Computer of the week...

[Airbozo]

That system is a tower system, so I think it is 4u. SM makes a similar model to rackmount. The lower portion is for intake, but looking at it, it should be easy to throw some kind of drive mounting assembly in there.

Working with both sata and scsi, I prefer scsi for speed, but sata for size and noise. When recomending storage to customers, it all depends on the application they will be using. If they need high speed in a single system scsi all the way, if they don't mind a storage expansion cabinet, sata on the low end fibre channel on the high end. Equalogic makes a really impressive sata san box that is very close to or equal scsi speed. Most of our high end video editing customers and simulation systems use scsi due to the reliability and speed.

[ajmilton]

supermicro's good stuff. we used their 1u servers for computational machines. slap a couple of processors, a couple gig of memory, and a hd into a rackful of 1u's, network 'em up and you have a beautiful rack of math pwnage

but yeah, they're really reliable. and the few problems we've had were handled very adequately.

i think the 1u's came with a prefab duct for the processors, which also made things nice.

[Airbozo]

So out of 3 systems so far only one works. I personally think it is related to the heatsink. It takes _alot_ of pressure to push down on those clips to get them to secure to the board and the mobo flexes and touches the case. I have never liked those heatsinks for that reason. They also have a nasty habit of coming loose in shipment. The engineer that came up with that design should be shot. I have swapped out everything including the bios chip to try and fix it, but 2 in a row bad? Must be related to something I am doing (although in 20+ years of working on computers I have only once ruined a mobo by installing a heatsink, now maybe 3 times, twice in one day!?!?!?...)

Despite one bad tech support guy I talked to (I had to ask him if he was the receptionist), SuperMicro has been great. They are rma'ing the boards and we should be able to pick them up today (we are only a couple of miles from thier warehouse).

...And the sales guy just came in and we are taking one of the systems in to their QA guy to have him do some testing for us (really helps when you buy $100k+ of parts from them a month). I will post the results.


EDIT: Just got back from Super Micro and they were very helpfull. They put the system on their test bench and within less than minute they were telling me the memory was bad. Sure enough we swapped it out (I already swapped it out with known good memory) and the system came right up. I came back to my lab and grabbed all the good sticks of memory I had and went back to test it in the system. Some worked some didn't, _and_ the known good ones worked the first time we booted it but not the second time. Reseated everything and it worked. Tried the rest of the known good memory and some failed and some didn't (different ones this time). We came to the conclusion that we had some flakey memory and are having the vendor replace all of it with hopefully a different maufacturer. We are using ATP memory since it is a local company and they worked with Super Micro the get it certified in their systems. We are going to test some more of the ATP memory and if it fails or is flaky again we are not buying from them ever again.

update: sales guy just came in and we are going to take this memory over to their lab and verify that it is bad or good on a memory tester.

[markkleb]

I really like how clean the insides are. Thanks for the post.

Who makes the Slimline PS?

[Airbozo]

I really like how clean the insides are. Thanks for the post.

Who makes the Slimline PS?

Yes SM does a good clean assembly. Makes my job easier since I just have to add parts and not clean up the whole unit.

You can find slimline psu's on newegg and other places. Try searching for 1u power supplys or even 2u. The 1u's can sometimes be noisy. Hell one of the systems here has a 700w 1u power supply that sounds like a small jet on it's quietest setting. Not sure why it needs a 700w ps though since there is only room for 4 drives and no pcx-e16 slot... Only a dual xeon too.


BTW Any requests? I was planning on showing the insides of an sgi supercomputer or a couple of sun boxes.

[Maz]

i like the sound of "super" better than "box" so please show the super : )

[nil8]

Yea, supercomputer gets my vote.
You have a cray sitting around?

[Airbozo]

Yea, supercomputer gets my vote.
You have a cray sitting around?

Hehe not anymore. Used to have a cray in one of my old labs. was crazy fun to watch since it had a liquid cooled backplane... http://vitalsecurity.typepad.com/pho...m/pic_0077.jpg

I will line up an sgi supercomputer system and snap some pics.

[Airbozo]

Got busy this week so I will try and get some pictures up tomorrow or friday.

[nil8]

Imagine the amount of work the @home folding project could do with one of those crays...sweet lord.