A blog about my rantings, including Games, Game Development, Gaming, Consoles, PC Gaming, Role Playing Games, People, Gaming tips & cheats, Game Programming and a plethora of other stuff.
I've spent about three hours checking and sorting out the machine which went down, and come-what may I found problem after problem, but not with any of the software. If your software checks out then there's an obvious other place to look... Your hardware.
My first step was to remove the drives, specifically my ZFS devices. No difference, everything still broke.
I then set about systematically removing one piece of hardware at a time, first my quad ethernet card, no difference, then I removed the added dual SATA card still broke...
Finally, I removed all the memory and inserted just one stick...
For the first time the firmware of the motherboard reported something had changed (at boot) it knew the memory has reduced from 8GB to 2GB. But then the grub boot was really fast, it came up and into the system very quickly.
Now, I had been getting MySQL Error 2013 for nearly ever query or SQL dump, with 2GB of RAM this didn't happen, sudo and all the programs now work again... I can therefore only assume one of the other sticks of RAM is corrupt in some manner.
So with a clean boot...
I was able to start pulling the data out...
I ran the server on soak in memtest for an hour and still no problem, there was ONLY a problem after MySQLd had started and 8GB of RAM was installed... Time to bin some of these sticks.
Its that time, I have been maxing out my machine repeatedly, I had two options upgrade or build new.
Money determined that an upgrade is all I can afford, between the server rebuild earlier in the year, building myself a new rack-mount table and just generally being skint my budget was low, super low, like £200.
Lets go over what the machine is....
I'm running an Intel Core i7 950 3.0ghz. This is a four core (eight thread) chip, it cost the earth when I bought it as an early adopter of the newly released Core i7 series. My upgrade comes in the form of an Intel Xeon X5670, clocked slightly slower I do plan to overclock the chip, but it lifts me to 6 cores (12 threads). There's also a whopping increase in L3 cache, I see this as the last and only upgrade path for this machine.
The motherboard hosting this is a very trusty Asus P6X58-e, I've loved every minute of this board, and hope that applying the overclock will be as easy as everything else working with it.
As I am overclocking however, it's going to be a full tear down of the machine, a full clean, replacing the heatsink pads & compounds throughout and cleaning it all up. This will be the first time I'll have taken the motherboard out of it's residential case since I built the machine.
For RAM I've been very happily running 6 x 2GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 at 1333mhz, actually underclocking the memory as it's 1600mhz rated, but running it any faster than 1333mhz I ran into heat issues and instability.
With the rebuild however, I've bought second hand sticks of the Corsair XMS3 DDR3 but 4GB sticks, since I want to retain triple channel functionality I want six matching rated sticks, however, the number of sellers with matching sets is hard to find, there's lots of XMS3 about, but you get a speed spectrum from 1600mhz to 2000mhz stick, I've gotten some listed as different versions too, so I'm hoping everything will be okay and I can homogenise the sticks I have.
The power supply remains the Corsair I have had a while, but I am going to try and clean it out.
Brian over at TechYesCity on YouTube, often recommends using WD40 to coat parts and keep them working longer, I may have to check this on my secondary Core 2 Duo machine to see if it works before going for it on this my main machine.
The final upgrade is to sort out and replace the filters with something high micron rated, HEPA filter pads across the bottom.
Over the last few weeks you will have seen that I've been tinkering with my Dell Poweredge servers, I asked Morten over at "My Playhouse", his suggestion was that the RAID controllers should appear in the POST screens even if they had no RAM.
Mine were not appearing, however, whilst investigating Mortens suggestion I did try a different stick of RAM in one of the controllers, and it showed up!... The Dell Perc 5/i controller output light blue/cyan coloured text when it had an issue.
So, I did a lot of reading, and it's few and far between about exactly what RAM the controller should take... As I had HP marked RAM in a Dell RAID controller, it was clear somewhere in it's life this stick I have had been swapped out.
I read that I needed EEC DDR2 PC3200-R 333mhz RAM for the controller, and specifically they needed to be Rx8 or Rx16 types.
Luckily I recently had a donation directly to the blog, so I invested that kind gift into two second-hand sticks of RAM for the RAID controller... Here is the result:
Well, I'm midway through an awful lot of little projects, and right now (well about 5 hours ago) I actually just got home from a holiday (vacation to our American cousins)... So, lets just go over what I'm working on, what I'm planning for you guys, and when I plan to do it, saving time slips.
First, the server fan project, the fans have been modded with new resistors, they all still work, and the server boots. And it a LOT LOT quieter, however, the BMC does start to moan after a while and it ramps the fans up to 100% screaming again when they drop below 2250 RPM. So, I'm still working on software patching that...
Second, I have an introduction for you guys for the servers, covering all the little bits of kit I found in them, including memory installation, RAID controller configuration & installation, DRAC set up, and even re-working an Intel Dual Gigabit 8x PCIe. Well I say re-working, I took the heat-sink off and put new shiny thermal paste on it to help it run cooler with the slower fans... Anyway, all that is coming up.
Third, what am I actually going to be doing with the servers? Yes I have two new things to announce, watch this space.
Fourth, again a server item, racking them... I'm planning on building my own mini-coffee table style rack from some ikea items... However, this is a very low priority and depends on Pay-day coming around.
Last Server Item, it the new drives and RAM upgrades I've order, yes a whooping £20 has been spent! However, I'm reaching out to several ebay and Amazon traders looking for partners to bring you new and exciting content as well as giving them reviews for their kit... So, watch this space for more kit being reviewed in my unique style. To those vendors I've sent missives to... Get back to be folks, first come first served... I've got a Server CPU provider already negotiating... I'm missing RAM and cable providers... (hence why I've bought the first round of items for review & use).
Sixth, this is a software project, one of my most popular post series is my old, original, "Write your own CPU" series, which I think is pretty crap, I never finished it, never went beyond the basic add & sum op codes. The later 4004 tutorial is not as popular (despite it being vastly superior), so to help my viewers see more of my blog and sites I'm going to be making a video series about writing your own virtual CPU.
I've got a bunch of real Z80 chips lying around, and some LED's, and a breadboard, so I may very well make a simple Z80 stepping/tester board and then we can write something similar in C++.
Seventh, Java code, the java series I had gets a fair view YouTube views, but I never see those viewers come through to here, so we need to figure out someway to get them java folks to read more than one line of text at a time!
So that whole series needs a tidy up, and the game itself there needs some new loving.
Eighth, I have some more Socket 775 modifications to work on, these are very very low on my list of projects, as I bought them at exactly the same time as the new servers came in. And since the servers work, and are dual socket quad core Xeons, they are far more performance ready.
Very finally, I need to sort out the work-area, I have a new lovely digital controlled soldering iron, I have the Z80 project to solder, and three different arduino powered projects for the father-in-laws DCC train-set hobby to work on, so all those are coming this way, the first will be to mount the arc welding effect lighting into a single board solution. Then I have an RGB effect lighting board to build to emulate a glowing set of fires for him. Then finally a 5v DC motor project to power with PWM and emulate a set of coal-mine head stocks turning.
In my rig I have lots of silent fans (140mm silent fans, 120mm silent fans), I did a review fitting Knox silent Fans a while back, as part of that same rig however I have a Corsair Airflot RAM Cooler:
I've never really liked this addition, but it does serve a good purpose, cooling my RAM significantly, but the fans are small and loud, very loud, as it has aged however, it is getting terrible.
I had heard some users mention this unit making noise, but they didn't have it fitted to Corsair ram, so I assumed it was just their unique problem. Well I do have Corsair RAM, I purchased the RAM and cooler as a kit when I put the current Core i7 rig together myself
Over time, I've heard it making a bit more noise than normal, but last night whilst working, I had to actually open the case and pull the power cable on this, it was grinding, vibrating and generally grumbling like crazy, as I pulled the power on it my rig became almost silent instantly, and totally silent once I'd shut the case back up again. This little fan had been causing such trouble.
I actually trouble shot this even more, and using my finger bravely, stopped the fan spinning (don't do that at home folks!), and figured out it was the fan to the top most position which was making all the noise, the other fan was silent...
I'm thinking after a server back up of my code, and doing some work on the house at the weekend, it might be time to strip the PC down and clean it, and see about replacing this fan unit.
