Anyone have a "Skulltrail" Setup?
12 Jun 2016 4:11:03 UTC
Topic 198644
(moderation:
I was part shopping this week to upgrade some old systems, and in the process discovered something I hadn't known about, a dual LGA771 motherboard based on a "Skulltrail" spec:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121330
It supports dual Core2Quad Extreme or LGA 771 Xeons. Two of them together won't give great single-core performance, but you'll surpass the better single CPU LGA 1366 setups.
Anyway, I managed to upgrade a Core2Duo H8400 LGA775 board into a Xeon L5430 LGA 771 setup. You can cut the guiding tabs out of the 775 socket with a box cutter, then buy these aftermarket stickers that swap two pins on the CPU, then insert the 771 CPU sideways into the 775 slot, and...it works! I expected an explosion when I powered the up the former Core2Duo, but instead I got this:
https://einsteinathome.org/host/12200030
It's pulling 100 watts with a 6-pin 750ti running 2x BRP6. Right now it has 4GB memory and it's using half, so I went shopping for 4GB DDR2 800 sticks. They're $180 a pair for non-ECC(!), but I found someone on eBay who had listed a new pair of Samsung sticks with fuzzy pictures. He'd answered a question about what the part number was, and I was able to look it up and determine that they were compatible with my consumer motherboard. Got the pair for $20...score!
Anyone have a "Skulltrail" Setup?
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There's a sad story about Skulltrail from around 2008/2009, but I won't rake over old coals.
More to the point, I see BOINC is only reporting 4 cores - i.e. probably one CPU. You're running "Microsoft Windows 10 Core x64 Edition". I haven't caught up on the new Win 10 edition nomenclature and licensing yet, but in olden says, Windows was restricted on the number of CPU packages it was allowed to use.
'Home' editions were restricted to one CPU package, whether that had 1/2/4/8 cores.
To get full use of a dual socket board like a Skulltrail, you had to use the next version up - Professional for XP and Win 7, Business for Vista. Or Linux, of course. I'd check whether your new beast might be being throttled by software.
RE: There's a sad story
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No worries, I mixed up two things in one post: My "new" system is just a low power 4-core 771 Xeon hacked into a cheap 775 board. I came across the Skulltrail motherboards when researching the value of building a dual LGA771 system, and thought it was neat that they supported dual consumer processors.
If I did want to double up my L5430's, there's this fine SSI-EEB monster available on the cheap:
[url]https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Xeon-Dual-Support-motherboard/dp/B000VS8WSS?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0[/url]