Building dual XEON X56xx system - what motherboard? HP z800, Dell, Supermicro?

[noname984938]

Hello there.

I have made a few Hacks in the past but just i5:s or Core 2 Quads. They all work fine but now it´s time for a real build.

My thoughts are around a DUAL XEON CPU rig, with a standard GPU (radeon hd 5770).

Now to the motherboard, which is a problem. Most cases supports E-ATX, like the Fractal Design R4 or Corsair 330R and others like that, but NONE of these specify the measurements of the actual motherboard space, the space from the back to the hdd:s. They just specify the whole thing or the space for the Graphics Cards, which is very unreliable information.

I´ve seen builds form the HP z800 and z600 and it seems to work okay except for the form factor, which seems to be a problem. Anyone got a z800 Motherboard in a normal PC chassis ?? Please let me know.

If there is no way to use the z800:s motherboard, which looks like the smallest one, apart from the z600, is there another motherboard that will fit the cases above?



Then there is the case of compatibility with OSX 10.6.8 and Mavericks, which are the OS:s I will be running. If anyone have gotten these working in parallel, let me know please.

Hope you can help.

Hoping to get started with the build ASAP.

Best Regards
Andrew

 

[andybrown]

Now to the motherboard, which is a problem. Most cases supports E-ATX, like the Fractal Design R4 or Corsair 330R and others like that, but NONE of these specify the measurements of the actual motherboard space, the space from the back to the hdd:s. They just specify the whole thing or the space for the Graphics Cards, which is very unreliable information.

I´ve seen builds form the HP z800 and z600 and it seems to work okay except for the form factor, which seems to be a problem. Anyone got a z800 Motherboard in a normal PC chassis ?? Please let me know.

If there is no way to use the z800:s motherboard, which looks like the smallest one, apart from the z600, is there another motherboard that will fit the cases above?

I've done this myself using the HP-Z800 board. A full writeup will appear on my website in the next couple of months. Here's some key points from my build:

• It will not fit in an EATX case. HPTX is required. I went for a Nanoxia Deep Silence 6 and it swallows the board like it was built for it.
• It wasn't built for it. The motherboard mounting holes do not line up with the standard ATX mount points. You will need to drill and tap new holes in the motherboard tray. This is very, very fiddly and you must be accurate or your cards won't mate with the back of the case.
• The HP power supply does not fit in a standard case. Using a high-quality ATX power supply is fine, however...
• The main ATX power connector is non-standard. You must solder up your own.
• There is a 10-pin memory power connector. You must solder this up yourself.
• The 5-pin CPU fan connectors are non-standard but will take a standard 4-pin connector. Standard LGA1366 HSF's will fit. I'm using the Zalman CNPS10x Optima.

I currently have mine running with 24Gb RAM, a 1KW Superflower Gold PSU and a Samsung 840 EVO boot disk connected to a Sata-3 add-on card. I also have a Dell Perc4/DC RAID card controlling 4x 15K SCSI drives in there.

I tested it all with a low-end 2.14GHz Xeon that I picked up cheaply just in case the whole thing didn't work and I had to offload the parts. It does work, I'm very happy with it and I'm on the lookout for a pair of hex-core's to finish it all off.

 

[andybrown]

Well, I did it. Click here to read all about it. I hope my experience can help anyone out there considering a similar hack.

 

[mfbernstein]

Well, I did it. Click here to read all about it. I hope my experience can help anyone out there considering a similar hack.

Very nice writeup. I'm think of building a similar system, but SuperMicro's dual LGA 1366 motherboards are so cheap that I think I can get away with a plain E-ATX setup.