Messages

16

General Discussion / Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano

« on: June 12, 2020, 11:26:45 am »

My plan is to find someone locally who could do laser cutting service so I could design some sort of compatible adaptor to mount water cooler heatsink.

There is a thread about water cooling:

https://forums.raptorcs.com/index.php/topic,110.0.html

The heatsinks sold by Raptor have IBM part numbers.  I wonder if they can get the water cooling blocks from IBM also.

17

Blackbird / Blackbird memory options...

« on: May 21, 2020, 04:15:19 pm »

So the manual for the Blackbird doesn't have much to say about the memory, besides:

DDR4 1600/1866/2133/2400/2666 ECC

The wiki says more:

must be registered (RDIMM); must NOT be LRDIMM.
The supported memory speeds are 1600, 1866, 2133, 2400, 2666 MHz.
Ram will be running at a potentially slower frequency (2666, 2400, or 2133) based on if there is 1, 2 or 4 DIMMs per channel

So as a noob to this stuff, what is a good approach to picking RAM for the Blackbird?  For example, would 2 8GB sticks be better than a single 16GB?  Or is it better to leave a slot open for a future upgrade?  How much does the speed matter?

18

Blackbird / Re: How many fans per FAN header?

« on: May 21, 2020, 04:05:48 pm »

I'd guess an amp would be about as much current as you want to pull through a regular header pin.  If your fans are high power, you could always source the power straight from the PS and the PWM signal from the fan header.

19

General CPU Discussion / Re: POWER9 water cooling kit

« on: May 08, 2020, 04:05:28 pm »

Thanks for the link.  I dug through the junk on there and found the cheese:



That's neat!  I wonder where/how we could get those water blocks shown?

20

General CPU Discussion / Re: CPU Performance DD2.2 vs DD2.3 (v2)

« on: May 05, 2020, 09:41:07 pm »

I am hesitant to upgrade the firmware... 

I wonder if Raptor would burn some flash chips and mail them?  Then you could literally swap out the firmware, and swap back if needed...

21

General Hardware Discussion / Re: 2u Blackbird Build with 18 cores?!

« on: April 28, 2020, 06:33:46 pm »

Thanks for sharing the details of your build!  Which CPU are you using?  The datasheet describes a 130w 18-core version and a 190w version.  It seems like the 130w CPU should not stress the blackbird board.  In your stress test, could you tell if the speed was 'throttled' as it got hot?

22

General Discussion / Re: The pride of being Power!

« on: April 28, 2020, 03:07:44 pm »

Thanks for the reply.  I also just saw your blog post--very thorough!  The explanation for filling both sockets makes sense.  I guess I hadn't picked up on that before.

Do you know which CPUs you got?  If some of your tests ran the same then I'm guessing the CPU speed was the same.  From the datasheet I've seen, the 02CY649 DD2.3 8-core part has a 3.8GHz "boost" speed, which would be the same as the 02C297 4-core part.  The "base" frequency is higher, whatever that means.  I'm guessing the CPU automatically ramps to 3.8GHz under load (temperature permitting)?

The datasheet also lists a 02WP000 DD2.3 8-core CPU a 4.1GHz.

23

General Discussion / Re: The pride of being Power!

« on: April 22, 2020, 10:43:40 am »

I just got shipping notification on my dual-8 second Talos II system...

I was wondering how your upgrade went.  I follow your blog and really appreciate your contributions to the community.  With so many options, how did you pick the dual 8-core setup?  For example, it looks like you could get a single 18-core CPU for less than the dual 8, and you would have an empty socket for future upgrades.

24

Applications and Porting / Google Earth?

« on: March 06, 2020, 02:18:46 pm »

Google earth quit working on my mac.  How hard would it be to get it working on a blackbird? 

25

Blackbird / Re: Support for POWER9 22core?

« on: February 24, 2020, 11:58:37 am »

It seems the limitation is power draw.  The supported 8-core part is listed at 160w in the IBM datasheet, and there are a variety of core configurations that are 160w or less:



So it looks like a 22-core CPU (at a lower speed) should work, if you can find one.  I think there are a variety of other CPU configurations floating around with part numbers that are not documented publicly.  For example, I can't find what a 02AA878 is, but you can buy one:

https://www.newegg.com/p/1B4-002U-00CR1