BORED - Ordering Parts

[rustydusty1717]

Got bored, and wanting to try out the new AMD chipsets, as everything I have is Intel, and would love to try the new AMD 8 cores. Here's what I got picked out so far, only thing I've heard is that this MOBO needs a bios update to run the FX chipsets. Sounds like you need an older AMD cpu to put in place to do the upgrade first before you can put the FX in. Anyone know anything regarding this?

Case:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6811129042

PSU:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6817151093

Board:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6813131758

Memory:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6820231486

CPU:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6819113284

Total: $570.34CDN

[kraze]

Is this just a fun build or do you plan on making this your main rig? If so I would switch up the PSU for something Corsair. I have found there PSU's are amazing.

I personally don't run AMD but I would imagine if you got a newer mobo you shouldn't need to flash the bios.

[rustydusty1717]

Actually, this might end up being an VMware esxi5 host, if everything does right. My main rig is a descent Intel desktop with 8gb ddr3, gtx 560ti, ssd, etc. Other main rig is my new Alienware M17


My main hosting machine at my house is just maxing out of memory, and is running Hyper-v 2008, which I would like to get away from. This would be a perfect upgrade, and VMware converter makes the hyper-v to VMware move, extremely easy.

All I got was this reply, stating the bios on the board needs to be a specific version to support the FX chipets.

(Note: BIOS will need to be version 0505 or newer for FX CPU support)

[soja]

I don't know if it natively supports the new FX CPU's, but from what i've seen on asus boards, if they don't have a dedicated bios flash usb port and button, you will need to be able to get into bios to flash it.

I have no experience with this board, but that is what i've seen on other asus motherboards.

Quote from a newegg review:

Cons: MUST UPDATE BIOS FOR NEWEST AMD PROCESSORS. Purchased two of these boards with the new AMD FX 6100 Processor... Couldn't get it to post for the life of me... changed out PSU's... disconnected everything... tried different ram.. It was frustrating. Finally purchased an inexpensive AM3+ Sempron Processor to update BIOS and it booted up flawlessly. Once BIOS Updated, the AMD FX 6100 worked perfectly as well...

[rustydusty1717]

Well, this is what I came up with. Since this is going to a virtualized machine for a variety of servers, I will just throw a random video card in it and enjoy. Anyways, here is what I came up with:

Case:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6811129042

PSU:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6817151093

Board:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6813131874

Memory:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6820231486

CPU:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6819113284


After all discounts, shipping, etc, the total came to..... $599.67 CDN

Not bad for what I was actually thinking of. Like I said, this was a somewhat budget build, last minute and some boredom was involved. I really wanted to try the new Piledriver chipsets, and I'll be sure to put it through it's paces. May post results of the build when it's all said and done.

[Vanderburg]

I have an FX-8150 and the Sabertooth 990FX and I didn't need to flash it (Back in Feb '12), but it's a good idea to do so anyway, just to stay current. Fortunately, if you get one of the nicer ASUS boards, you can actually do this from within the OS.

[rustydusty1717]

Well, newegg decided to ship everything from 3 locations. Everything from LA, to Toronto and Vancouver. The stuff from Toronto and LA arrived (PSU and Case) and the stuff from Vancouver is sitting at the depot. The stuff farthest away arrived first, figure that out.

Anyways, patiently waiting till Monday for the board, memory and CPU to arrive. I couldn't help myself, so I put the PSU into the case to get the effect of it running



Come on FX-8350, G skill ripjaws and ASUS M5A99X

I'm definitely going to make this an ESXi 5 box, so you'll know the crappy vid cards that will be used just to do the setup of ESXi

[kraze]

I couldn't help myself, so I put the PSU into the case to get the effect of it running

LOL, I completely know that feeling.

[rustydusty1717]

Calgary is only an hour and half drive from where I live. Wonder if there's any way to get into the depot and snag it myself? Yes, I'm that impatient!

[Vanderburg]

They do have a pickup option in LA, if I remember, but I don't know about any other location.

[rustydusty1717]

For Purolator? Didn't think you could pickup at any depot except the one being shipped to.

[Vanderburg]

I don't know about outside distributors, but for Newegg's LA warehouse you can.

[Vanderburg]

I don't know about outside distributors, but for Newegg's LA warehouse you can.

[rustydusty1717]

I guess I'll try and patiently wait for Monday morning's arrival...

[rustydusty1717]

Alright, here's some pics I took while testing before cleaning things up.



Here it is humming away with a few virtual machines now moved onto it.



So ran into some major snags. Had to get the latest RAID drivers for the board for Hyper-v to run properly. Then had to network, so had to use pnputil to manually load the inf network drivers from a usb. Had some issues with drives in the raid arrays as well. It's running quite smoothly now though and so far very happy.

Here's a quick screen of the hyper-v console



Probably add the extra 16GB ddr3 in coming weeks. 32GB should be enough for the new server