2008 a year later

12-21-08

Many things have taken place since I last updated this. I guess I got a bit lazy. But my life has changed a great deal in the last year and it has taken me away from working on the computers. For one thing I moved to Louisiana and took a job there. The job is working many more hours than I would like but at least it keeps me out of trouble. haha

The QuadCore as described previously has been running continuously since last year. Well a little interruption here and there but for the most part 24/7. She was overclocked to 2ghz and hasn't skipped a beat. One thing I did that I hadn't mentioned was to install Fedora, a linux distribution. No problems whatsoever although I must admit I know very little about linux. I just didn't want to buy another Windows license and I had heard that Linux actually runs my folding program a bit faster. I never did really prove that and I doubt there is much difference.

Meanwhile over the last year or so a lot has changed in the folding world. Folding is now running on graphics cards. The GPU program can now run on a lot of ATI and NVIDEA cards. These video cards turn out a tremendous amount of work. Much more than the CPU's even! So now the plan is to install some high power video cards into the quad core and see how much I can get out of her.

The first problem you run into with this Dell unit is the motherboard only has PCIe slots that are 8x. Of course there are no 8x cards that will run folding so I kept looking around. I finally found where some folks had solved the problem by carving out the end of the slot on the motherboard. Let me explain. A 8x slot is long enough to accomodate a 8x card. However most of the high end video cards are 16x! The good news is they are designed to work even if the 16x slot isn't wired for all 16x connections. I believe they are backward compatible all the way to a 1x slot but don't quote me. In any case they will work in this motherboard if you cut the end out of the slot so the card can hang out the end. Here is a picture of mine after I cut it some. I still have a bit of whittling to do but it is close to being done. Notice the end is cut out so it is open on the end. That is the mod that is required. I botched a few of the last pins so I am not sure what that is going to do. If you see a mushroom cloud coming out of my apartment... well you know it didn't work. lol

One of the things I want to monitor is how much power these new video cards pull. I just fired up the machine with the ole Kill-A-Watt meter on it and it is bouncing around between 248 to 253 watts. So without adding the card I am pulling approximately 250 watts at the wall.

The new video card is an Nvideo GeForce NX8800GT made by MSI. It uses two slots as it exits the heat out the back by the video connectors. I like that design as I certainly have plenty of heat inside the case and don't need any more.

I installed the card then couldn't find enough power connectors to run it. It requires a 6 pin power connection to the end of the card like a lot of the high end cards now a days. It pulls more power than a standard edge card connector can provide. So the design is to plug in an extra power connector on the card. Trouble is I didn't have a 6 pin connector in the machine that would reach the card. So I looked for an extension but couldn't find one. I found plenty of 8 pin extensions but no 6 pin extension. So I bought a dual 4pin to 6pin and plugged it in. Then I found I didn't have two 4 pin connectors that I could use. Sheesh.. So I looked around and found a SATA power converter to 4 pin. Plugged it in and powered up the machine.

Now I had been told that this motherboard is a bit picky on video cards. Well I had some video out while it went through post but then nothing. I tried it twice with the same results. I couldn't get it to go into the setup program either. So that is where I sit at the moment. I read where others were having the same problems and some found if they waited a few minutes it would finally boot up. I will have to try it again over the holidays. So far I cannot figure out what is causing the problem. Stay tuned.

12-23-08

Well it seems to be a no go. No matter what I do the machine refuses to go past the first post screen. Pressing F2, or any F key, does not go into the bios and let you do anything. I am beginning to think no matter what I do this bios is not going to let me use this card. Removing the card however and the machine boots just fine. So it is definitely something to do with the card and the bios conflicting.

There is one other test I am thinking of. There is another 8X slot next to the one I am using. It however cannot be cut out because the video card would then conflict with some of the SATA connections that plug into the motherboard. There is an adaptor that is available that allows a conversion from 8X slots to 16X slots. It however raises the card about a half inch or so and will not allow the card to seat in its normal manner. If I go this route I will have to modify the case and I wanted to avoid this. However the adaptor is inexpensive, around $25 or so and it is the only route, other than selling this card and trying another, that I can see at the moment. So I will order the adaptor and see what happens. The other issue is that it still may not work so I may do all this work and still not have a workable card.

Of course if I knew someone that could rewrite this bios then I would probably be all set. However I don't know  how to do it nor do I know anyone else that can.

Well I installed the adaptor and it still doesn't work. I guess I will have to be satisfied with standard built in video and running the folding on the CPU's.

My guess is that there is something in the BIOS that conflicts with this card. Dell probably doesn't like you modifying their servers to turn them into a real workstation class machine. They would rather sell you a workstation for more money. Oh well.