What are you building now?

[STMahlberg]

I picked this up last night for $60 and I'm hoping to have it up and running in a couple of days. It does have 2 pci-e x4 slots.

Any suggestions to what I could plug into the pci-e that's worth the time?

Intel Server Board S5000VSA
Dual Xeon E5440 @ 2.83 processors
Buffalo 4 x 2GB DDR2
WD Black 250GB HDD


2457

[Haunted Forest]

I picked this up last night for $60 and I'm hoping to have it up and running in a couple of days. It does have 2 pci-e x4 slots.

Any suggestions to what I could plug into the pci-e that's worth the time?

Intel Server Board S5000VSA
Dual Xeon E5440 @ 2.83 processors
Buffalo 4 x 2GB DDR2
WD Black 250GB HDD


2457

Careful with those pcie slots, they might be something strange like for expansion boards or other weird server crap. I have a supermicro dual 771 that I thought had pcie. but it was just a weird slot.
might have something like strange ddr2 ecc as well. bdimm or ? can't remember

Have fun though, love strange things

HF

[DrPop]

@STM - cool, neat to see the old stuff being used. :) There's a couple options there with the PCI-e x4 slots since a GPU needs PCI-e x16 in length. If you're real handy with the tools, you can cut or melt the back part of the slot so that the GPU sits in there with the longer part sticking out the back. Or, you can get a PCI-e x4 to x16 converter that clips in the slot and then you put the GPU in the longer slot of the converter.

[STMahlberg]

@STM - cool, neat to see the old stuff being used. :) There's a couple options there with the PCI-e x4 slots since a GPU needs PCI-e x16 in length. If you're real handy with the tools, you can cut or melt the back part of the slot so that the GPU sits in there with the longer part sticking out the back. Or, you can get a PCI-e x4 to x16 converter that clips in the slot and then you put the GPU in the longer slot of the converter.

I found this and thought it might work... it looks about right: EVGA GeForce GT 710 PCI Express 2.0 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487221) For $30, it might be worth a try but I'm not sure how much work it would do. I do like your idea; I could get a Dremel Tool to do that.


Careful with those pcie slots, they might be something strange like for expansion boards or other weird server crap. I have a supermicro dual 771 that I thought had pcie. but it was just a weird slot.
might have something like strange ddr2 ecc as well. bdimm or ? can't remember

Have fun though, love strange things

HF

I did find a manual for the Motherboard online and downloaded it; the manual listed the expansion slots as follows:

• One 32-bit/33MHz, 5V PCI connector
• One full length 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X connector
• One 64-bit/100MHz PCI-X connector
• Two x4 PCI Express connectors

The first three... I haven't got a clue. :confused: And that's even after I read about them.

[STMahlberg]

I finally got this new rig up and running; however, I can't connect to it remotely. I setup everything just like I did with my laptop and it connected just fine. I put "password" as my password into the gui_rpc_auth.cfg file and dropped it into the Program Data directory along with the remote_hosts.cfg file that has the ip of my main rig... but that didn't work. I then edited the cc_config.xml file and changed 0 to 1 in <allow_remote_gui_rpc>1</allow_remote_gui_rpc> and that didn't work.

I've restarted Boinctasks, rebooted, several times on all my rigs. I've checked my network and everything can see everything else that's in the network. I've used the scan feature in Boinctasks and it simply doesn't see this new computer. I've checked the ip address and I've entered it manually and it won't connect. ~X(

The only thing that is different is 1) it's wired into my router, everything else is wireless (can't imagine that would make a difference though) and 2) this new system is running Windows Server 2008 which I'm not familiar with.

What am I missing?

[Mumps]

Windows 2008 server will block incoming connections with it's firewall by default. Have you checked for that? If you have a session logged in on the console, it may prompt you that there's an incoming connection for boinc and let you grant permissions for it...

[STMahlberg]

Windows 2008 server will block incoming connections with it's firewall by default. Have you checked for that? If you have a session logged in on the console, it may prompt you that there's an incoming connection for boinc and let you grant permissions for it...

Thank you. I will check for that.

Edit: Fixed. I checked in the Server Manager and it showed that Windows Firewall was on... I turned it off.

[DrPop]

There is one halfway decent PCI GPU you could put in the first slot, but I honestly don't think it's worth the money. I would rather spend the same money on a PCI-e GPU and get a lot more performance per dollar.
The PCI-X slots unfortunately aren't going to be of much use to us for crunching purposes. They were created at a time between PCI and full PCI-e implementation, and were basically a faster version of PCI. This was necessary for some RAID controllers, etc., in servers of the day.
Your best bet is to cut or melt the back of that PCI-e 4x slot or get a 4x to 16x adapter to put a modern GPU in there. Or just use it for CPU crunching of course.
Hope that helps a little! :)

[DrPop]

Forgot to add: if you type "PCI-e 4x to 16x" in Google, it will show you some adapter options, several less than $10 at Newegg now, depending on the style that will work best for you.

[John P. Myers]

Just a word of warning, you may also find some PCI to PCIe adapters during your searches. DO NOT buy one expecting to power a GPU with it. The PCI slot cannot deliver the power required :)