Ultra 20 M2 modifications - Who tried what?
Hi All,
Coming monday I get my Ultra 20 M2 (jay!) and I was wondering what kind of things people have tried upgrading/modifying. From the customer stories at the sun page I already saw that people have had great success with various nvidia graphics cards! I am specifically curious about
* Other AM2 CPU's, FX-62? Athlon X2 6000, Opteron 1220?
* Nvidia 8800 series (G80 core) PCIe adapters
* Higher wattage powersupplies (500+ watts)
* Memory types/brands
Let us all know! I'm sure this thread (like the tyan mainboard thread earlier this month) will get googlized pretty heavily!
Grtz,
Rubin.
I've got a 40 M2, added a 8800 Ultra and it's a blast :).
I'm also thinking about a second (SLI), but that's a bit difficult as the system offers only two PCIe power connectors (see the other thread) and I've got to get a SLI connector from somewhere as well.
What tyan thread are you referring to? On my motherboard there is a two-digit LCD display showing various numbers during runtime (seems to be hex) and I want to know what they mean :)
This one:
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5158620
I just got my Ultra 20 M2 in! I thought it would be monday but it's here today! As soon as I've done some research regarding the mainboard, I'll post in the aforementioned thread!
Regarding the two-digit thingie on the mainboard: that's a POST display; it shows POST codes so you know in which state a mainboard is at a given moment. It's really handy when you need to find out why you're not getting any image on your display, for example. Take a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POST_card
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-on_self-test
In the Ultra 20 M2 there's a Phoenix based bios (don't know about the 40): So:
http://bioscentral.com/postcodes/phoenixbios.htm
;-)
Thank you - really helpful! :)
On monday I should get a SLI connector...
Ok!
Today (saturday the 28th of july 2007) My other hardware stuff came in! This is just a quick status update:
* The AMD Athlon X2 6000+ 3ghz AM2 works! fan connectors are compatible!
* The Corsair TWINpair 1gb PC2-6400 (DDR2-800mhz) modules work!
The corsair memory I bought is rather lengthily called "Corsair 2GB XMS2-6400 DDR2 TWIN2X Matched Memory Pairs | TWIN2X2048-6400C4".
I now have a 3ghz 4gb ram Ultra 20 M2! OhBoyOhBoyOhBoy! ;-)
Now for the stuff I'm starting on now: The Antec NeoHE 550 powersupply is pin compatible (ATX2.2) and has two PCIe connectors which in turn are required for my eVGA 8800GTX EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB HDCP PCIe P/N: 768-p2-e831-ar); Stay tuned for that one; modding required due to length.
Grtz!
Soo,
I've just finished cleaning up after heavily modifying the internals of the Sun Ultra 20 M2. At this moment I'm installing Windows XP Pro SP2 on a Sun Ultra 20 M2 with:
* an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (3.0Ghz),
* 4Gb Corsair PC2-6400 (DDR2 at 800mhz),
* an eVGA 8800GTX 768mb PCIe,
* an Antec NeoHE 550watt powersupply,
* and an additional SATA harddisk, a 500GB Seagate.
Everything is working well but I still have to do some extensive testing. We made pictures along the way and as soon as I've got them on my laptop, I'll link to them here.
Everything went very easily, except for the 8800GTX; it is too big. I had to remove the drive cage and SATA backplane from its original location and move it down which was hard because it was not screwed in, but bolted in! I had to use a drill to get it out ;-). Next to that, the original IDE cable that is used for the DVDrom has a too large connector which I needed to modify because else the videocard in question will not fit snugly into the PCIe 16x slot!
However, all that is behind me now! I must congratulate Sun on making such a well designed machine! I am very impressed with it, and really happy about the fact that, although not supported, I can do this and run a really fast system in such a beautiful case! Fantastic stuff, Sun! Great work!
Stay tuned for the pictures!
Here you can find a few preliminary pics; The quality is not too good but you'll get the idea ;-)
http://www.grond.org/cgi-bin/photos-show.sh?section=photos&language=en& album=Avonturen%20Met%20Een%20Ultra%2020%20M2
I've participated in the mod today... It was totally wicked. And it's faster than fast (atleast in my opinion). Hehehe ... when can we start modding the 2nd Ultra?
