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bebopper · Guest

I finally got my Opteron dualie all together. I used my
original case which had housed a P4 mobo, and kept the floppy, CD/RW
and DVD-R. I put in a Vantec Stealth 520W PS. Very quiet considering
3 fans, but they are ball-bearing. I added two retail Opteron 242s
(with AMD heat-sink/fans). I used the Tyan brackets as recommended in
the manual. For memory, I used the Corsair TWINX1024R-3200C2 PC400
(two 512MB modules.) I also added a WD Raptor 70GB 10K RPM SATA
drive. I kept to 2 Maxtor 80GB ATA drives which were already there.

Graphics card is a Nvidea GeForce FX5200 (8xAGP) The one BIG
tip I would give to anyone installing XP on such a beast is to REMOVE
ALL UNNECESARY CARDS before attempting to install the OS. I went
through HELL until I finally wised up and stripped all but the
essential CD/floppy Video devices, and installed XP on the SATA drive
(which requires hitting F6, to prompt for the driver FLOPPY. I almost
though about ditching the floppy, but you will NEED an "A" drive to
complete and XP install to SATA.

After that, I added my SB Audigy Sound Card, and an old SCSI
card to drive my HP scanner. Added another USB 2.0 card, and plugged
in a bunch of devices (Midisport USB MIDI connector, Logitech Cam Pro,
Edirol SD-20 Sound Module, Blackberry, etc. Also a pair of
ProjectLabs Century CD turntables (USB) which are WAY cool !!

Anyway, the machine smokes. I may upgrade the procs. Another
word of warning, watch the placement of your hard disk drives, since
once the heat sinks are on those optys (it takes a LOT of pressure,
and you really have to put the box on the floor) you won't be popping
any drives out which are mounted parallel to the CPUs.

Anyway, hope this spares somebody some grief somewhere along
the line.

- bebopper