Building an Affordable "Skulltrail" System

[Unregistered]

Yeah I got 94C WITH a corsair memory fan on the FBDIMMS.

Didn't help much lol!!

94 even with the fans? Are you sure they're running at top speed? If you've got them connected to a motherboard header, go into the bios and make sure you've got "system fan control" disabled as this reduces the speed any fan that is being run off the motherboard - except the CPU's which are controlled seperately.

Apologies if you already know this...which you probably do!

 

[Kougar]

Hehe! Poor old Rob trying to tie up all the loose ends!!

As far as my case goes, I uninstalled the intel Matrix 8.6 drivers and reverted to the native XP Sp2 ones (also disabled write caching on the raid 0 array), this time the test made it to nine hours in xp without locking up and with no vcore increase (I manually stopped it this time)!

I doing one more test now with the drivers re-installed.

I accept what you say about Vista aswell, that's why I was thinking this may have been a compatability issue all along....oh well...hopefully I'll have resolved this by the end of next week...once I've had another go at Intel!

It's tricky to compare all our issues since we're each running a slightly different configuration - specifically on the CPU front - this is bound to yeild varying results.

Mike does have a point, make sure your RAM isn't overheating and throwing errors. Simply using four modules of RAM causes this problem for me so I must keep a fan on them, but FB-DIMMs get significantly hotter...

Also, if you are using Intel's RAID system, I suggest you open up Intel's Matrix storage program, select the drive away, and do a drive verification and repair on it. You'll want to see if there are errors that can be causing the problems. Overclocking can cause lockups/reboots/bluescreens, etc... and that will fill your array with errors. Usually this will only cause odd program behavior and application crashes. But if you get errors in the wrong place the system will mark your array as failed next time you reboot, and you just lost all your data...

 

[Unregistered]

Mike does have a point, make sure your RAM isn't overheating and throwing errors. Simply using four modules of RAM causes this problem for me so I must keep a fan on them, but FB-DIMMs get significantly hotter...

Also, if you are using Intel's RAID system, I suggest you open up Intel's Matrix storage program, select the drive away, and do a drive verification and repair on it. You'll want to see if there are errors that can be causing the problems. Overclocking can cause lockups/reboots/bluescreens, etc... and that will fill your array with errors. Usually this will only cause odd program behavior and application crashes. But if you get errors in the wrong place the system will mark your array as failed next time you reboot, and you just lost all your data...

Seriously, it isn't the memory. I've tested two batches from Crucial and Kingston (8 individual sticks) at the correct voltage - the Kingstons have enhanced heat spreaders.

Have always had the Corsair fan on both sets at the full 6600rpm, never at any time have the temperatures gone above 65 deg on the Kingstons or 75 deg on the Crucials.

As for the RAID, you're absolutely correct, but I really haven't been doing much overclocking, this problem occurs with everything at stock, though seemingly only in XP.

Anyway, I'll try a verification and see if anything comes up. Think I may have to call this one a mystery for now, unless Intel have anything more to offer, which I some how doubt.

 

[Rob Williams]

P.S. What's the answer to the random question for posting regarding the two colors of the site? I never seem to get it right.

Haha. Orange and blue?

As far as my case goes, I uninstalled the intel Matrix 8.6 drivers and reverted to the native XP Sp2 ones (also disabled write caching on the raid 0 array), this time the test made it to nine hours in xp without locking up and with no vcore increase (I manually stopped it this time)!

Ahh, so you think it was just a storage driver issue? Seems strange, but it wouldn't be the first time we've seen RAID-related issues like this on the forums.

Yeah I got 94C WITH a corsair memory fan on the FBDIMMS.

Allow me to . It's issues like these that go to show what an unwise choice it was to stick with FB-DIMM on this platform. DDR2 would run much faster and half as hot.

 

[Mike]

Phew! Back to normal

It's happening with regular use, simple web browsing. USB mouse and keyboard seem to be working fine. All stock voltages, 400 FSB (which is stock for the board and the memory, but not for my E5420's). Northbridge rises to 70 and blue screen. I'll have to try with it back down at FSB 333. If it's still a problem there, then I've definately broken something. If broken, I wonder if liquid cooling would be enough to keep it functional?
QUOTE]

Phew! I did some messing around to better align my fans by moving the case front intake to be exactly in line with the eastern CPU, and to make sure that the northbridge fan was not getting buried under heatsink of the western CPU. I also followed the advice posted by someone earlier and disabled system fan control. Seems like it did something, 'cause it's much louder now But, everything works again!

FSB 400
2 x Xeon e5420 @ 3.0Ghz (stock 2.5Ghz)
All stock voltages

Kingston HyperX 4x1GB
4:4:4:12 @ 2v as per Kingston advertising. I suspect that I can take the voltage back down to stock 1.8. But, that's for another day.

Prime95 blended test after 1.5 hours (and counting, will leave for at least 10-12 hours):
CPU max temps 59,59,60,60 C on one chip, 51,51,56,56 C on other chip.
Northbridge max temps (remote 1, local, remote2 as per CPUID hardware monitor) 51, 43, 63
Memory max temps 46, 48, 52, 47 thanks to triple fan unit.

It was the Northbridge remote2 that had been killing me before, slowly and steadily rising to 70+ before blue screen. Now solidly at 61 - 63.

Given as how I've blown easily 15+ hours researching everything I could on liquid cooling, I may still go down that road. I expect the temps to rise 20+ F once the summer returns, and suspect that my lovely 60's C internal temps won't hold out under those conditions.

I even strongly considered turning the whole works into an aquarium (enough to call and ask about dimensions). But alas, the aquarium kit only fits an ATX board, not an eATX. http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

 

[Mike]

Price Updates

It's been fun working through the issues. And now that all appears to be well, I thought I'd take things back full circle and speak to the original subject of the thread; price.

Prices have come down nicely since the original post. Finding the board in the $500's is pretty easily done, and I've seen it as low as $450 plus shipping. The CPUs too have come down. There's really no reason any longer not to get at least the Xeon e5420's.

But, best of all, we can thank the search wars for HUGE savings.

In their attempt to gain market share against Google, Microsoft has introduced their Live.com "cashback" program. The program is simple; search for an item using Live.com, and if a participating vendor sells that item, Microsoft will add a link to the search results offering anywhere from 2% to 30% cashback if you follow the link and ultimately buy the item (subject to conditions).

As it turns out, eBay is a participating vendor with their "Buy it now!" listings, and you can buy virtually every part for a Skulltrail rig on eBay! eBay listings regularly cost 10% more for parts than what you could find elsewhere. However, the cashback link has routinely been 25%-30% when searching for these parts. End result, you pay a higher up front cost, but get a big rebate 60 days later.

In my case, out of $2400 in parts (including upgrade CPU's and waaaay upgrade hard drive - WD Velociraptor 300Gb), Microsoft has promised to repay me just under $600! It shows up in my account and everything

I have no affiliation with Microsoft, but I do appreciate their sharing 25% of my total costs! Just be sure to read all the fine print regarding browser session lifetimes, etc.

Now, maybe I'll take some of that $600 and pour it into an awesome liquid cooling setup

 

[Rob Williams]

I even strongly considered turning the whole works into an aquarium (enough to call and ask about dimensions). But alas, the aquarium kit only fits an ATX board, not an eATX. http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

Heh, alright. So I just spent about 15 minutes looking through that page, and I'm impressed. I don't think it's viable for most people, and I certainly wouldn't do that to a main computer, but it's definitely interesting. Water-cooling on its own can at times be messy... I can only imagine what it'd be like with oil that you actually have to deal with. Very cool result they have there though.

Glad to hear your temperatures are back in check though... that is one sweet overclock to run stable, especially given that the QX9775 is only 200MHz higher...

Now, maybe I'll take some of that $600 and pour it into an awesome liquid cooling setup

I've never heard of any of that before, but it seems very interesting. $600 is no small amount of cash... that's amazing. Have you used these "techniques" for other computer hardware as well? I'd be interested to know if this could be done for almost any type of hardware. People could save a bundle over the course of a new build.

 

[Mike]

Cashback

I've never heard of any of that before, but it seems very interesting. $600 is no small amount of cash... that's amazing. Have you used these "techniques" for other computer hardware as well? I'd be interested to know if this could be done for almost any type of hardware. People could save a bundle over the course of a new build.

The offering is not restricted to computer parts. You can take advantage of it for anything you want, so long as a participating partner is selling it online. The trick is to be sure to start a new session before each purchase, since the promotion applies to a single item each time (e.g. for 2 CPU's, you cannot simply enter quantity 2 from a Buy it Now auction, but rather must buy the first, exit browser (just to be sure), new browser window, new search, buy the second).

Similarly, you must make the purchase within 60 minutes of clicking on the link and the rebate is limited to a max of $200 per item (eBay restriction) and $2500 per year (MS restriction). So, it is best to do your research first, then confirm that the part is available on eBay, and only then use the Live.com cashback link to reach the item. Note that the rebate "badge" appears to follow you throughout the eBay experience, so even if you search for something completely unrelated just to get a cashback link to eBay, once you get into eBay you can search for whatever else you want and still get the cashback!

In my case, rather than pay $600 for the motherboard from NewEgg, I paid an inflated $650 for it on eBay, minus 30% cashback = $195 rebate, resulting in net cost of $455 plus shipping. Same idea for my Xeon e5420 CPU's, $90 back for each of them (net cost $245 ea.), $70 back for my WD Velociraptor 300Gb (net cost $190), $20 back for each Zalman CNTS 9700 (net cost $55 ea.), etc. etc.

I don't mean to turn this into an advertisement for Microsoft/eBay, but clearly that is their intent with this program. And, frankly, I don't mind furthering their machinations since it is very clearly a win-win situation for everyone. http://search.live.com/cashback/howToUse

 

[Toledo_Speedo]

Fired up my SkullTrail and got thru formatting my HDD and it crashed. Turned it back on and a capacitor blew in a 4th of July fashion. After turning the smoke alarms off in my office I RMA'd the board AGAIN! Just to be sure I tested the PSU on another system and it worked fine. Please tell me if anyone else has had this much trouble with their boards; could I be doing something wrong?

 

[Mike]

Board Failure

Fired up my SkullTrail and got thru formatting my HDD and it crashed. Turned it back on and a capacitor blew in a 4th of July fashion. After turning the smoke alarms off in my office I RMA'd the board AGAIN! Just to be sure I tested the PSU on another system and it worked fine. Please tell me if anyone else has had this much trouble with their boards; could I be doing something wrong?

On my first board, a choke blew (those little black squares beside the CPU labeld R25) in spectacular fashion at the soldering point. I thought that it might have shorted as a result of my side fan pushing against the CPU cooler and ultimately bending the board just enough to touch the back of the case. But, I've since read a couple of other accounts where user's had their boards spark in a similar fashion in the same area. So, perhaps there's a quality control problem all. I'd feel a lot less silly if that proved to be the case

 

[Toledo_Speedo]

That is right where mine blew! I am glad to hear others had the same problem! I have been second guessing my Case/PSU/Everything else sense it fried.

 

[Rob Williams]

I don't mean to turn this into an advertisement for Microsoft/eBay, but clearly that is their intent with this program. And, frankly, I don't mind furthering their machinations since it is very clearly a win-win situation for everyone. http://search.live.com/cashback/howToUse

I agree, and I'm impressed. I live in Canada, and rarely have to buy hardware anyway, so I wouldn't be able to take much advantage of this, but given the majority of our forum visitors are from the US, I can see this being useful knowledge. I'm surprised by how it works, actually. It takes some effort, but the savings are huge.

On my first board, a choke blew (those little black squares beside the CPU labeld R25) in spectacular fashion at the soldering point.

Haha, it's not funny, but this is getting ridiculous. I'm surprised out of all the reviews for this platform, no one seemed to experience these issues, and these are the guys who tend to push the hardware harder than everyone else. I really hope you guys can get things under control soon. This platform is far too expensive to have to deal with issues like this.

 

[Toledo_Speedo]

I just bought a used SkullTrail board off of eBay in case the next one from intell is bad. Plus if the used one works fine I can sell the RMA'd from ebay as "NEW".

 

[Merlin]

I just bought a used SkullTrail board off of eBay in case the next one from intell is bad. Plus if the used one works fine I can sell the RMA'd from ebay as "NEW".

Well, I certainly hope it works for you. I Never get any computer parts from eBay, I hope it is in the original sealed box.
Well, maybe accessaries like lights or something like that

Merlin

 

[Kougar]

Technically RMA'd stuff isn't new, it's refurbished or opened goods sent back to the original company. Unless they send you a new, unopened retail kit or some such.

 

[Rob Williams]

Technically RMA'd stuff isn't new, it's refurbished or opened goods sent back to the original company. Unless they send you a new, unopened retail kit or some such.

It's true, and makes sense since the company wants to spend as little as possible. If it is sealed and stll has that "new board smell", then it might very-well be new. I'm really not sure how Intel handles things like that.

 

[Kougar]

I don't either, but I suspect they follow the industry trend on that. Either way I was indirectly stating I'd be rather annoyed if I bought a "new" item on ebay and it turned out to be a refurb, to put it mildy.

 

[Mike]

RMA vs. New

Technically RMA'd stuff isn't new, it's refurbished or opened goods sent back to the original company. Unless they send you a new, unopened retail kit or some such.

Don't know how you would be able to tell the difference in this case. There is nothing "sealed" in a Skulltrail kit, except a simple warning sticker holding the antistatic bag closed. My RMA was identical packaging to the original, except that the RMA one had the skulltrail logo on the south bridge heatsink that my original did not have. Then again, I bought my original on eBay, so maybe they were both RMA

 

[Rob Williams]

Don't know how you would be able to tell the difference in this case. There is nothing "sealed" in a Skulltrail kit, except a simple warning sticker holding the antistatic bag closed. My RMA was identical packaging to the original, except that the RMA one had the skulltrail logo on the south bridge heatsink that my original did not have. Then again, I bought my original on eBay, so maybe they were both RMA

That little Skulltrail logo is supposed to come with all retail versions of the board, but I know it's easy to lose. I'm not even sure where the one on our board went ;-)

Oh, and their P45 Bonetrail board came with one too, I believe.

 

[TGG Productions]

Mine came with the logo, and I bought the board about 5 months ago...

For the record, my skulltrail system is running smoothly, no more memory problems I think I solved the overheating issue.

Rob, you said you could overclock the board to 2.8 stable, I have got it up to 2.97 stable with waterblocks on the NB and SB.

This thing is great for any enthusiast, but be prepared to spend more money then planned to get the performance and stability.