Dell Workstation Owners Club

[elfoam]

I have a small update on my T5810 for future reference. My two sticks of DDR4 2400mhz ECC ram arrived. There was conflicting information on if it'll run with different sized ram installed but it does.

I have the two 8 gig 2400mhz (dual rank) sticks in slot 1 and 2 and the original 4 gig 2133mhz (single rank) sticks in 3 and 4 for a total of 24gig and it's running correctly in quad channel. The E5 2630 V3 6 core I have in it only runs ram at 1866mz so all 4 channels are running at 1866mhz. I got the dual rank 2400mhz sticks as the end goal with the machine is a high end E5 V4 Xeon and they run the ram at 2400mhz.

I'll add more 8 gig dual rank 2400mhz sticks soon.

Dual channel vs Quad channel benchmark below

Dell Inc. Precision Tower 5810 vs Dell Inc. Precision Tower 5810 - Geekbench

 

[crazydrve`]

Has anyone here been able to fill all there PCI slots?

I have a T5500 and currently I cant get the PCI slot to work with all the other slots full without an error.

PCI-x - quad nic card
PCI -
PCIe x16 - video card
PCIe x16 - raid card
PCIe X8 - quad nic card
PCIe X8 - quad nic card

Thank you for any advice.

 

[Susquehannock]

Has anyone here been able to fill all there PCI slots?

I have a T5500 and currently I cant get the PCI slot to work with all the other slots full without an error.

PCI-x - quad nic card
PCI -
PCIe x16 - video card
PCIe x16 - raid card
PCIe X8 - quad nic card
PCIe X8 - quad nic card

Thank you for any advice.

Have you installed the latest Intel chipset Driver = A23? (not BIOS) may help with bandwidth and/or compatability issues with later hardware.

Link:

Support for Precision T5500 | Drivers & Downloads | Dell US

 

[crazydrve`]

Have you installed the latest Intel chipset Driver = A23? (not BIOS) may help with bandwidth and/or compatability issues with later hardware.

Link:

Support for Precision T5500 | Drivers & Downloads | Dell US

Thank you for the suggestions but the dell site won't load windows 10 drivers for the T5500, I checked and I have the latest driver available. I am thinking it might be the quad nic I am trying to use.

I have been able to use this software to tell what bus number are the devices.

SIV - System Information Viewer

SIV - System Information Viewer

rh-software.com

 

[lexluthermiester]

Thank you for the suggestions but the dell site won't load windows 10 drivers for the T5500, I checked and I have the latest driver available. I am thinking it might be the quad nic I am trying to use.

I have been able to use this software to tell what bus number are the devices.

SIV - System Information Viewer

SIV - System Information Viewer

rh-software.com

The Windows 7 drivers will still work in Windows 10.

 

[crazydrve`]

The Windows 7 drivers will still work in Windows 10.

How would I find that its Intel chipset Driver version?

Well I found my problem with the pci error, my onboard nic is broadcom and so is one of my quad nic cards. I dont get the error if I disable the onboard or take out the broadcom card.

ugh.

If all you have is a PCI slot, you will get a performance boost VS USB2.0, effectively double the bandwidth. It's just not optimal USB3.0. Those benchmarks should be interesting.

Any idea of what I can use to benchmark usb 2 and 3? what program can I use?

 

[lexluthermiester]

How would I find that its Intel chipset Driver version?

https://www.dell.com/support/home/e...5c5h2&oscode=w764&productcode=precision-t5500

Any idea of what I can use to benchmark usb 2 and 3? what program can I use?

CrystalDiskMark is a good one.

CrystalDiskInfo

About CrystalDiskInfo A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB, Intel RAID and NVMe. Aoi Edition Standard Edition Shizuku Edition Kurei Kei Edition Download System Requirements OS Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/11Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019/2022 Architecture x86/x64/ARM64...

crystalmark.info

HWInfo is another.

Free Download HWiNFO Sofware | Installer & Portable for Windows, DOS

Start to analyze your hardware right now! HWiNFO has available as an Installer and Portable version for Windows (32/64-bit) and Portable version for DOS.

www.hwinfo.com

Both are free and have a benchmark that gives solid performance info.

 

[crazydrve`]

https://www.dell.com/support/home/e...5c5h2&oscode=w764&productcode=precision-t5500

CrystalDiskMark is a good one.

CrystalDiskInfo

About CrystalDiskInfo A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB, Intel RAID and NVMe. Aoi Edition Standard Edition Shizuku Edition Kurei Kei Edition Download System Requirements OS Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/11Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019/2022 Architecture x86/x64/ARM64...

crystalmark.info

HWInfo is another.

Free Download HWiNFO Sofware | Installer & Portable for Windows, DOS

Start to analyze your hardware right now! HWiNFO has available as an Installer and Portable version for Windows (32/64-bit) and Portable version for DOS.

www.hwinfo.com

Both are free and have a benchmark that gives solid performance info.

Thank you, I forgot about Crystal Disk.
Going to run some tests today with the pcie usb3 card I have and the pci.

 

[elfoam]

How did you go with the benchmarks ? I'm going to try and make one of my 5500s or a 7500 boot from clover on a small ssd to a NVME as my next project.

 

[KLiKzg]

That's a Windows 10 problem. Microsoft changed the way sound cards are handled and many older cards are no longer seen/used properly by Windows. You will need to use DanielK's wonderful custom drivers that have a solution to that problem.

SB X-Fi Series Support Pack 5.0

This software/driver pack is unofficial, not supported by Creative Labs. Use it at your own risk. Supports the following Sound Blaster...

danielkawakami.blogspot.com

Try those and let us know if the problem persists. It shouldn't, but let us know anyway.

Didn't work...so I'm back to original T5500 sound on MBO.

Does anyone know what chip is it?
Maybe even have drivers for Win 10?

 

[Susquehannock]

Didn't work...so I'm back to original T5500 sound on MBO.

Does anyone know what chip is it?
Maybe even have drivers for Win 10?

Sound is a Creative chip if memory serves. Driver "V1.00.20" is what shows up in device manager on my systems running Win10.

Here is the Dell link. Page says compatible with Tx500 systems. Hope that helps.

>> https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-gy/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=fnj43

 

[crazydrve`]

How did you go with the benchmarks ? I'm going to try and make one of my 5500s or a 7500 boot from clover on a small ssd to a NVME as my next project.

Haven't been able to do them yet, I had to redo my server and now I think my raid card is dead all of a sudden, 9f that's even possible???

 

[Haloss1]

How did you go with the benchmarks ? I'm going to try and make one of my 5500s or a 7500 boot from clover on a small ssd to a NVME as my next project.

PCIE NVME SSD Booting works great on my T7500 with Clover, i used this russian guide for setting up the bootloader: https://habr.com/ru/post/472224/ (Use Google Translate).

I Installed Clover on a internal HDD connected to the Intel sata controller, the sas controller i'm using gives problems booting the bootloader (I guess you could use a USB drive as well sticked in the internal USB header, but i didn't tested that since i'm having problems booting with USBs at all with my system).
I installed Windows 10 Enterprise from another HDD who had the installer on it, in Rufus i used GPT and UEFI With a NTFS File System, The SSD was also in GPT format.

For the SSD im using a Sandisk Skyhawk Enterprise 2TB SSD, the thing makes the system fly, it's incredible how much stuff we can pack on these 10 year old systems.

EDIT: Whoops i was showing the wrong drive in CrystalDiskInfo

 

[elfoam]

PCIE NVME SSD Booting works great on my T7500 with Clover, i used this russian guide for setting up the bootloader: https://habr.com/ru/post/472224/ (Use Google Translate).

I Installed it on a internal HDD connected to the Intel sata controller, the sas controller i'm using gives problems booting the bootloader (I guess you could use a USB drive as well sticked in the internal USB header, but i didn't tested that since i'm having problems booting with USBs at all with my system).
I installed Windows 10 Enterprise from another HDD, in Rufus i used GPT and UEFI With a NTFS File System, The SSD was also in GPT format.

Excellent ! hopefully I can mange to get it up and running myself. That is roughly what I planed to do, using onboard sata and then switching to the NVME.. That's right about the performance I was expecting to see. After having had the NVME in my T5810 for a while now I cant go back to a sata ssd.

 

[crazydrve`]

Would anyone know why when installing drivers for a raid card the system stalls at installing drivers?

 

[BartPC24]

Would anyone know why when installing drivers for a raid card the system stalls at installing drivers?

Did you install all prerequsited drivers first ?

BR,

BartPC24

 

[crazydrve`]

Did you install all prerequsited drivers first ?

BR,

BartPC24

I tried too but my raid card is dead or something, can't even reflash the card

Did you install all prerequsited drivers first ?

BR,

BartPC24

I tried too but my raid card is dead or something, can't even reflash the card

 

[KLiKzg]

Sound is a Creative chip if memory serves. Driver "V1.00.20" is what shows up in device manager on my systems running Win10.

Here is the Dell link. Page says compatible with Tx500 systems. Hope that helps.

>> https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-gy/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=fnj43

Actually it's SoundMax integrated digital HD audio chip.

Link: https://www.dell.com/support/home/e...66tnr&oscode=w764&productcode=precision-t5500

 

[hat]

I may be looking into getting a used workstation of some sort. Don't care too much about the brand... but it has to be a full tower (not some silly SFF thing) and it needs to be able to accept a decent graphics card. Not sure if these workstations come with power supplies that even have any pci-e connectors, or if the power supplies are proprietary?

Preferably, it should come with one already installed, something around 750Ti level at least.

 

[elfoam]

I may be looking into getting a used workstation of some sort. Don't care too much about the brand... but it has to be a full tower (not some silly SFF thing) and it needs to be able to accept a decent graphics card. Not sure if these workstations come with power supplies that even have any pci-e connectors, or if the power supplies are proprietary?

Preferably, it should come with one already installed, something around 750Ti level at least.

The T7500 uses a standard format power supply (1100 watts) and has 8 pin connectors. They are 10 years old now so unlikely to come with a GPU that fast
, the common GPU you are going to get that is around 750ti performance is the K2200 and that often comes with the T5810 a (mid tower) and T7810 (full tower). But those are 5 year old machines. Right now I'm on my T5810 with a RX580 saphire nitro gpu. The T5810 is a bit small for me but they are inexpensive.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I may be looking into getting a used workstation of some sort. Don't care too much about the brand... but it has to be a full tower (not some silly SFF thing) and it needs to be able to accept a decent graphics card. Not sure if these workstations come with power supplies that even have any pci-e connectors, or if the power supplies are proprietary?

Preferably, it should come with one already installed, something around 750Ti level at least.

If you are willing to do some shopping, mixing and matching and go with older equipment, you can put together a solid system for $200. So the question is, what do you want to do with it?

 

[hat]

Ah, this idea doesn't really seem to be a thing anymore. It was an idea I was floating, but things didn't go that way. Might return to the idea another time.

 

[KLiKzg]

I may be looking into getting a used workstation of some sort. Don't care too much about the brand... but it has to be a full tower (not some silly SFF thing) and it needs to be able to accept a decent graphics card. Not sure if these workstations come with power supplies that even have any pci-e connectors, or if the power supplies are proprietary?

Preferably, it should come with one already installed, something around 750Ti level at least.

T5500 costed me in Croatia 300€.
Sold the shitty ATi card for 70€ & on last Black Friday bought GTX 1650 for 180€.
Put also GT 730 in it, so be cooled from 1650 fans.
Changes CPUs to X5670 for something like $40.
& not planning to put more RAM, as 48GB ought to be enough (for now).

Now thinking only to put dual non-cooled CPU coolers on it, just to test it.
As I have stock coolers in the front & dual ZALMANs 90x90mm in the back.

 

[hat]

For sure, these used workstations are great for anyone needing a decent PC at a low price. They often come with gobs of RAM too. It just wasn't meant to be this time...

 

[elfoam]

Talk about gobs of ram, I visited the local e-waste place the other day and saw a wool bale bag full of ram sticks. Sitting on top was an obvious stick of ddr3 ecc so I took that home, I bet if I looked carefully I could have found hundreds of sticks of ddr3 and filled up my T7500