Messages

211

General Discussion / Re: Fractal Design cases

« on: September 04, 2020, 10:56:55 am »

I tried the above, connecting the case fans through the Fractal case's fan hub.  The fan hub is getting power from the PSU via a SATA power socket and it has a 4-pin input that connects to motherboard FAN1

Visually, it looks like the fans speed up after power on and they slow down after some time has passed.  It sounds really quiet too.

Is there any way to verify the speed of the case fans definitively?  For example, can I force them up to full speed while leaving the CPU fans at minimum, to see if I can hear the case fans alone?

212

Operating Systems and Porting / installers not booting

« on: September 04, 2020, 09:22:43 am »

petitboot starts up and displays the menu

I've tried both the Debian 10 and OpenBSD USB sticks.  Neither of them appears to be working.  The install options (e.g. Debian/Expert mode) appear in petitboot, I select the option I want, the screen goes blank and then displays the message "SIGTERM received, booting..."

Leaving the machine like this for 5 or 10 minutes, nothing more happens, it just appears stuck like that.

213

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: Talos II arrived

« on: September 03, 2020, 05:19:15 pm »

Do you mean these products?

https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters

For example:

9400-8i for NVMe+SATA, PCIe 3.1 x8, 8 internal ports, 2 HD Mini-SAS SFF8643

9500-8i for NVMe+SATA, PCIe 4.0 x8, 8 internal ports, 1 x8 SFF-8654 (SlimSAS)

Will the U.2 disks get full speed through either of these cards and their respective connectors?  Is there any reason to get the PCIe 4.0 version, or the older PCIe 3.1 card will be sufficient.

I'm thinking about workstation systems with 1 or 2 of the U.2 disks at most.

214

General Discussion / Re: Fractal Design cases

« on: September 03, 2020, 05:10:15 pm »

I went looking for more details about the fan hub integrated in the case.

It appears that I can connect the 4-pin wire from the hub to one of the zone 3 outputs on the Talos II

The hub will then supply power to all three case fans.

I will test this to see if they run at full speed all the time or if the Talos II is able to control their speed through the hub

If the fan hub can't control the speed then I'll replace the case fans with 4-pin fans and connect those directly to the motherboard.

Does that make sense?

215

Operating Systems and Porting / testing different operating systems next week, any ideas/requests?

« on: September 03, 2020, 02:46:16 pm »

Before putting my Talos II into proper use, I might spend a week or so testing different operating systems on it.

Can anybody make any suggestions about things that might be worthwhile to explore?

216

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Talos II arrived

« on: September 03, 2020, 02:12:14 pm »

My Talos II arrived yesterday, I'll be building it gradually over the next few days.

I already shared some observations about success with the Fractal 7 XL case, it would be really helpful to get some feedback about their fan hub connections

I'll use a legacy SATA HBA as a stop-gap measure until I get some U.2 disks in a few weeks.  Long term, can anybody comment on what will be a good choice of HBA to combine at least two U.2 disks and a handful of legacy SATA disks?

Can anybody make any other tips about getting started?

217

General Discussion / Re: Fractal Design cases

« on: September 03, 2020, 12:52:13 pm »

With the Fractal Design Define 7 XL, all the studs can be moved into positions compatible with the Talos II and the board fits nicely in the case.

By default, the case includes three 3-pin fans and a fan hub for powering them.

The fan hub has connections for
- each case fan
- the CPU1 fan
- connection to the motherboard
- connection directly to the PSU via a SATA power socket

Can anybody comment on whether

a) the case fans should be replaced with 4-pin fans or the default 3-pin fans will be OK?

b) the case fans should be connected to the Fractal fan hub or directly to the case fan jumpers on the Talos II motherboard?

c) the cable from the fan hub to motherboard would go to which port on the motherboard?

218

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Which GPU would *you* choose?

« on: September 02, 2020, 05:14:05 pm »

A Polaris GPU causes far fewer problems. The performance between RX 580 and RX 5500 is almost identical. Performance/price ratio between RX 580 and RX 5700 is also better.

On power consumption/heat output, they are both similar too, 30-35W idle

Are all RX 580 variants considered reliable or is there one particular OEM model that people have tested more than others?

Do you consider all Navi to be bad right now, or once again, does it depend on the specific OEM model chosen?

One strategy in my mind right now: Scavange any spare Radeon GPU for 12 months as a stop-gap measure, skip over the new Navi in November and wait for them to release a card supporting AV1

219

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Radeon Pro vs regular Radeon cards - worth the price premium for POWER users?

« on: August 16, 2020, 02:18:44 pm »

As there are multiple threads about this, I felt it would be useful to create a wiki page about GPU selection criteria

Feel free to improve it.  A shortlist of products tested by Raptor and other experienced users might be useful too.

220

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Which GPU would *you* choose?

« on: August 16, 2020, 02:18:19 pm »

As there are multiple threads about this, I felt it would be useful to create a wiki page about GPU selection criteria

Feel free to improve it.  A shortlist of products tested by Raptor and other experienced users might be useful too.

221

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Which GPU would *you* choose?

« on: August 12, 2020, 12:40:00 pm »

I put some of my own observations and preferences in the thread about Radeon Pro vs regular Radeon

Part of the answer depends on what everybody else is using: for example, if a lot of people use a particular card and actively contribute bug fixes to the driver then that makes it compelling.

222

General CPU Discussion / Re: POWER9 water cooling kit

« on: August 10, 2020, 05:49:34 pm »

Instead of using radiator fans on the water cooling circuit, are there any external chiller or heat pump options that could reduce overall heat emission, even if they don't reduce net noise emissions a lot?  This type of option requires a way to dump the heat, much the same way a split-system air conditioner moves heat to the outdoor component.

223

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: News?

« on: August 07, 2020, 09:46:00 am »

Raptor may not want to have all these extra chores though.  A lot of organizations recently started hiring people in eastern European countries to help with things like this.

For example,

• phpList has set up a small office in Albania
• Debian had an Outreachy intern from Albania to handle contact DebConf sponsors
• Prishtina Hackerspace, in Kosovo, has received funding from other groups to hire a publicity officer on a permanent basis

The wage expectations vary, starting from about $300/month for a student in a non-technical field.  There are a small number of really good developers there but they insist on globally competitive rates of pay.  In between those two extremes there are many possibilities or opportunities to piggy back on other groups there.

224

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Debian

« on: August 02, 2020, 04:16:40 am »

The announcement page doesn't really tell us much about the impact for ppc64* users.  This is where it would be really useful to have tags for ppc64* issues, we could then run a report in the BTS and see exactly which issues were fixed by each new release and which issues are fixed in unstable and ready for backporting.

225

Condor / Re: Condor cancelled

« on: August 01, 2020, 01:52:34 am »

As suggested in another thread, the most useful thing to do right now may be making the best use of the Talos II Lite

Even if the existing Condor design is being mothballed, maybe the name Condor can be reserved for some future product.  POWER10 will reach us in 2021 or 2022, look out for return of the Condor (and keep your children and pets out of the way)