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Bought this (Modern) hardware today

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Reply 480 of 2069, by kithylin

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oeuvre wrote:
An HP dc7900 SFF that I upgraded a bunch. http://imgur.com/a/tsrVC […]
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An HP dc7900 SFF that I upgraded a bunch. http://imgur.com/a/tsrVC

E8400 -> Q9400
2GB RAM -> 4GB RAM
Added 80GB Intel 320 SSD to go along with the 250GB 7200RPM SATA HD
Added an LSI 20160 SCSI PCI card for testing old SCSI drives
Ordered an HD6450 on eBay. Turned out they mislabeled it and it is actually a 1GB HD 7470. Pleasant surprise.

I own the same SFF HP system. Thank you for confirming they'll take the quads. Plug and play, put it in boot up and everything is fine? No problems?

Reply 481 of 2069, by PhilsComputerLab

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Those HP boxes, and other brands, are all over eBay in Australia at the moment. Must be the right time for the recyclers? I find these make great retro machines.

The 7 Pro licence is super handy, as I believe you get a XP downgrade right as well? Not sure how one goes about activation though.

Does that HP use standard ATX layout and PSU to transplant it into another case if needed?

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Reply 482 of 2069, by kithylin

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Those HP boxes, and other brands, are all over eBay in Australia at the moment. Must be the right time for the recyclers? I find these make great retro machines.

The 7 Pro licence is super handy, as I believe you get a XP downgrade right as well? Not sure how one goes about activation though.

Does that HP use standard ATX layout and PSU to transplant it into another case if needed?

No idea on the layout compatibility or anything but in mine I put a Core2duo chip in it. A 3.33 ghz xeon dual core in it, 6MB 45nm wolfdale chip, and I have it fitted with a GeForce 310 low profile card. This combo is bare minimum enough to accelerate h.264 and VC-1 videos and I use it as my htpc machine in the living room with a bd-rom and a 32GB SSD in it. Plays all the *.MKV videos I can find off the internet @ 1080p with no slow down just fine, and does great at playing blu ray movies with PowerDVD, and I have a USB IR + Remote dongle package I picked up for $10 that's supposed to go to an HP machine. Remote works perfect to interface with the PowerDVD system. Get arrow keys, enter button, pause, fast forward reverse, stop, mute, volume controls, etc. Works with VLC for the controls too. Only need 32GB on it for a bare bones Win7 install.. it streams all the actual content over the network off my big NAS server in the back room @ gigabit wired. Onboard NIC is gigabit, it works great. And I get audio and video out through the GeForce 310 which comes out DVI -> I convert it to HDMI -> routes through our receiver, is perfect. I think the 310 + adapter cable dongle thing to split it's connector to 2xDVI was $5 for the card $7 for the cable.

Funny quick story, I actually got the whole SFF chassis free (Came with 2.4 ghz core2duo 4MB chip, 500GB mechanical hard drive and 4x1GB ram) completely free. Paid for a $12 LGA-1366 xeon chip on ebay.. seller screwed up and sent me the SFF machine instead then for some reason offered me a refund for the $12 via ebay (I didn't say a word to em) and I accepted.. got my $12 back and the SFF computer free. Seller never asked for it back or anything or even mentioned it. Weird.. but free 😁

I've been thinking of putting a Core2Quad in it to maybe some day start playing 4K content on it, possibly. Pretty far off for that though.

Reply 483 of 2069, by PhilsComputerLab

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Nice! I think I've got a 3000 here, with Windows 7 and Celeron CPU. Also got it for free, but haven't done anything with it yet. A bit "too modern" for the time being 😁

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Reply 484 of 2069, by oeuvre

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kithylin wrote:
oeuvre wrote:
An HP dc7900 SFF that I upgraded a bunch. http://imgur.com/a/tsrVC […]
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An HP dc7900 SFF that I upgraded a bunch. http://imgur.com/a/tsrVC

E8400 -> Q9400
2GB RAM -> 4GB RAM
Added 80GB Intel 320 SSD to go along with the 250GB 7200RPM SATA HD
Added an LSI 20160 SCSI PCI card for testing old SCSI drives
Ordered an HD6450 on eBay. Turned out they mislabeled it and it is actually a 1GB HD 7470. Pleasant surprise.

I own the same SFF HP system. Thank you for confirming they'll take the quads. Plug and play, put it in boot up and everything is fine? No problems?

I did a BIOS update to the latest one available from HP's site first just to be safe. Other than that, plug and play and it works like a charm. You can go up to a Q9550.

For PSUs, the SFF has a weird factor so you probably can't fit an ATX PSU in there but for the CMT I think you can swap in whatever PSU.

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
ws90Ts2.gif

Reply 485 of 2069, by agent_x007

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^This little thing is AWESOME !!!
(NVMe + PCIe adapter card)

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I DARE any SSD with SATA3 beat that 😁

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Reply 486 of 2069, by kithylin

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agent_x007 wrote:
^This little thing is AWESOME !!! (NVMe + PCIe adapter card) […]
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NVMe.jpg

^This little thing is AWESOME !!!
(NVMe + PCIe adapter card)

NVMe 2c.png

I DARE any SSD with SATA3 beat that 😁

One thing I have been wondering about these things. Is there any way you could try this in like, a spare older computer with PCIE-1.0 / 1.1 and see.. if they work at all? And if they do what speed they get? I've considered these with a very small nvme drive for older computers but never bothered with buying one yet because I was unsure if they worked. I think you have some Pentium4 systems around somewhere. If you could test and report back to us if they work.. this very well might be the fastest storage option for old computers by -a big long mile- compared to standard sata drives.. most of these systems have like Sata-150 onboard.

Reply 487 of 2069, by agent_x007

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@kithylin Basic requirements of native NVMe drives (like my Samsung SM951) :
1) They require 64-bit CPU (and UEFI/GPT mode to work)
2) GPT/UEFI requirement can be overcome by using "Clover" software (with NVMe driver copied manually, apparently Clover doesn't work with RAID mode enabled [?]).
3) They require a free PCI-e x4 slot, preferably NOT shared with GPU/other things.
4) I will test this with my P35 board (P5B I own doesn't have PCI-e x4 slot...), probably tomorrow/today (depending on time zone).
This WILL NOT work in 775Dual/4CoreDual MB's (boards stopped posting after installation of this card).
Probably it's PCI-e 3.0's fault, older PCI-e 2.0 M.2 drives may work in those MB's.
5) I don't own M.2 "SATA" drive, so I can't compare it's compatibility with stuff (it uses standard SATA/AHCI controller to communicate, if connected via SATA port - it's limited to MB's speed controller, and if by PCI-e - drive is limited to AHCI's speed).

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Reply 488 of 2069, by kithylin

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agent_x007 wrote:
@kithylin Basic requirements of native NVMe drives (like my Samsung SM951) : 1) They require 64-bit CPU (and UEFI/GPT mode to wo […]
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@kithylin Basic requirements of native NVMe drives (like my Samsung SM951) :
1) They require 64-bit CPU (and UEFI/GPT mode to work)
2) GPT/UEFI requirement can be overcome by using "Clover" software (with NVMe driver copied manually, apparently Clover doesn't work with RAID mode enabled [?]).
3) They require a free PCI-e x4 slot, preferably NOT shared with GPU/other things.
4) I will test this with my P35 board (P5B I own doesn't have PCI-e x4 slot...), probably tomorrow/today (depending on time zone).
This WILL NOT work in 775Dual/4CoreDual MB's (boards stopped posting after installation of this card).
Probably it's PCI-e 3.0's fault, older PCI-e 2.0 M.2 drives may work in those MB's.
5) I don't own M.2 "SATA" drive, so I can't compare it's compatibility with stuff (it uses standard SATA/AHCI controller to communicate, if connected via SATA port - it's limited to MB's speed controller, and if by PCI-e - drive is limited to AHCI's speed).

I was under the impression once you put em in PCI-Express like this that they're essentially just turned in to a generic PCI-E flash drive we see around and shouldn't need any fancy drivers.. I guess it just passes through the nvme card to the system.. ah well, so much for that idea. Thanks for checking for us anyway.

Reply 490 of 2069, by kithylin

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luckybob wrote:

I get almsot 2400MB/s on my SSD raid. takes 4 drives, but it gets the job done. ^.^

On what, some sort of pci-express solution? Those speeds aren't possible with SATA, even the newest ones.

Reply 491 of 2069, by luckybob

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A little big ago I got a new sas raid controller: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

16 ports @ 6gb/s power. Each drive will do about ~550 in reads. The controller is bitchin fast and i've been told can saturate an 8x pci-e 3 slot.

http://www.storagereview.com/adaptec_series_7 … trollers_review
and 4 of these bad daddies: http://www.corsair.com/en-us/force-series-ls- … ata-3-6gb-s-ssd

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 492 of 2069, by kithylin

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luckybob wrote:
A little big ago I got a new sas raid controller: Bought this (Modern) hardware today […]
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A little big ago I got a new sas raid controller: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

16 ports @ 6gb/s power. Each drive will do about ~550 in reads. The controller is bitchin fast and i've been told can saturate an 8x pci-e 3 slot.

http://www.storagereview.com/adaptec_series_7 … trollers_review
and 4 of these bad daddies: http://www.corsair.com/en-us/force-series-ls- … ata-3-6gb-s-ssd

Interesting and nice. I tried putting some samsung Pro 850 SSD's in an older Dell PERC SAS pcie raid card and got like 50 MB/s, I thought desktop ssd's didn't work in sas raid cards. I guess the PERC's are just shitty ones.

Reply 493 of 2069, by luckybob

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Depends on the card. Some sas raid cards will downgrade when you connect sata drives. I have another LSI card that will do sas @6g but only sata @3g. I'm lucky to find this one does not. In addition to 1gb of ram, it also has an additional 1gb ssd drive for "smart" cache. I'm moving my spinning drives to that as well to bump them up a bit, maybe in the future, but I'm looking into doing it.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 494 of 2069, by agent_x007

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kithylin wrote:

I was under the impression once you put em in PCI-Express like this that they're essentially just turned in to a generic PCI-E flash drive we see around and shouldn't need any fancy drivers.. I guess it just passes through the nvme card to the system.. ah well, so much for that idea. Thanks for checking for us anyway.

No, my MB doesn't see pcie drive. To be honest, even X79 boards have problems seeing them.
But fancy drivers aren't the problem (those can be downloaded from lenovo website for example).
Problem is booting in uefi on non-efi MB 😁
Here's guide I used : LINK

luckybob wrote:

I get almsot 2400MB/s on my SSD raid. takes 4 drives, but it gets the job done. ^.^

Just for the reference, do you have any screenshots ?
I would love to see that score (CrystalDiskMark maybe) ?

Last edited by agent_x007 on 2017-04-13, 07:11. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 495 of 2069, by luckybob

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hmm... I just assumed it was fine. To quote Bubbles, something's fucky.

duL0NQRm.jpg

And the same drives (and my spinners) on my old controller:

m3zLrXom.jpg

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 497 of 2069, by luckybob

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1> but wouldn't writes also tank? These are 60gb drives with extra overhead. I dont tax them hard, all my games are on a 4-array of spinners.
2> most likely, I will look into it here tomorrow
3> I might have been acting the mickey and did something wrong with the setup of the array. God, if I have to re-install windows again...

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 498 of 2069, by kithylin

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agent_x007 wrote:
Few options : 1) Garbage collection or TRIM problem on RAID0 configuration (speed degrades with time) 2) Driver bug 3) Controll […]
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Few options :
1) Garbage collection or TRIM problem on RAID0 configuration (speed degrades with time)
2) Driver bug
3) Controller itself doing "funky stuff" ?

I noticed this also. My samsung pro 850's read extremely fast the first days I bought them new. But their random access performance dropped by almost -40% a few days later and have settled there ever since and never run as fast as they once did originally out of the box. Part of new SSD Technology I suppose.

Reply 499 of 2069, by agent_x007

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I got PCI-e 1.1 numbers for my NVMe 😀

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I did use latest driver (2.2.0.1703), and switched off PCI-e power saving features along with Write-cache buffer flushing.

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