Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: cheap Dell servers for next 4 days

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Posted by Andrew Piskorski on
Incidentally, my Dell PowerWedge 600SC arrived early last week. I haven't ordered the RAM and disks I want to put in it yet, and I haven't had time to do a proper inventory of just what the heck hardware I've really got, but so far:

The case is small, but looks very slick. No fans blowing directly over the hard drive area (which is a nifty feature of the nice $70 Chen-Ming 601 case on one of my other machines), but there are two big honking fans in there blowing air in and out. The one in the back is nearly 5 inches across, the fan in the front is smaller but looks somewhat bigger than the usual 80 mm size, maybe 90 or 100 mm. I don't think cooling will be a problem.

Running memtest86 on the paltry 128 MB (but registered ECC!) RAM from Dell shows 49 errors within the first minute or two, most almost immediately, then no additional errors over several hours. The power supply is only rated 250 W max and has only a single fan, so maybe it's a low quality unit, and responsible for the problems. Or maybe the RAM's just bad. Won't know till I try the real RAM for the machine.

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Posted by Andrew Piskorski on
I tried swapping out the Dell "Model: NPS-250FB B Rev: 00" 250 W power supply for an Achieve "Model: AX500.N Item: PW606" 500 W supply. No difference, same memory errors.

Unfortunately, I sort of suspect the Achive supply is a lower quality unit than the Dell (it feels slightly lighter, despite being rated for twice the wattage!), but I don't have a known-good high quality power supply free for testing.

But at any rate, this strongly suggests that the memtest86 errors on my new Dell box are due to either the memory or the motherboard, not the power supply unit.