Dell Workstation Owners Club

[crazydrve`]

Maybe the motherboard then?

it was supposed to be certified good, bought from server worlds, still doing some research. any ideas of tests to run? btw the voltages are showing normal now.

 

[lexluthermiester]

it was supposed to be certified good, bought from server worlds, still doing some research. any ideas of tests to run? btw the voltages are showing normal now.

Weird. If things are back to normal after removing the RAID card, it is possible that the card has an incompatibility with the system.

 

[crazydrve`]

Weird. If things are back to normal after removing the RAID card, it is possible that the card has an incompatibility with the system.

I hate scenarious like this where its hard to tell... although I did get a error notice for pci express slot 3 and a memory config error. I could have bad ram, I am testing it now.

Thank you again for all your help, I want to get this machine going, its a beast if I can.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I hate scenarious like this where its hard to tell... although I did get a error notice for pci express slot 3 and a memory config error. I could have bad ram, I am testing it now.

Thank you again for all your help, I want to get this machine going, its a beast if I can.

I feel you. No worries, happy to help. Try testing one stick at a time, in slot 1. The system will boot like that and it will make narrowing down which stick might be bad much easier.

 

[crazydrve`]

I feel you. No worries, happy to help. Try testing one stick at a time, in slot 1. The system will boot like that and it will make narrowing down which stick might be bad much easier.

Right now I am testing all at once. I keep wondering if is the stick of ram on the raid card, I have no way to test that.

It has a 1GB ddr2 ecc module

 

[lexluthermiester]

I keep wondering if is the stick of ram on the raid card, I have no way to test that.

Find a spare stick? DDR2 isn't expensive and a 1GB or 2GB ECC module will not be hard to come by. What's the model number for the RAID card?

 

[crazydrve`]

Find a spare stick? DDR2 isn't expensive and a 1GB or 2GB ECC module will not be hard to come by. What's the model number for the RAID card?

It's a areca 1880ix-12, I'm taking a chance and ordered a 4GB stick

 

[lexluthermiester]

It's a areca 1880ix-12, I'm taking a chance and ordered a 4GB stick

Have you checked the specs page for that card?

Products - SAS RAID Adapters | 廣安科技 Areca

The new third generation ARC-1883 family offers advanced technology for increased performance and improved enterprise data protection. They were designed with 1.2 GHz dual core ROC processor, DDR3-1866 memory architecture and PCIe 3.0 connectivity for the most performance-hungry data center and...

www.areca.com.tw

Those specs state that it takes DDR3.

Scratch that, was looking at the wrong product page.
The product manual shows it'll take a 4GB DIMM.

 

[jeanpat]

Hello,
I've been asked advises regarding the spec of PC gaming to run elderscroll. As an happy owner of a T5500, I start to search a deal on ebay. I found a T3600 on ebay uk for 324 €(no auction) with:

• RAM 16 Gb
• ssd 120 Gb + Hd 1Tb
• cpu E5 1620 v?
• quadro 4000
• PSU ?

Would it be a good deal to play elderscroll online?
As a gpu upgrade seems mandatory (the quadro 4000 possibly doesn't meet the minimal requirement), which graphic card could be considered to keep the budget tight keeping in mind that I don't know if the PSU is a 425W or 625W?

I do not dare to advice to buy on auctions since it is not my money. It may be an error since one can find interresting products:

• dell T5600
• dell T3600

 

[Macio4ever]

I have T5500 (2 x5687) with 24 GB RAM - with midrange GPU (1660ti) I can play FHD even a demanding titles. Secondary PC is T7810 with 2x e5-2637 v3 - it is faster ~ 30% (synthetic benchmarks) but in games there is no significant diference on the same GPU.

IMHO there is no such big differnce T5500 vs T5600 - that's why I have decided to move to T7810. Hope this helps

I would try to buy 625W PSU.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I have not noticed bottlenecks, T5500with those CPUs can easily saturate GPU to 100% on AA games.

To a point this is true. I have an RTX2080 and the X5680 it had was holding it back a little bit. The W3680 I swapped out when OC'd does better but not a lot. This suggests strongly that the highest end CPU's of 1366 platform are nearing the bottleneck phase of CPU lifecycles, so...

Secondary PC is T7810 with 2x e5-2637 v3 - it is faster ~ 30% (synthetic benchmarks) but in games there is no significant difference on the same GPU.

..this would likely be an indication of GPU bottlenecking. Get a better GPU for that system and games will run much faster.

 

[Macio4ever]

I think I have to make my post more clear

Bottleneck no 1 - I have only referred to 1660ti and rtx 2060 which I have tested. It may be different story with high end GPU. So I only told my story with my equipment.
Bottleneck no 2 - I meant that having i.e. 150 FPS (Apex, max details 1920x1200) vs 130 FPS which I do not consider significant for my needs. I am sure that other people may have different perception.

I think my English is not good enough. I meant 30% in benchmarks was to show difference between X5687 vs e5-2637 v3 (the same number of cores, similar clocks) and impact in such configuration in few games was not that big for me. 144p or 4K it may be a different story.

 

[ManGupta]

To a point this is true. I have an RTX2080 and the X5680 it had was holding it back a little bit. The W3680 I swapped out when OC'd does better but not a lot. This suggests strongly that the highest end CPU's of 1366 platform are nearing the bottleneck phase of CPU lifecycles, so...

1366 platform maybe nearing bottleneck phase ..... BUT ..... X79 still have juice left .....

 

[Nepo Rood]

Hello fellow members,

I picked up a Dell T7500 from a friend in our Android community a couple years (+/-) back. He needed money to move so I helped him out, it came with all the drive bays full, mostly HDDs, but there were 2 SSDs. Installed RAM was a bit on the "low end" at 12Gb (6 x 2GB/1Rx8 modules), when compared to max amount of 192Gb. Dual E5645 Xeon processors, and an AMD graphics card (HP Radeon HD 8490 1GB X16).

The main purpose of this box is compiling Android ROMs for "smart" phones, more specifically my own Android ROM project. I have Libre Office installed for work related reasons as I need to work with spreadsheets and such.

Over the past few months I've been looking for some ways to "upgrade" this system, as I really don't want to go out and drop a ton of money on something more modern at this time (yes, the Rona has me "working" from home in front of my own PC #Bored). A friend of mine just shelled out $3000-ish for a new setup, and yes, it's a beast of a thing.

The road so far:

* I've pulled the original RAM and added 6 x 16Gb/2Rx8 modules, for a total of 96Gb @ 1333Mhz.
* Replace the installed Radeon graphics card with a GeForce GT710
~Side Note: I had purchased the GT710 for my sons PC, but he lacked the necessary PSU to run it properly (later fixed, but that's a different tale)
* Added 2 PCIe cards:
- 4 port SATA III (I boot one of my SSD drives from this card, boot times are faster if you disable the integrated SAS controller)
- M.2 NVMe "M" Key (Haven't figured out how to boot from this yet with "standard" means, but that's really not a problem for me)

The road ahead:

* Ordered a couple Xeon X5680's today, hopefully after I get those installed, it will improve my compile time. I've heard that my T7500 would thank me for the CPU upgrade...
* TBD


Additional Info:

I picked up a couple Samsung EVO drives to use with the PCIe cards mentioned above. The 860 EVO SATA and the 970 EVO NVMe M.2, read/write is pretty decent considering the PCIe slots on my board are of the v2.0 variety. Motherboard has 3 SATA II ports, the other 4 are attached to the SAS controller.


Regards,
Nepo

 

[lexluthermiester]

* Ordered a couple Xeon X5680's today, hopefully after I get those installed, it will improve my compile time. I've heard that my T7500 would thank me for the CPU upgrade...

Make sure you update your BIOS before installing those CPU's. See PM.

 

[crazydrve`]

Have you checked the specs page for that card?

Products - SAS RAID Adapters | 廣安科技 Areca

The new third generation ARC-1883 family offers advanced technology for increased performance and improved enterprise data protection. They were designed with 1.2 GHz dual core ROC processor, DDR3-1866 memory architecture and PCIe 3.0 connectivity for the most performance-hungry data center and...

www.areca.com.tw

Those specs state that it takes DDR3.

Scratch that, was looking at the wrong product page.
The product manual shows it'll take a 4GB DIMM.

So it looks like there is some sort of incompatibility with the T5500 and the ARC-1880, I disabled the bios on the raid card and all is working good now. this is so weird. must be a boot bios issue.

thank you for all your help.
Bill

 

[lexluthermiester]

So it looks like there is some sort of incompatibility with the T5500 and the ARC-1880, I disabled the bios on the raid card and all is working good now. this is so weird. must be a boot bios issue.

Yeah, that sucks. It happens though.

thank you for all your help.
Bill

You're welcome Bill. Sorry it didn't work out for you. Are you going to try another raid card? If so, I have a suggestion you might find compelling;

Syba SY-PCI40037 5 Port SATA II Port Multiplier RAID 0 / 1 / 3 / 5 / 1+0 Card | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Syba SY-PCI40037 5 Port SATA II Port Multiplier RAID 0 / 1 / 3 / 5 / 1+0 Card at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

That card is hardware based set-it-and-forget-it RAID. I personally have used one of these and it was effortless.

 

[crazydrve`]

Yeah, that sucks. It happens though.

You're welcome Bill. Sorry it didn't work out for you. Are you going to try another raid card? If so, I have a suggestion you might find compelling;

Syba SY-PCI40037 5 Port SATA II Port Multiplier RAID 0 / 1 / 3 / 5 / 1+0 Card | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Syba SY-PCI40037 5 Port SATA II Port Multiplier RAID 0 / 1 / 3 / 5 / 1+0 Card at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

That card is hardware based set-it-and-forget-it RAID. I personally have used one of these and it was effortless.

So far I am going to stick with the raid card, I don't believe I need the bios, I can still manage it through the OS. I am going to go through lots of different tests to make sure its stable.

This card was expensive. here is the card, FYI.

areca ARC-1880ix-12 PCI-Express 2.0 x8 SATA / SAS Controller Card - Newegg.com

Buy areca ARC-1880ix-12 PCI-Express 2.0 x8 SATA / SAS Controller Card with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[Nepo Rood]

I got decent card from Amazon, works well for my needs. I haven't tried the RAID on it, but get decent R/W from my SSDs

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KYP5RRL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Edit:
See where you are keeping the current card, lol

 

[lexluthermiester]

I got decent card from Amazon, works well for my needs. I haven't tried the RAID on it, but get decent R/W from my SSDs

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KYP5RRL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Edit:
See where you are keeping the current card, lol

Unfortunately, that card does not do RAID 5 which is what @crazydrve` needs(IIRC).

 

[crazydrve`]

@Nepo Rood

I needed a card with some serious expansion and power, I can hook this card up to expanders and get many hdds with multiple raids going. I hook this up to another case that has my hdds in them.

This is essentially what I am doing...

SAS Expanders, Build Your Own JBOD DAS Enclosure and Save – Iteration 1

Guide to building your own low cost 4U JBOD DAS Enclosure using a HP SAS Expander to save money

www.servethehome.com

It seems weird that a bios on a raid card can conflict that badly. With disabling the bios on the card I now have 40TB I am building.
Thanks for all the help everyone,

 

[crazydrve`]

Has anyone seen in the bios where it doesnt show anything on the boot sequence?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Has anyone seen in the bios where it doesnt show anything on the boot sequence?

What do you mean?

 

[crazydrve`]

What do you mean?

I go to the boot sequence section in the bios and it was just a blank area.

I completely reset the bios using the pins and now it seems good.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I go to the boot sequence section in the bios and it was just a blank area.

I completely reset the bios using the pins and now it seems good.

Likely just a glitch.