Recent Posts

1

Talos II / Re: Order processing time

« Last post by vmlinuz on October 21, 2021, 11:55:22 pm »

Side note: United States Federal regulations require most items ordered online to ship in 30 days unless a longer time is specified or the item is listed as out of stock/backordered, or else the seller has to take action or face a chargeback. I suppose that places a handy upper bound on it, but I hope it doesn't take that long - everything I ordered was listed as full production or in stock at the time of ordering. Let's hope it doesn't come to this:

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-reform-proceedings/mail-internet-or-telephone-order
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-youre-billed-things-you-never-got-or-you-get-unordered-products

Not to be a downer of course, this is good to know in any situation where you are ordering something online, especially considering the sorry state of the U.S. supply chain and online retailers like Chinamazon...

2

Talos II / Order processing time

« Last post by vmlinuz on October 21, 2021, 06:11:12 pm »

Hello all,

My name is Dave and I am a newcomer to the Talos community. I'm not as much a security freak as I am an exotic hardware enthusiast; I just ordered a Talos II kit with dual quad-core POWER9v2 CPU's and the 8-port SATA controller. Does anyone know how long it generally takes to process such an order these days?

Looking forward to receiving my components so I can start building!

3

Talos II / Re: Using the μPCIe connector (J10108)

« Last post by Hasturtium on October 21, 2021, 03:48:22 pm »

The manual suggests it is 4 lanes (PCIe 4.0 x4)

The errata states it is an Oculink SFF-8621 physical connector but it is not completely wired for Oculink

Nonetheless, do the PCIe lanes work sufficiently for an SFF-8621 to U.2 NVMe cable?

Here is an example of the cable CBL-SAST-0956 from Supermicro

The cable is not very expensive, I might simply buy one to try it.

I've seen Raptor offer the cable when you buy a Blackbird combo, so it's presumably a supported use case. I'm thinking about doing that after I've tested my incoming Blackbird for stability and gotten a feel for its performance with SATA.

4

General CPU Discussion / Re: POWER9 water cooling kit

« Last post by vikings.thum on October 20, 2021, 02:42:46 pm »

No, I saw that; just checking it didn't change. Thanks!

What changed in fact is that this isn't a high-pressure mount. This was unrealistic for our budget because it would've required a custom made water cooler. I would've preferred to do just that, but... Perhaps next year :-)

5

General CPU Discussion / Re: POWER9 water cooling kit

« Last post by ClassicHasClass on October 20, 2021, 12:40:00 pm »

No, I saw that; just checking it didn't change. Thanks!

6

General CPU Discussion / Re: POWER9 water cooling kit

« Last post by vikings.thum on October 20, 2021, 03:04:21 am »

Are you planning to sell fluid as well, or if not,

Yes, though it should be pretty easy to make a solution yourself.

what's your specific recommendation?

Please see reply #20 from a while ago above, perhaps you've missed that.

How good is the mounting pressure on these?

Hand-tight.
We try to prevent over-tightening by choosing a short screw correspondingly, so that it shouldn't be possible to tighten it too much. The mounting mechanism is somewhat improvised to be low-cost, so high pressure, e.g. with IBM's 90kg high-pressure system, would bend the mechanism and probably destroy the water cooler as well.

7

General CPU Discussion / Re: max memory speeds

« Last post by ClassicHasClass on October 19, 2021, 04:39:02 pm »

My understanding (perhaps Raptor can clarify) is that both are right, in a manner of speaking. You get the full 2666MHz with a single DIMM per channel, 2400 for 2, 2133 for 4. However, the controller for each processor has 8 channels and no Raptor system has more than 8 DIMM slots per CPU, so it's physically impossible to get multiple DIMMs on one channel. On a large system with more than 8 DIMM slots per CPU socket, however, it's possible.

8

General CPU Discussion / Re: POWER9 water cooling kit

« Last post by ClassicHasClass on October 19, 2021, 04:33:15 pm »

Are you planning to sell fluid as well, or if not, what's your specific recommendation? How good is the mounting pressure on these?

9

General CPU Discussion / POWER9 water cooling kit soon available

« Last post by vikings.thum on October 19, 2021, 02:27:52 pm »

Glide, O sparkling waves and murmur softly...

We now have a second revision of our improvized mounting mechanism in place, made of stainless steel and a couple of other small improvements. The mounting mechanism is in production and will be available in approx. 2 to 4 weeks  together with a water cooling kit for all RaptorCS mainboards. We'll also make it available with just the cooler (because the mechanism is made for a specific cooler), just in case people want to use existing pumps/radiators.

I'll send another update here once we have them in stock.

10

Talos II / Re: Using the μPCIe connector (J10108)

« Last post by pocock on October 17, 2021, 06:20:27 am »

I notice the micro PCIe socket is right under one of the PCIe cards.  This means it may be better to use a cable with right angle (RA) connector like this:

Supermicro CBL-SAST-0955