Messages

16

Talos II / Re: Arctic Tern bracket?

« on: June 09, 2023, 02:23:42 pm »

Ahh! A few plans: the most uninteresting was to simply to boot my T2 faster, the more interesting being looking at FPGA brute force implementations of some the graphics work I do. Unfortunately time ticked on, and since I couldn't just plug it in (then my T2 got gutted for another up coming project) I ran out of steam.

17

Talos II / Re: Arctic Tern bracket?

« on: June 08, 2023, 03:59:06 pm »

No plans, I made it to scratch an itch. I wasn’t willing to balance the Arctic Tern card in a vertically mounted mobo without a bracket. I’ll post more once I have the stainless steel version in my hands.

I also wanted an excuse to try the sheet metal folding workflow in BricsCAD (like AutoCAD, better in some ways, worse in others, but importantly without the subscription licensing).

18

Talos II / Re: Arctic Tern bracket?

« on: June 08, 2023, 09:31:27 am »

Since a bracket hasn't magically arrived I made one. I'm currently waiting for the sheet metal version to be fabricated (a week or so) which if I'm happy with will document/arrange how to have more made. I'll also make the CAD files freely available, and it's 3D printable at a push.

A few things are of note:

• The Arctic Tern's connectors don't extend far enough on the board. The mini-HDMI are too far back by a few millimetres, which means the bracket design is a compromise between correct PCIe mechanics and access to the ports.
• (So I created two variants, one with this compromise, and another spec-correct but the ports blanked off.)
• The mounting hole at the top of the PCB is in a really odd place, so needs an L-shaped bracket to connect, and the bracket needs to pass over traces, so will need extra insulation.

(I've attached the work-in-progress CAD files for anyone interested, in DWG and IGES format.)

19

Mod Zone / Re: Initial findings running on water cooling

« on: March 31, 2023, 12:29:26 am »

I'm concentrating on fitting in all into the case at the moment. My priority was quiet, then I'll delve into what else it brings and what I can do.

Until I have it all running I won't know the temperature over ambient I have with the single radiator, single set of (pull) fans, and the enclosed box.

20

Mod Zone / Re: Initial findings running on water cooling

« on: March 29, 2023, 10:13:13 am »

Once I've documented the changes required, I'll add it to the list. If you're taking the sensible air cooling route, apart from losing the top USB ports it's just a bit of hole drilling and threading.

21

Mod Zone / Re: Initial findings running on water cooling

« on: March 29, 2023, 09:09:17 am »

They are really well made, and easy to strip down to make any mods (they unscrew entirely into panels). The maker is also open to customising them for buyers, so custom holes added, that sort of thing.

Dune was just a big waste of money and time, and the 10 or so folks who did get them weren't that happy with the quality.

22

Mod Zone / Re: Initial findings running on water cooling

« on: March 29, 2023, 12:24:21 am »

Apparently, fo' realz this time, Dune is back in production.

23

Mod Zone / Re: Initial findings running on water cooling

« on: March 27, 2023, 03:06:03 pm »

McPrue Apollo ATX:

    https://www.mcprue.com/store

A very expensive, hand-built Mac Pro clone. It's like the Dune case, but it actually shipped and some dude didn't run off with mine and everyone else's money. They're very nicely made but too small for building E-ATX into, at least without the extra work.

24

Mod Zone / Re: Initial findings running on water cooling

« on: March 26, 2023, 02:01:47 pm »

I'm building with a custom loop, this radiator is just for testing. I have a couple of the McPrue, erm, Mac-inspired cases I'm building into, squeezing E-ATX motherboards and water cooling.

The Threadripper build needed custom brackets designing and printing to replace the case closing mechanism. The T2 motherboard is a little smaller so fits fine (it just needed extra standoffs drilling and threading). Next is to work out the mounts for the reservoir, and decide whether I'm going to try with a dual pump or not.

Both still need a custom solution for the power connectors.

25

Mod Zone / Re: Separating CPU/HSF?

« on: March 24, 2023, 10:13:58 am »

Answering myself, I thrashed the CPUs for a bit, quickly shut down then removed everything whilst it was still hot. Nothing stuck and the indium pads just peeled off.

26

Mod Zone / Initial findings running on water cooling

« on: March 24, 2023, 10:12:03 am »

I'd like to share my early, initial findings water cooling (finally!) my Talos II using this kit with some Thermal Grizzly paste:

https://store.vikings.net/en/water-block-assembly-for-power9-cpus

I have dual 18-core CPUs, testing with only one CPU for now. I'm running on a test bench, with a simple AIO radiator/pump/reservoir combo (Alphacool Eisbaer). I'm stressing the CPU using my own benchmark (I do numerical 'stuff') so I have the same on Threadripper, Apple M1 Ultra, etc. A photo of the messy test bench is attached.

The numbers with the big, noisy HSF are in the mid-70s (Celsius, I'm not a savage...) with the fans running LOUD! And with the water block it's mid-40s, with the fans stalling on the radiator because they're running so low. It's running silently, which is very pleasing!

Next is to get the second CPU plumbed in.

27

Talos II / Re: Unsatisfactory performance of SSD drives

« on: February 26, 2023, 08:20:25 am »

Really useful graph, thanks for taking the time!

28

Talos II / Re: Unsatisfactory performance of SSD drives

« on: November 30, 2022, 04:18:56 am »

Hmm, this is interesting and having tried the same on my Talos II with Debian I'm getting numbers slower than expected. With a Samsung NVMe PM9A1 (think of it as a 980 Pro with a U.2 connector) I see 3.0GB/s in Disk Utility and:

Code: [Select]

sudo /sbin/hdparm -t /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 2512 MB in  3.00 seconds = 837.20 MB/sec
This is connected via PCIe 4x. We have the same HighPoint card and PM9A1 disks on x64 systems with Debian to try later.

29

Applications and Porting / Re: Clion, VSCode, IDE options?

« on: November 24, 2022, 05:03:40 am »

So, how did you get clang-tidy inspections (visible on your screenshot) as I understand they use clangd?

Probably a happy accident of my installing clang-tidy and clangd on my system (it's a few months ago, I may have built them from source) then symlinking them to where CLion expects to find the x64 versions (there are probably also tweaks to CLion's config files too).

I did read through the qemu stuff but was happy enough with how things were working that I didn't (yet) feel the need.

Continued use of Eclipse revealed problems with the debugger and CMake projects, but CLion continues to be usable (but confession time: I'm a full-fat Visual Studio fan and nothing beats it, not even CLion on x64, and especially not the slow-to-start Xcode on the fastest of Mac Studios).

30

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Talos II GPU slot preference

« on: November 03, 2022, 02:50:11 am »

Only rebuilding the kernel with patches. I've been lazy and plugged in a VGA to HDMI adapter to see the BMC boot, so never got round to what should be the next steps.