Group Buy : Arima 4 Socket Opteron Boards

[alsenior]

I was wondering if anyone was interested in starting a group buy for some of these motherboards.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arima-AMD-...tem5649db4df2I

should hopefully be able to get the seller down to $40 a piece for boards (maybe even lower) and if we buy in sufficiency quantity than the price for delivery of each one would be significantly lowered.

these are 4 socket opteron boards that take quad core barcelonas. there for they meet the requirements to do bigadv units. these will put out the same PPD as a GTX580 at lower cost and lower running costs . with processors,ram and power supply the total cost should come in at less than £200 and they use ~200w fully loaded with 8347HE opterons that cost ~£15 each. the cost for the bare board will be about ~£80inc vat.

you can read more about the boards here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...-F-3000-series

In order to take part in this you must meat the following Requirements

• Be an Active Member of the Hexus Forums
• Have Folded At Least 1 unit For the Hexus Tema in the last 30 Days
• Have A hexus Trust Account

FAQ
What is the warranty on these boards like?

These boards come with a 7 day DOA warranty from the supplier. There for I will test every board before it is sent out. I will then warranty the boards for 30 days.

Can these boards run windows ?

No, due to the ACPI implementation in the bios being geared towards Linux the references towards windows are incomplete, windows server cannot boot on the bare metal on these boards but it can run virtualized on a hypervisor like Citrix Xen Server(which is Linux at its core).

Where are these boards coming from?

Houston , Texas

How Will the Boards be distributed?

These boards will be distributed by me from within the UK, I will handle importation and testing when they arrive.

Is there a limit to how many I can buy ?

Within Reason, no

I need Processors and I am not sure what to buy?
This board Accepts Barcelona core quad core opteron processors with a stepping code of BA or B3. Avoid Chips with Stepping code B1 or B2 and “shanghai” core processors (Stepping code Cx). The chips with a B1 and B2 Stepping code will work but will lower performance due to the TLB bug fix (~20%)

What ram should I buy?
The Motherboards require ECC Registered Modules that are filled in pairs you do not need to fill every bank but doing so with matched modules will increase performance.

I don’t live in the uk can I still join in ?

Sure if you’re in Europe I will handle shipping as normal just with a small price increase. Otherwise I will make special arrangement to ship straight from the supplier.


Buyers
Alsenior [2]

[Vimeous]

I've been doing a little research into efficient folding and I'm not sure if this board remains relevant for bigadv.
As I understand it the short deadlines on current bigadv projects means only those running 24 cores @ 4GHz will complete the WU's in time.

I no longer have the necessary AMD CPU knowledge so do you know if/how this board and appropriate CPU's can be made to play ball with bigadv?

[alsenior]

I think these are marginal on most bigadv units. but there are different classes of BigADV units. some worth ~6000 points and some worth ~20000 points. either way these will still powerful folders even when folding SMP units

[Zak33]

I'e now sanctioned this, BUT IT'S NOT AN OPEN TICKET FOR ANY OTHER GROUP BUYS.

It's because

A) Al is a good guy and is certain to control it properly
B) HEXUS FOLDING is an amazing team effort
C) Cos Al has agreed to it only being for the devoted nutters in here.. no one else.

[Tattysnuc]

What an absolutely brilliant idea. I'm tipping my hat to you Zak for allowing such a noble venture.

I've been reading the posts from scratch, and an up to page 10 of 31. It seems there have been a LOT of problems with the bios for these boards. What are the beefiest CPU's that this board supports? Any hex cores for instance?

Apologies if that's a real dumb question, but I'm so long out of the AMD fold, I'm completely unsure nowadays what is required, and what items are compatible etc.

Also, does the board overclock? I'm guessing not, but saying that the Supermicro http://www.overclock.net/t/1224208/s...clocking-guide does.....

[Tattysnuc]

PS. My last points submitted were W/C 6th and 13th May.... Do I qualify?

[Golden Dragoon]

I think I may have missed the boat on this one but I would have been very interested in getting one of these, haven't been on hexus in a long while due to work commitments taking all my spare time

[alsenior]

What an absolutely brilliant idea. I'm tipping my hat to you Zak for allowing such a noble venture.

I've been reading the posts from scratch, and an up to page 10 of 31. It seems there have been a LOT of problems with the bios for these boards. What are the beefiest CPU's that this board supports? Any hex cores for instance?

Apologies if that's a real dumb question, but I'm so long out of the AMD fold, I'm completely unsure nowadays what is required, and what items are compatible etc.

Also, does the board overclock? I'm guessing not, but saying that the Supermicro http://www.overclock.net/t/1224208/s...clocking-guide does.....

The fastest chip these support is the 8390SE but those are 137Watt part and absolutely drink power. in the same power envelope as these you can fit 2 of these boards with he processors. as far as im aware these do not over clock but the first thing im doing when i get mine is to start building a new bios based on coreboot this may open some options down the road

PS. My last points submitted were W/C 6th and 13th May.... Do I qualify?

Yes

I think I may have missed the boat on this one but I would have been very interested in getting one of these, haven't been on hexus in a long while due to work commitments taking all my spare time

to be fair i thought this idea as long dead but you have revived it. i wont be able to do anything until late September because that's is when i get my next round of financing.

[Golden Dragoon]

Well when it is convenient for you can you send me a pm, I would most likely want 2 of these, I am assuming you can run then as DP boards and pop in another 2 cpu's later as alot of amd server boards seem to allow this.

[alsenior]

For those that are still interested i need to know by Sunday (30th September).