016 will have something called "containers" but I am still not sure what exactly they are. I mean, aren't VMs already doing that? I guess it's the next step in the virtualization evolution. Each "container" is supposed to act like a clean VM and your app is the only one running. Or something like that.

I think I can shed some light on this...

When you use full virtualization, the guest OS can (and often is) different from the host OS. So, e.g. the host OS might be some variant of Linux and the guest might be Windows. (Or vice versa.)

There's an optimization known as paravirtualization which offers some speed ups by using a specially compiled guest OS kernel. Basically, the guest OS is aware of the fact that it's running in a virtual environment and, using this knowledge, plus services provided by the host OS (or virtualization environment), is able to gain better performance by using these interfaces. In Linux (with which I'm most familiar), this can sometimes be accomplished via kernel modules. In this instance, only a small part of the guest OS needs to have knowledge that its running in a virtual environment. Paravirtualization typically speeds up access to hardware devices.

Containers (as I understand them) are totally different than either of the above cases. As noted above, both full- and para-virtualization allow the host and guest OS to be different. When you use a container, the kernel - i.e. that part of the operating system that manages and schedules resources - must be the same between the host and all container instances. So, running Windows in a container on a Linux hosted OS is not possible.

So... what's the point?

As you said, a container provides you with a clean space in which to run either just one app or perhaps some collection of related apps. There is no way (short of exploiting kernel bugs) that programs in the container can affect anything going on on the host or in some other container. However, since the running kernel is shared amongst all containers and the host, access to hardware is very fast, as fast as it is on the host. Also (I'm sort of guessing here) there's no need to go through the OS startup procedure, so starting an app in a container is very fast.

(I'm basing most of the above one what I know about running things in a chroot environment. It's my understanding that containers offer additional isolation that chroot did not.)

[CanadaBuilder3]

MS calls it "integration services". I believe all recent Windows OS know if they are in a VM and behave accordingly. They list a bunch of OS that can be made "aware" or at least can be controlled by the hypervisor (make them shut down cleanly, time sync, and for Windows Server, if your host is licensed then all your guest Windows Server VMs act as if they are all licensed.)


You also can not normally nest virtualization (a VM in a VM in a host) as that is usually a hardware feature on the procs. There are ways to get around this limitation, and the latest offerings from VMWare and MS Hyper-V do have nested virtualization.

I also can not run Android emulators inside a VM. Won't work no matter what I try, at least not in my set up. The Android emulators are actually running virtualization software, then feed the "device" GPS, simulated wifi, touch, and everything else except the signal from your phone company.

[Synthetickiller]

I always thought my gtx 690 was a monster of a card...

[KBKB]

I always thought my gtx 690 was a monster of a card...

Wow!

Are either of them suitable for bitcoin mining?

[CanadaBuilder3]

No GPUs are suitable for bitcoin mining. Or at least they are not profitable. You may consider alt-coin mining, such as litecoin or ether or any of the new ones that pop up every now and then.

Between GPU brands, you would want AMD over NVidia for mining purposes because of more cores.

I used to run 5 to 6 GPUs from a single motherboard. It was fun. It was educational. It was hot (temperature).

[Synthetickiller]

Wow!

Are either of them suitable for bitcoin mining?

Almost $800 for the better card... lol.
I doubt the 690 could mine much by comparison.


Edit:

I'm most likely returning the MSI card to Amazon. I've noticed a tiny bit of audible coil whine when not benchmarking where the screens run at full tilt at 1000s of FPS. It's also a poor clocker. For the money, I could have bought a much better air cooled card & water cooled it. They really should bin cards that expensive. I'm most likely getting the Zotac WC'd variant. According to a few forums, all of the zotac cards overclock like nobody's business. And for that price... they better. Why else watercool?

No GPUs are suitable for bitcoin mining. Or at least they are not profitable. You may consider alt-coin mining, such as litecoin or ether or any of the new ones that pop up every now and then.

Between GPU brands, you would want AMD over NVidia for mining purposes because of more cores.

I used to run 5 to 6 GPUs from a single motherboard. It was fun. It was educational. It was hot (temperature).

I used to do Folding@Home & Seti. For about 18 months or so, I was part of a F@H team that did pretty well for the small numbers of people we had. One person had access to a super computer & had the highest output of anyone on earth using F@H, lol. I remember running 4 GPUs in a closet at 100%, 24/7. Who needs central heat? lol

If I could justify buying more cards (and in no way can I, right now), I'd love to set up a GPUGrid rig & just fold 24/7 w/o any electrical bill.

[CanadaBuilder3]

... running 4 GPUs in a closet at 100%, 24/7. Who needs central heat? lol

I had 2 motherboards, 5 GPUs each. Total of 10 GPUs. I got the R9 270X because they had lower power requirements and best bang for your buck. (This was 2 or 3 years ago.) I put them in vegetable crates with open tops. 1000 watts each. No hard drive, boot from USB. Risers for each GPU so they were sitting 2 to 3 inches apart.

Sold them all after 4 or 5 months.

Now that I'm in Canada, I'm thinking of getting the latest from bitmain. Their R4s run 800 watts at 8 GH/s (giga hash per second), so in theory it should ROI in about a year, with current difficulty; in practice you never really make money. But, I'm only going to turn it on during winter. Whatever bitcoins it earns will pay the electricity. Or I'll wait for one of their competitors to show up.

I keep reminding the bitcoin and altcoin miners, look guys, there are thousands of people folding/prime number hunting for negative profit as well.

[Synthetickiller]

I had 2 motherboards, 5 GPUs each. Total of 10 GPUs. I got the R9 270X because they had lower power requirements and best bang for your buck. (This was 2 or 3 years ago.) I put them in vegetable crates with open tops. 1000 watts each. No hard drive, boot from USB. Risers for each GPU so they were sitting 2 to 3 inches apart.

Sold them all after 4 or 5 months.

Now that I'm in Canada, I'm thinking of getting the latest from bitmain. Their R4s run 800 watts at 8 GH/s (giga hash per second), so in theory it should ROI in about a year, with current difficulty; in practice you never really make money. But, I'm only going to turn it on during winter. Whatever bitcoins it earns will pay the electricity. Or I'll wait for one of their competitors to show up.

I keep reminding the bitcoin and altcoin miners, look guys, there are thousands of people folding/prime number hunting for negative profit as well.

At least you can use it as a heater. We have two seasons here, hot & summer, lol. There's never a benefit. I just think it's fun & I do know some medication was developed due to the information generated by simulated protein folding. That's pretty cool. I don't know the effectiveness of the drug, so the outcome is neither here nor there. Develop a cure & then we're talking!


As for my current gtx 1080... it's degraded. I can't even overclock it to the speeds I got yesterday. I could add only 110mhz to the core w/o stablility issues. Now even 100mhz is unstable. It's going back...
Now I have to figure out if I do a direct swap & get another EK X, the Zotac variant or just get a founder's edition & buy my own block. I like option number 2, but I'm really indecisive. I have night & tomorrow to decided before issuing an RMA. First the house & people now working... then my phone is literally a bomb ready to go off & now this... I do NOT like 2016 at all.

[KBKB]

Speaking of RMAs...

Newegg has processed my Motherboard / CPU RMA and is sending me replacements. Should be here Tuesday.

[CanadaBuilder3]

I have not tried newegg.ca yet. Should I even bother? I can get from amazon.ca and ncix.com at lower prices too. (The Canadian websites)

[Synthetickiller]

I have not tried newegg.ca yet. Should I even bother? I can get from amazon.ca and ncix.com at lower prices too. (The Canadian websites)

If the price is lower, I don't see why not.
I usually use amazon for the ease of doing a return. I really, really didn't want to fight w/ newegg over why i'm returning the card. "Oh, your overclock range is degrading, but it's fine at stock. DENIDED!" lol.
NCIX in the US has video card prices at insane levels. They want 1080s for closer to the price of the Titan x (pascal) card.... just insane.

[KBKB]

I wasn't aware of NCIX until I started watching Linus on youtube. (Yes, I still find his voice somewhat annoying, but he does seem to know what he's talking about.)

I took a look at the NCIX US site this morning. I find it hard to navigate compared to Newegg.

If I lived in Canada, I'd give newegg.ca a try. I still like the US site and have no qualms about ordering from them. Though, depending on what I'm ordering, Amazon can often get stuff to me more quickly - same day, sometimes.

[Synthetickiller]

I got my hands on the Zotac variant of the 1080s. I ordered from jet.com because they are running a $50 off promo. The prices are incredibly inflated for this card, but this brings it down to "normal" levels, so I hopped on it.
I'll give you guys a review of how the card ships & who the actual seller was. Jet.com is basically a broker. They don't sell anything. They just source items at 'the lowest price," or so they say.

[KBKB]

I got my hands on the Zotac variant of the 1080s. I ordered from jet.com because they are running a $50 off promo. The prices are incredibly inflated for this card, but this brings it down to "normal" levels, so I hopped on it.
I'll give you guys a review of how the card ships & who the actual seller was. Jet.com is basically a broker. They don't sell anything. They just source items at 'the lowest price," or so they say.

I ordered something from Jet.com earlier this year. I don't remember what I ordered from them, but whatever it was arrived quickly and was well packaged. The cats enjoyed playing in the box for a few days.

I just ordered a Schiit Jotunheim with DAC module. I'm not an audiophile - it's probably overkill for the Sennheiser HD 598 headphones that are (also) on their way here. My current headphones are some really old (like 10+ years) Sennheiser gaming headphones. They still work okay, but the part that goes over the head has lost much of its clamping force - the headphones are falling off my head when leaning forward or backward.

The HD598s don't have a microphone. I need one for conference calls, so I'm also getting an Antlion Audio ModMic. It's a boom microphone that attaches via a magnet to whatever headphones you care to use. The reviews look good.

[CanadaBuilder3]

If you're still thinking of bitcoin mining, you probably mean something like ethereum mining, then you should take a look at the ff cards:

Asus strix r7 370 4gb
- rx 480 31Mhash
- rx 470 25.5Mhash

That's just with a quick look at the mining (alt) section of another forum.

Another post and blog does mention the Nvidia 1070

The preferred motherboard for mining is the ASROCK H81 BTC Pro, if you can find it. Let's you use 6 GPUs, you just need the risers.

I don't mine anymore, not unless I can get my hands on some recent ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) designed for mining, at a cheap price, which is unlikely. I was going to host a "group buy" ... is anyone interested in this forum? The deal would be to have it hosted offshore, I know a guy in Labradour or some other cold northern province of Canada who will run it for you. (Hosted mining, that's what they call it.) Or we could always just have it shipped to your house and you run it. Space heater for winter or something like that.

If you're not experienced and don't have the cash (as it is very unlikely to break even), I don't recommend you try it. For educational purposes only. It's a hobby that will make you lose money. The backup servers are a much more practical experiment. I have an old one so all I need are 6 hard drives for it. Probably going to upgrade the memory to 72 GB.

[KBKB]

No mining for me, either hosted or in my house. Living near Phoenix, my summer electric bills are already too high. And, hosting it elsewhere, well, what's the fun in that?

My replacement CPU & Motherboard arrived today. I got it working enough to boot a Linux rescue USB drive. It's cool - I was able to plug the USB memory stick directly into the motherboard.

I connected the SATA DOM (disk on module). It seems to work as I was able to see it in /dev. Doing "fdisk -l /dev/sdb" (or maybe it was sda) showed the correct amount of space.

I was puzzled about the memory for a moment; running the Linux "free" command showed an amount significantly less than 128 GB. But running "uname -a" showed that it's running an i686 kernel. This memory won't show up unless I run a 64-bit (x86-64) kernel. The BIOS showed the correct amount, however.

Speaking of the BIOS, I was disappointed to not see a "health" tab with CPU temperature, fan speeds, etc. Oh, well, it's not that useful anyway.

I counted the fans; I have 12 fans total. Three of them are only 40mm fans though. I managed to attach them to one of the ventilated front panel blanks. Hopefully this will help to pull in more air from the front.

I still have at least one fan header left over! (The three small fans are tied together via two Y connectors. Three more of the fans are in the mobile racks.)

I haven't installed any disks yet.

My next goal on this project is to flash the on-board LSI 3008 to IT (JBOD) mode. Once that's done, I'll check to make sure that each of the drive positions are working by installing just one disk in a tray and then moving that tray to each of the 15 different positions.

I still need to order three more disks to bring the total to eleven. But I'm not going to do that until I'm certain that everything is working.