[Beowulf] hardware question - which PSU for this?

[Andrew Piskorski]

On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 10:41:44AM +0100, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

> This seems ideal mainboard for beowulf clusters. built in infiniband  
> it seems.
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com/Arima-AMD-Opteron-Quad-Core-Socket-F-3000-series-Server_W0QQitemZ390149471460QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCOMP_EN_Networking_Components?hash=item5ad6b87ce4

Vincent, what makes you think that motherboard has Infiniband?  Do you
see connectors for it in the pictures or something?

Arima's older SW500 quad socket 940 Opteron motherboard came in four
versions, two of which had Infiniband (Mellanox MT25208).  Thus, it's
quite possible that this newer quad socket F board also had an
Infiniband option, but I have no idea if this particular board has it
or not.

  http://www.flextronics.com/computing/support/server/Product/ViewProduct.asp?View=SW500

> The problem is no manufacturer lists these boards and which PSU fits  
> on it and what cpu's is unclear.

It's an Arima model 40GCMG020-D400-100.  Perhaps it was intended as an
OEM motherboard for Gateway or Dell; at least, I can't think of any
other good reason why there's essentially no information whatsoever
about it on web.  Arima sold its computer business to Flextronics in
2007, perhaps that's related somehow.

Chris Morrell (aka, "[XC] gomeler", a Georgia Tech student and
sysadmin) seems to have made good progress in figuring out the
functions of most of the pins on the motherboard's non-standard power
connectors, but hasn't yet succeeded in getting his to boot:

  http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4194423&postcount=137
  http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4224859&postcount=175
  http://atrejus.net/arima/arima-gr.jpg
  http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?s=e603598f0c265e1e0725a0b10b1a3757&p=772296#post772296

-- 
Andrew Piskorski <atp at piskorski.com>
http://www.piskorski.com/