Post your system.......

[momaka]

OK, here’s another system of mine that I’ve been meaning to post for a while: a Dell Precision T-7500 workstation. I bought it a little over 3 years ago, in early March of 2020, when both video card and other PC parts prices were just starting to sky-rocket again due to crypto and chip shortages with the early onset of Covid-19 events / lockdowns.

I actually posted a ”teaser” picture in the best cheap/free scores thread.
Link to original post can be found here.

Here’s how it all started (*sigh* long post ahead )…
In early 2020, right before prices of computers (and GPUs) went absolutely crazy, I was thinking of getting something a little more powerful than my Optiplex 790. The 790 ran great (and still does), but a co-worker at my last job built himself a new rig, and then another co-worker did the same. So I started thinking perhaps I should also finally build something newer and more powerful. Besides, the Optiplex 790 was starting to stutter a little with its i5-2500 in certain e-sports games (particularly Fortnite.)

At first, I was considering buying off a used 6th gen i5 system from my supervisor (the 2nd coworker mentioned above.) He was trying to play the new (at the time) Call of Duty Warzone game, but couldn’t understand why it was running very sluggish – especially on initial startup. He thought it was the amount of RAM he had (16 GB), but asked me for my advice/opinion. I checked his PC with MSI Afterburner while running the game and found his CPU was the main bottleneck – an i5-6600k, IIRC. Warzone was pretty much pegging all 4 cores to the max all the time. Everything else was OK / under-utilized. So then I did some research on his mobo and found that it can take up to a 7th gen i7… but the prices of those were still quite steep. As such, he decided he might as well just build a new PC (into his old case)… and he did. He was then looking to sell the old components (i5 6th gen, 16 GB DDR4, GTX1050 TI) and asked me if I was interested. At that time, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. However, he offered the mobo+CPU+RAM+GPU for something like $150, which seemed like a pretty good deal at the time compared to what I saw on eBay. I was ready to pull the trigger and even had the cash ready. However, he kept forgetting to bring the old components. Also, the new CV-19 measures kept us on different schedules.

In the meantime of all of the above, I got curious to see what else $150 could get me. Then I remembered Topcat’s and Ratdude747’s dual-CPU workstation builds… so I started looking for similar. I guess we can say it’s all Ratdude’s fault again? :

Anyhow. I eventually started hovering mostly around Dell Precision workstations, as they seemed really hard to beat for the money – particularly the socket 1366 systems, like T3500, T5500, and T7500. My initial thoughts were to go with a T3500 and a single high-end hex-core CPU. The T5500 and T7500 were all $100+ for the most part with the same single-CPU configurations as the T3500. And the dual-CPU ones were even higher, starting at ~$150 and up.

But then, as if by miracle, I found a T7500 with the following description:
”Dell Precision WorkStation T7500 2.13GHz Intel Xeon E5606 8GB RAM No HDD”
At first, I thought it was just another T7500 with a low-end single-CPU. The starting bid looked very attractive, though: $20. So I clicked on the eBay listing. The pictures were rather dull-looking and didn’t reveal anything special. However, the description had one line of text that intrigued me instantly: “CPU riser card: YES”. A little online search showed this riser card is for the 2nd CPU… therefore suggesting a 2nd CPU likely was present inside the machine. But I figured, even if that wasn’t the case, just the presence of the CPU riser card was well worth the price. Another quick lookup revealed that socket 1366 Xeons were dirt-cheap. Also, another search showed the riser cards for the T5500/T7500 stations easily went for $30-50 at the time, and there weren’t too many of them either. So this alone made the listing worth book-marking and following, if nothing else.

But then I realized something else: the shipping was quite steep at $70 No surprise there - these workstation PCs weight at 70+ lbs (30+ Kg). I turned out super-lucky, however. I looked at the seller’s location, and it was listed as somewhere in Maryland. A search for the city on Google Maps showed that it was approximately halfway between Baltimore and Washington D.C. – i.e. not too far from me. B-more usually takes me a little over 1 hour to get to with no traffic on the i95… so I figured the place would be about a 40-45 minute drive with regular light mid-day traffic. The final step, of course, was to check if local pickup was possible... and it was! This essentially could eliminate the $70 shipping. My car’s fuel economy clocks at around 30-35 MPG (about 6.7 - 7.8 Liters per 100 Km - not bad for an old Focus, IMO ), I figured I’d be in for probably less than what a cup of (overpriced) Starbucks coffee costs (particularly with those low gas prices we had in early 2020 )

This gave me an “upper hand” with bidding on the auction, as I no longer had to deal with shipping charges (and I messaged the seller to confirm as well.) As such, I could allow myself to bid higher than other people. Again, the auction started at about $20, though I quickly asserted myself in there early on and raised it to $30 to hopefully “show” any low-bidders I meant serious business here. Normally, this isn’t a good strategy on eBay… but to my surprise, even in the final minutes, no one bid higher than $35. Hey, OK! So I ended up winning the auction for a paltry $36!

A few days later, on my day off from work (a beautiful, warm, and sunny mid-March day) I drove to the place and picked up the beast. I knew these workstations were big. But damn! I didn’t know they were THAT big. When I saw it, I panicked it wouldn’t fit in the trunk of my car (And FWIW, Focuses… or is it Foci for multiple?... have very reasonably-sized trunks.) Rest assured, my new T7500 did fit… but just barely! WOW!

And so, the following post details what the system came with originally, in terms of hardware:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...=7609&page=219

In short- it did come with 2x CPUs.
I stuck a spare 128 GB SSD I had just picked up from the trash at work (yeah, I know ) and a spare GTX 560 I got a few months prior to this for $10 from a Craigslist ad that was nearby. So for $50 total or thereabouts, this easily turned into a cheap low-end gaming PC. Testing Fortnite just on that hardware (a game that is rather hard on the CPU and prefers fast cores / threads), I was getting butter-smooth 60 FPS without any stutter. 8 cores, even at a lowly-low 2.1 GHz, are not to be trifled with.

But I wasn’t going to stop there, and I knew this all along as soon as I bought the workstation.

Not even a week after getting the T7500 WS, I found a listing on eBay for 12x 2 GB reg ECC modules for $21 shipped (i.e. 24 GB for under $21.) Needless to say, I bought those right away. Then, I did some search as to what would be the best CPU for my T7500 without having to change the stock heatsinks. The truth is (or at least it seems so now) that I probably could run 95 Watt TDP CPUs with the stock heatsinks… but I opted not to. The original Xeon E5606 CPUs are rated at 80W TDP, so I only looked in that range. There aren’t many Xeons rated for 80W TDP, though. The best I could find (that wasn’t an extra-low-voltage CPU, as those are more expensive) was the Xeon E5649. A pair of those ran me $15 shipped to my door – not bad!

Finally, it was time for finding a GPU. While I have quite a good number of old GPUs (most of them “cheap” scores from eBay for under $10-15 each), none of them were something I felt would fit the caliber of this build. Going back to my co-worker above, he still had the GTX 1050 TI… but again, we just didn’t get enough chances to talk about it, so I didn’t end up buying it. Besides, the GTX 1000 series do not have an analog video output, which is a major turn-down for a CRT freak like myself. There was also another (3rd) co-worker that was offering me a GTX 980 TI for practically peanuts (like $20), but I felt I’d be ripping him off if I bought it for that little… and in the end, he’s glad he listened to me and didn’t sell, because he couldn’t buy a new Radeon RX 6700 like he was hoping to, thanks to chip shortages and Bit-Scam scalpers. Thus, back to eBay I went for my video card hunt. Again, knowing I wanted something with native analog output, my options were limited to either GTX 900 line from nVidia or certain Radeon R9 cards. The latter seemed too failure prone, so I took a step back and looked at Radeon HD 7k cards instead (which ironically aren’t that much more reliable.) At this point, the supply of old cards was still not too dry on eBay, but I could tell it was getting there (I’m an eBay “regular”. ) Interestingly enough, I found a listing for a HIS Radeon HD 7950 video card that no one seemed interested in (perhaps because it was listed in “as-is” condition, despite the description also saying that it was tested and came out of a working system.) Anyhow, I ended up nabbing that card just a few cents shy of $40, including the shipping. Had I waited a few more months of even weeks, I wouldn’t have been able to get it for that price anymore, as that’s when the chip shortage really started to hit. And to my luck, the HD7950 that I got did end up working OK. It just needed a good de-dusting and cleaning.

So for a total of about $115 (in 2020 prices), this is the rig I ended up building:
Motherboard: stock Dell Precision T7500 motherboard [0m1gj6] with riser card
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon E5649 (SLBZ8) @ stock 2.53 GHz
RAM: 24 GB total (12x 2 GB Helwet Packard 2Rx8 PC3-10600R 1333 MHz ECC Reg)
Video: HIS Radeon HD7950 IceQ Turbo 3 GB DDR5 [H795QC3G2M]
HDD: 500 GB Dell RE5 series / Western Digital WD5002ABYSe (7200 RPM, 3.5”, SATA3)
Optical: _________
PSU: 1100 Watt Newton Power NPS-1100BB A rev:08
Case: stock Precision T7500 case
OS: Windows 7 Professional SP1 (as per COA sticker on the case )

Some pictures of the build…

Front & back:




Inside:


Air guides / shrouds off to show RAM and 2nd CPU riser card:

^ This is an early picture, as not long afterwards, I added a 40 mm fan on the chipset heatsink. It was running quite warm otherwise.

A shot of the PSU label:

1.1 KW Newton PSU [NPS-1100bb] with 80+ Silver rating It’s a beast!

CPU riser board:




CPU-Z of the original CPUs (Xeon E5606 at stock 2.13 GHz speed):
Dell Precision T7500 stock Xeon E5606 x2 - CPU-Z.png

The stock 8 GB of RAM that came with the system, configured in dual-channel, of course:
Dell Precision T7500 stock RAM - Hynix HMT325R7CFR8A-H9 T8 AC - CPU-Z.png
And the motherboard itself:
Dell Precision T7500 motherboard - CPU-Z.png

I didn’t stick with the stock RAM for too long. Here’s the system once the 24 GB of RAM showed up (but still with the 2x Xeon E5606 CPUs, as can be seen with the RAM running at lower frequency.)
Dell Precision T7500 24 GB HP ECC RAM - Nanya NT2GC72b8pA0NL-CG - CPU-Z.png

Once the 2x E5649 CPU showed up, this also increased the RAM frequency from 533 MHz to 666 MHz (as did the NB frequency, from 1.6 GHz to 2.13 GHz.)
Dell Precision T7500 24 GB HP ECC RAM - Nanya NT2GC72b8pA0NL-CG - CPU-Z (2).png

And speaking of the E5649 CPUs, here they are:
Dell Precision T7500 CPUs - 2x Xeon E5649 - CPU-Z.png

Sadly, I didn’t use this system as much as I hoped I would – not initially, anyways. One of the reasons was that it just took way too long for the system to initialize and boot (almost 20-30 seconds before getting video output, another 20-30 seconds for the onboard LSI 1068e SAS/SATA controller to see the HDD, then another 20 or so seconds for Windows 7 to boot.) In comparison, the Optiplex 790 I was using prior to this would be up and running on the desktop in just 30 seconds or less. Heat was another issue: while the system ran really cool (CPUs rarely go over mid 40’s Celsius with a normal gaming use), the fact that there are 2x CPUs still makes the system pump out a lot of heat. This is great for the winter months, but no so much for the summer / hot months. And lastly, I build this system primary to try and play some more modern games on. However, I kept busy with other things and rarely had time for anything else other than the occasional Fortnite match with a few old buddies of mine. Well, Epic games released some updates that first broke the audio chat in Fortnite on that system, so I went back to the Optiplex 790. Then another update broke the game altogether under Windows 7.

In the Spring of 2021, I finally decided to try something new to get Fortnite running, so I could chat with the few buddies I had there – I installed Windows 10 Home on a spare 250 GB Seagate Constellation 2.5” HDD. This was a dumb mistake on my part, since Win 10 Home will NOT work with a multi-socket CPU system. While it saw my 2nd CPU, it simply refused to use it.

As such, I downgraded the system: I removed the 2nd CPU riser card, along with the 12 GB of RAM attached to it. And since I was mostly using the PC just for Fornite, I also downgraded the HD7950 GPU to an HD5830, as the single E5649 CPU left became the bottleneck at this point. I ran this config until November of 2022, when the HD5830 decided to bite the dust (it was a cheap eBay “as-is” score, so no surprise.) So I further downgraded the GPU to an HP OEM HD7570 2 GB video card that I just had scored and fixed off of eBay. But this is the current state this system has been for a good while now… and it more or less replaced my Optiplex 790 for my gaming needs.

Anyways, that’s all for now for my T-7500 workstation. As with all of my PCs, it’s always a “work-in-progress”.

[Dan81]

Two oldies. One is still work in progress since I'm waiting on the CPU.

One:

Frontier PC case w/ thermal sensor
rebuilt ANS LC-B400ATX
Foxconn NF4UK8AA mobo (nForce 4 Ultra)
Athlon 64 3500+ skt939
4x512MB - 2GB DDR400
ASUS Geforce 8500GT 256MB
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
164GB Hitachi Deskstar
TSSTCorp SH-S182D DVDRW
Windows XP SP3

Two:
case to be decided
HKC SZ-430PDR PSU
DFI Infinity NF4 SLi
A64 3200+ for now - I'm waiting on a 64 x2 4600+ 939.
4x1GB - 4GB DDR400
Palit Geforce 8600GT sonic+ 256MB
Sound Blaster Audigy SE
160GB WD Caviar SE16
TSSTCorp SH-S203 SATA DVDRW
Vista Ultimate SP2

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by momaka

Anyways, that’s all for now for my T-7500 workstation. As with all of my PCs, it’s always a “work-in-progress”.

Now that I like!! Anything with 2 CPU's in it definitely gets a big thumbsup from me!!

The funny thing is, I was looking at a newer dual CPU board; the Supermicro X11DAi....and the core count & memory capabilities are so ridiculously high I couldn't bring myself to buy one.....it would be such a tragic waste of computing power for what I do these days......

The trusty skt1366 5600 series Xeons are still one of my favorites. That Dell will run the X5690's (make sure you have the latest BIOS), you won't have to worry about upgrading that any time soon; even though the 5600 series is equivalent to a first gen I-series....still plenty of power. They can be had cheap now; ~$50 for a pair.

[Dan81]

Welp... my crazy a$$ went ahead and dropped a 8800GTX on the 64x2 machine.

I feel like I've done a big stupid thing, but by far this is the only card that doesn't kill audio output when entering Windows. Every other card I've tried (8500GT, 8600GT, Quadro FX3700, EVEN A 9500GT FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!) kills audio output of any kind using a DVI-D to HDMI adapter (the same I've used for the nF4 Ultra unit) once you enter Windows. This happens across Vista SP2 and 7 SP1. Haven't tested XP 64 and 10 LTSC.

[Dan81]

Figured out what was up with the 8600 but still decided to use the 8800 on the 939 - I moved the 8600 on the machine below:

MB - ASUS M2NPV-VM w/ SB heatsink (my own mod)
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 x2 5200+ Brisbane
GPU - Palit Geforce 8600GT Sonic+ 256MB
RAM - 4x1GB DDR400
HDD - 500GB WD Scorpio Blue
OS - Vista Home Premium SP2

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Topcat

The funny thing is, I was looking at a newer dual CPU board; the Supermicro X11DAi....and the core count & memory capabilities are so ridiculously high I couldn't bring myself to buy one.....it would be such a tragic waste of computing power for what I do these days...

And when did that stop us???

Off-topic: That one does look pretty slick... Optane support too. Could get spendy but one could make a really slick zero-spindle rig with that.

That said, oddly enough my two Xeon Harpertown rigs see all the use these days. The newer systems (Westmere-EP and Opteron Istanbul) are dormant (but perfectly functional). Go figure.

Originally Posted by Dan81

Welp... my crazy a$$ went ahead and dropped a 8800GTX on the 64x2 machine.

I feel like I've done a big stupid thing, but by far this is the only card that doesn't kill audio output when entering Windows. Every other card I've tried (8500GT, 8600GT, Quadro FX3700, EVEN A 9500GT FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!) kills audio output of any kind using a DVI-D to HDMI adapter (the same I've used for the nF4 Ultra unit) once you enter Windows. This happens across Vista SP2 and 7 SP1. Haven't tested XP 64 and 10 LTSC.

If it works, it works. The only 8800 I ever owned kept having BGA issues... I'd reflow it only for it to fail a few months later. I think the issue is that they run hot and that was in the early days of lead-free soldering when alloys and processes were still not optimized (as I saw a lot of dead HP laptops with the same issue in the same era). But, I ran GTS 250's in an SLI setup for years (I still have it, but it's retired) and they never had an issue despite being the same core (granted, the same core with a shrunk die that runs a bit cooler).

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

And when did that stop us???

Off-topic: That one does look pretty slick... Optane support too. Could get spendy but one could make a really slick zero-spindle rig with that.

That said, oddly enough my two Xeon Harpertown rigs see all the use these days. The newer systems (Westmere-EP and Opteron Istanbul) are dormant (but perfectly functional). Go figure.

True true......it would be a mean rig!

One of my harpertowns are still active (X7DWA build), it's my service bench system and of course this message brought to you by a Westmere (X8DAI) from my office. I have a X9DAI with CPU's and RAM....but I think I've got that sold....

Crazy how cheap DDR3 stuff is getting these days.

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Now that I like!! Anything with 2 CPU's in it definitely gets a big thumbsup from me!!

Well, currently, it's only a 1-CPU rig (add-on board is removed, since I was a dummy and put Windows 10 Home on there, not realizing Home ed. only allows 1 CPU, even though it does see both CPUs.) Also saves a little bit of power this way... which is starting to matter around this time of the year when it's starting to get warm/hot again.

Otherwise, I like it too. It just feel solid all around - 70 lbs worth of steel and lots of parts inside. It's definitely coming with me, along with my T7400. The T7400 still needs a new PSU, though (or the original fixed, which I just haven't gotten to fully diagnosing yet.)

There's also someone on my local CL selling a T7500 right now with one CPU only for $10. I really want to get it, but looking at my PC hoard and how much I still have left to pack... yeah.

Then again, I might just stand by my title here and still go get it.
We will see.

The guy was actually selling 6 of these and 5 other machines for a total of $120. That was a few months back. I'm guessing the others got sold, so I got saved there.

Originally Posted by Topcat

The funny thing is, I was looking at a newer dual CPU board; the Supermicro X11DAi....and the core count & memory capabilities are so ridiculously high I couldn't bring myself to buy one.....it would be such a tragic waste of computing power for what I do these days......

Yeah, I feel the same way. Considering I still get by with just a 32-bit Pentium 4 HT (at least for actual work and not Youtube or other "nonsense" ), even the T7500 will be a major step-up from that for many years to come. The best part - it's fully compatible with WinXP!

Originally Posted by Topcat

The trusty skt1366 5600 series Xeons are still one of my favorites. That Dell will run the X5690's (make sure you have the latest BIOS), you won't have to worry about upgrading that any time soon; even though the 5600 series is equivalent to a first gen I-series....still plenty of power. They can be had cheap now; ~$50 for a pair.

These Xeon CPUs are also super-reliable too - soldered HS (IIRC) FTW!
Like the P4's, they'll probably outlast anything else from that era.

I actually considered getting a pair of X5670 at some point - much cheaper than the X5690 (I remember seeing one for about $15 shipped for the pair) and they are rated for 95W TDP, meaning I could probably get away with the current stock heatsinks I have. I doubt my stock HSs will be able to hand the 130W TDP of the X5690. In fact, the only reason I upgraded to the X5649 in the first place was because they had the same TDP as the original CPUs (80W).

Originally Posted by Dan81

Two:
case to be decided
HKC SZ-430PDR PSU
DFI Infinity NF4 SLi
A64 3200+ for now - I'm waiting on a 64 x2 4600+ 939.
4x1GB - 4GB DDR400
Palit Geforce 8600GT sonic+ 256MB
Sound Blaster Audigy SE
160GB WD Caviar SE16
TSSTCorp SH-S203 SATA DVDRW
Vista Ultimate SP2

Nice socket 939 build there!
Those X2 AMDs are starting to get hard to find now (at least for s939.) The 4600+ actually costs a good amount on the eBay, due to how retro stuff is now.

I only have an X2 4200+ that I bought a while back, though I still haven't gotten around to using it. Came with original box and HS too! A collector's item almost... but don't worry, I won't keep it in its box forever. I just have too much going on right now. But when the time allows, it will go into one of my recapped 939 boards.

The only question is, which mobo I would use. I have a good number of fixed/recapped 939 boards, but none are anything special to write home about. If my 2nd 939Dual-SATA2 wasn't so iffy, I would have gone with that board for a super quirky dual-GPU PC (it has both AGP and PCI-E.)

Originally Posted by Topcat

Crazy how cheap DDR3 stuff is getting these days.

Especially ECC/Reg modules.

The desktop stuff still holds a higher value, though not as much as a year or two ago. Even used DDR4 is getting much cheaper now. I'm guessing people are moving onto DDR5 now.

Meanwhile, this message was brought to you from a P4HT with 2 GB of plain-ol' DDR RAM.

When is this PC going to die, dammit! Need to get forced to upgrade, otherwise I'll just keep on using it.

[Dan81]

Originally Posted by momaka

Nice socket 939 build there!
Those X2 AMDs are starting to get hard to find now (at least for s939.) The 4600+ actually costs a good amount on the eBay, due to how retro stuff is now.

I only have an X2 4200+ that I bought a while back, though I still haven't gotten around to using it. Came with original box and HS too! A collector's item almost... but don't worry, I won't keep it in its box forever. I just have too much going on right now. But when the time allows, it will go into one of my recapped 939 boards.

The only question is, which mobo I would use. I have a good number of fixed/recapped 939 boards, but none are anything special to write home about. If my 2nd 939Dual-SATA2 wasn't so iffy, I would have gone with that board for a super quirky dual-GPU PC (it has both AGP and PCI-E.)

I did end up casing it - it's a K-Mex CX-6059 case. The PSU and GPU have been replaced - instead of the HKC unit, it's now powered by a Raidmax RX-700AC unit, Andyson OEM - I entrust it as it powered a R9 280x (which is a whopping 250W TDP ) without breaking a sweat. The GPU is now a Winfast 8800GTX TDH 768MB, in place of the 8600GT. I could have gone a notch lower and install a Quadro FX3700 (it's technically a lower clocked 8800GT) but I figured a 8800GTX should be plenty for some gaming on this PC

For mobo, I used a DFI Infinity nF4 SLi - spartan as all hell, but it never skips a beat. Same goes for the other SLi board I recently acquired, an plain A8N-SLI (not Deluxe or Premium - just plain ol' A8N-SLI) that looks like it was used for single-core gaming. (9400GT, SB Live 5.1 SB0100, 1.5GB GeiL DDR400 CL2.5 and an Winchester A64 3000+ were its original specs, with the upgrades being 2x ADATA Vitesta + 2x PQI Turbo in place of the GeiL sticks, a Venice 3200+ in place of the Winchester (god, I can only dream for another 64 x2 or a Opteron...) 3000, and I'm undecided whether I should swap in a Audigy 2 ZS in place of the Live 5.1 or just leave it be.)

P.S - don't mind the LG DVD-RW drive in the pic I attached - it's already been replaced with a MSI DR16-B2 unit I refurbished for an BE6-II build originally, but which ended up getting a NEC ND-3540A DVDRW instead.

[Dan81]

The one I call Skynet HT:

-JNC/Deer case
-AOpen Z500-12AE3 500W PSU (rebranded FSP500-60APN)
-ABIT IS7-E v1.2 mobo
-P4 Northwood HT 2.8
-4x512MB DDR400
-HIS Radeon X1950 Pro AGP 256MB
- SB Audigy 2 ZS
-160GB Samsung HD161GJ SATA
-Optiarc AD-7170A (aka Plextor PX-800A)
-XP SP3