BenseBuilt XW8600

[TheBense]

Hi Everyone. I'm Andrew. I am a senior in mechanical engineering at Clemson University. I have been playing/tinkering with computers for nearly 14 years now. One of the challenges that I have been most interested in is seeing how powerful of a machine that I can build, while spending as absolute little as possible. I decided to take on this project myself, out of personal interest, and it has taken place entirely on my own time. I am stressing this point because this project is 100% completely liberated from all warranties, support, politics, and legalities.

1. Purpose:

To build a powerful, reliable workstation as cheaply as possible.

2. Preperation:

Fast forward.. I purchased an DL160 G5 for very cheap. After tinkering with it, I came across an xw6600 motherboard, and then I ultimately chose the xw8600 as it seemed more suitable for my needs. I splurged and spent $45 on it  

3. XW8600 Workstation:

    XW8600 OEM Spec Sheet

4. BenseBuilt XW8600 specs:

• XW8600 motherboard sourced from eBay.
• XW8200 case.
• XW8600 / XW9400 1050w Power Supply
• 64GB of PC2-6400F RAM. I've got the RAM risers cage, with Sixteen 4GB FBDimms.
• Two Xeon X5460 CPUs. One is c0 stepping SLANP and the other is e0 stepping SLBBA.

         OEM Specifications of each of the X5460's can be seen in the above links, or below

              Cores: 4

              FSB: 333MHz (Which is quad pumped to yield the OEM FSB rating of 1333 MHz)

              Multiplier: 9.5x

              Operating Frequency: (9.5 * 333MHz) = 3166 MHz

              L2 Cache: 12 MB

I have sucessfully BSEL modified both of the CPUs (both the SLANP, and the SLBBA) to increase the FSB from 333MHz (1333MHz) to 400MHz (1600MHz). Thereby increasing the CPU operating frequency to; (9.5 * 400 MHz) to 3800 MHz. This applies to ALL eight cores. In addition, I've increased the voltage to 1.35v via BSEL pin mod to compensate for the overclock. 

5. Thermal Considerations:

I run the OEM HP "low height" heatsinks. In order to prevent the HP BIOS from complaining about the lack of dual fan heatsinks, I found this amazing 4pin PWM fan splitter off of newegg. It is the only 4wire PWM fan splitter that splits all four wires on the female fan header, into two seperate 4 pin male headers. I then purchased another matching pair of the fans that the OEM heatsinks have on them. I depinned the 4pin female end of the fan splitter and placed it in a 5pin plastic header. (I forget if the single fan heatsinks have 5pin headers on them, despite having only 4 wires) Then for the additional fan that I zip tied to the backside of the heatsink, I de-pinned the RPM signal and I pinned it directly into the empty 5th pin slot. 

I later used a soldering gun and bridged the 3rd and 5th pins to spoof the motherboard into thinking I'm running dual fans, while using a single, more powerful fan. This procedure has been adequately documented here. 

6. Stress testing and validating the overclock: 

No computational errors occured after running OCCT for 24 hours. 

In addition, I run all CPU cores at 100%, 24/7/365 in my BOINC projects. I have been doing so for months. Still without any issues. I anticipate that many skeptics will disapprove of this. I do not care. These CPUs are too cheap to justifyspending the cost of the far, far, far overpriced dual height/fan heatsinks  

7. Additional peripherals: 

• Dell PERC H310 RAID Controller. I have cross-flashed the firmware on it to an LSI 9240-8i. Connected it are 6x3TB drives in a RAID5 array. As well as a pair of Mushkin 240GB mSATA SATAIII (yes, mSATA) SSDs striped in RAID0.
• Nvidia GTX 770, Water cooled.
• Nvidia GTX 670, water cooled.
• Intel PCI-X quad port gigabit ethernet NIC.
• Atheros AR9160 MiniPCI dual band 802.11a/b/g/n wifi card, in an adapter that goes in the PCI slot. (What else can I put in the PCI slot?)

I am using a much more powerful nidec 120mm nidec fan that I ganked off of some deall. It is 120x38mm and it draws 1.40A. Which is nearly twice the amount of current as that stock 0.72A fan.

I am using a $4 PWM LED Dimmer to control the speeds of overpowered fans. It allows me to control fans that draw up to 5 Amps. 

I nearly forgot; i purchased one of these: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0009F8DV4

It is a 5.25" bay adapter that allows you to put a slimline optical drve (laptop drive), along with a 3.5" drive, all within a single 5.25" slot. Super handy.

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The rest of the Pictures of my build can be seen here

8. Upcoming projects: 

I am nearly finished with my HP DL585 G7. I've been piecing it together for nearly 9 months now. I've got a pair of unlocked 16core Opteron 62xx CPUs for it, and 8 sticks 32GB of PC3-12800R for it. I cannot, find a way to order the fan power harness without ordering the entire kit... Here's a teaser pic  

Edit:  02/18/2015 - Editing grammar.

[SDH]

Bense..... Good to have you back.

Impressive to say the least.  Can you educate us on the method of BSEL modding the motherboard or socket?  Some pics would be great.  I bet this takes a steady hand and a very small soldering tool.

Nice lapping.....

Thanks,

Scott

[TheBense]

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@Scott D. Harrison wrote:

Impressive to say the least.  Can you educate us on the method of BSEL modding the motherboard or socket?  Some pics would be great.  I bet this takes a steady hand and a very small soldering tool.

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I will try to take some pictures and add them to my photo album soon. What CPUs are you running? Can you PM me? 

[TheBense]

Just edited my first post to add some pictures  

[TheBense]

[SDH]

Well, Bense, that's a lot more impressive than my "GhettoMod" method of adding a front case fan to the xw workstations using the existing motherboard fan header meant for that purpose.

If you have a pic of one of your processors after this technique was applied it would be great to add that to this post.

We have shared "unsupported" ideas here in the past, and I think this is about as unsupported as it gets!  Interesting to learn about.

Thanks, Scott

[TheBense]

     

[TheBense]

[edited post]

[TheBense]

I wish someone would send me a 594765-001. Or even a pinout / picture of 582755-001. Then I could play with this DL585 G7 BEAST 

[TheBense]

If I could get my hands on some documentation on the ProLiant DL585 G7, that is, documentation beyond the common pdfs that are readily available on the HP support site, it would be extremely appreciated.

I acknowledge, and accept that my efforts are 100% outside of the realm of HP's support. I am not working within the bounds of warranties, contracts, licensing, politics, nor am I constrained within the bounds of purely HP products. My efforts are not for profit, nor or they for production systems. This is purely for the love of engineering.