Opteron evaluation, part 2: Building the system

Juli 2003

Here you can see the RAMs. If you look carefully, you can see a somewhat smaller chip in the middle. You can recognize ECC Registered RAM if there are 9 equally sized chips on the DIMM, and a smaller one in the middle.

I had to remove almost all the internal bays in the case. Based on the information on a number of online stores, I expected this case to be long enough to fit an extended ATX motherboard (12"x13"). To my surprise, this is not the case.

Boxed Opteron 244 (1.8 GHz) processor:

The heatsink that comes with the boxed Opteron is a Thermaltake copper heat sink, with variable fan speed.

I just spent several thousand euro to get this label on my machine:

But more important than the label are the processors.

I wonder which of these pins will have to go when socket 939 arrives.

Let's start assembling the system. First, mount the metal backplate and the black plastic bracket. Insert the CPU's.

The heatsink comes with TIM (Thermal Interface Material) applied:

Due to the lever on the heatsink, I've never been able to install a heat sink that fast. I was surprised at how much power you have to apply to lock the lever.

Add the RAM.

Let's take a look at the power supply. Nothing special to note.

Here's the system, ready to boot.

I planned on using 2 striped 10000 RPM Western Digital Raptor drives. But as soon as I switched on the system, I knew they had to go. They make a very loud high pitched whine. I 'm sure I wouldn't be able to bear this noise for more than a couple of minutes, so I removed them and used a good old silent Seagate Barracuda instead.

Coming up: Silencing the system.