Workstation Hardware Support

Discussion in 'General Hardware' started by zenhic, Jul 26, 2010.

  1. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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    I have two custom built work-stations and their build is:
    -COOLER MASTER COSMOS ESA RC-1010 Steel Full Chassis Silver Full Tower Case Retail
    -ENERMAX EGX1000EWL Galaxy DXX 1000W Power Supply
    -Tyan Tempest i5400XT- S5396WA2NRF Workstation Board. Size Extended ATX 12” x 13”
    -2 Intel BX80574E5420A CPU Quad-Core Xeon E5420 LGA771 2.50GHz 1333MHz 12MB 80W Active Retail
    -16GB (8x2GB FULLY BUFFERED PC5300 DDR2 667 ECC (FB-DIMM)
    -4x SEAGATE Cheetah 15K.5 ST3146855LW 146GB SAS 15,000 RPM 16MB
    -BFG Tech BFGR88768GTXOC2E GeForce 8800GTX 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card (supports Max. resolution of 2560x1600)
    -XP Professional - X 64 Editions

    I still have one tower running the Tyan motherboard that gave out in the other. I have a ton of problems and with the configuration I have, I don't have access to all the power of my hardware. I run a CS3 package (Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, etc.) And these programs are very RAM intensive. Any my workstation regularly crashes. It shuts down on it's own. It runs slow. I can't connect to the internet, and the USB ports in the front don't work. I assembled this computer myself and I happen to suck in doing so. But I had to make do with what I had. While I've ordered a new motherboard for tower that won't work, I need to fix up this faulty but working tower. I could really appreciate any input that you guys provide.
     
  2. Sniper

    Sniper Administrator Staff Member

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    Thats some system zenhic!

    What have you tried so far? how do the temps look?

    To start I'd strip down the system and only have one of each! e.g 1x ram stick, 1x hard drive etc run a few tests e.g Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool its going to be a process of elimination, considering the amount of stuff you have its hard to say what it could be.
     
  3. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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    Thanks Sniper.

    I actually removed Windows XP x64 today because a lot of people recommended I do so. I replaced it with a copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 tweaked to work like a work-station. Everything seems to be running smoothly, software wise. So should I still de-assemble the unit?
     
  4. Sniper

    Sniper Administrator Staff Member

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    If all is fine, then leave it for now!

    didn't notice you mentioned XP64, I know it was known to have compatibility issues when it came out, I guess it still applies.
     
  5. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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    Another problem seems to have turned up. I have 4 SATA HDDs connected to the comp and in the last configuration with Windows XP, I had configured then with RAID 5. But now the station will only recognize 1 of them and not the other 3. I even changed the settings for ATA and Serial ATA in the BIOS but the computer just refuses to recognize them. Any suggestions? I even unplugged them manually and reconnected all the wires.
     
  6. Sniper

    Sniper Administrator Staff Member

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    try using different SATA ports (I think the ones for RAID are coloured differently).
     
  7. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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    I'm sorry but which port might you be talking about? Is this on the motherboard or on the HDD itself?
     
  8. Sniper

    Sniper Administrator Staff Member

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    On the motherboard...
     
  9. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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    Oh, Lol.
    I feel really stupid right about now.
    Thanks Sniper.
     
  10. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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    Okay so the HDDs were connected to SAS ports. I found SATA ports 0-4 and connected the HDDs. But now I'm faced with only a blinking cursor and all black.
     
  11. Sniper

    Sniper Administrator Staff Member

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    ok, start with only the bootable hard disk, followed by the others one at a time! maybe its trying to boot from one of the non-bootable hard disks.
     
  12. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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  13. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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    Okay, I set it up and the setting show that 3 of the HDDs are arrays and one is a hot spare. Is that correct? And it's am IME config.
     
  14. Sniper

    Sniper Administrator Staff Member

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    ah ok, sorry didn't notice they were SAS drives, don't think it should have done anything to the drives.

    I'm not sure which RAID level you have setup but the hot spare should kick-in if one of the drive fails, which your probably already aware of :)
     
  15. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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    Okay so the SAS driver only supports RAID 0, 1, and 1E.
    Which one should I set up? And what about the HDDs? Do RAID 0/ 1 only work with 2 HDDs?
     
  16. zenhic

    zenhic Geek Trainee

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    So I just read on the Tyan website that my motherboard's built in SAS RAID controller only supports RAID 0, an RAID 1/ 1E configurations. Since I'm looking for performance, and not constant back up, I configured all four drives with RAID 0. And I hope to god that all the data was wiped on all the drives because I'm currently installing Windows again. I'd hate to find out the data wasn't wiped on one of the drives.
     

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