Technochicken
02-04-2013, 11:10 PM
Hey TBCS, it's been a while! School and non-computer related projects have been eating up all my time, so I haven't been on here at all lately.
I didn't bring my desktop with me to college, so I've been using my laptop as my workstation. It's a very fast (much faster than my old desktop, actually) and I have a pretty nice setup for it (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7c-p9nXgJS4/UJawR7Dm2JI/AAAAAAAACJ8/Ea3cL-mX0YY/s1600/20121104_124337.jpg), but I would prefer to use it as a laptop, rather than as a desktop replacement.
That's where this comes in (sorry for the crummy picture, I'll get some better ones later):
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-w5varFrseWI/URBsp_a0sDI/AAAAAAAAC1c/pVVNlnOo5ok/s1024/20130202_165052.jpg
That's a Supermicro X7QCE with four Xeon 7340 2.4 Ghz quad core CPUs (roughly equivalent to q6600's) and 24 gigs of ECC DDR2 667. And I got it for free.
I spend a lot of time at a completely student run machine shop/hackerspace kind of place at my school, and have found a few other hardware enthusiasts there. One of them got this board and accompanying hardware on ebay to play with, but wasn't using it much and decided he needed more space at the shop for his tesla coil stuff (shameless plug, he recently successfully kickstartered (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/onetesla/onetesla-a-diy-singing-tesla-coil) a tesla coil kit he helped develop.), and decided to find a new home for the board. Which is how I got it.
I haven't done much with the board besides setting it up and installing/configuring Windows server on it. Unfortunately, normal versions of windows only support up to 1 or 2 physical processors, so I have to use the server version, which isn't very well suited for personal computer use. I still have lots of tweaking to do to get it useable.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-VoqhNPXDYec/URBspnFFeKI/AAAAAAAAC1Y/eDoKXsjNxk0/s1024/20130202_165040.jpg
I don't have a dedicated graphics or sound card yet for it, but I'm hoping I can scavenge those from electronics recycling, or buy used ones cheap.
I'm not planning anything too elaborate for a case - I'll CAD up something in the next few weeks, and then laser cut it out of acrylic (hooray for infinite free laser cutter access!).
I didn't bring my desktop with me to college, so I've been using my laptop as my workstation. It's a very fast (much faster than my old desktop, actually) and I have a pretty nice setup for it (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7c-p9nXgJS4/UJawR7Dm2JI/AAAAAAAACJ8/Ea3cL-mX0YY/s1600/20121104_124337.jpg), but I would prefer to use it as a laptop, rather than as a desktop replacement.
That's where this comes in (sorry for the crummy picture, I'll get some better ones later):
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-w5varFrseWI/URBsp_a0sDI/AAAAAAAAC1c/pVVNlnOo5ok/s1024/20130202_165052.jpg
That's a Supermicro X7QCE with four Xeon 7340 2.4 Ghz quad core CPUs (roughly equivalent to q6600's) and 24 gigs of ECC DDR2 667. And I got it for free.
I spend a lot of time at a completely student run machine shop/hackerspace kind of place at my school, and have found a few other hardware enthusiasts there. One of them got this board and accompanying hardware on ebay to play with, but wasn't using it much and decided he needed more space at the shop for his tesla coil stuff (shameless plug, he recently successfully kickstartered (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/onetesla/onetesla-a-diy-singing-tesla-coil) a tesla coil kit he helped develop.), and decided to find a new home for the board. Which is how I got it.
I haven't done much with the board besides setting it up and installing/configuring Windows server on it. Unfortunately, normal versions of windows only support up to 1 or 2 physical processors, so I have to use the server version, which isn't very well suited for personal computer use. I still have lots of tweaking to do to get it useable.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-VoqhNPXDYec/URBspnFFeKI/AAAAAAAAC1Y/eDoKXsjNxk0/s1024/20130202_165040.jpg
I don't have a dedicated graphics or sound card yet for it, but I'm hoping I can scavenge those from electronics recycling, or buy used ones cheap.
I'm not planning anything too elaborate for a case - I'll CAD up something in the next few weeks, and then laser cut it out of acrylic (hooray for infinite free laser cutter access!).