Building a dual Xeon X5680 workstation

In a previous post I detailed how I built a NAS server from a Supermicro X8DTL-3F motherboard with Xeon E5645 CPU and DDR3 ECC Registered memory. It set me thinking on my spare PC. This PC used to be my main PC before an upgrade and is not really appropriate… Continue reading

Getting a Dell U2713HM to run 2560×1440@60Hz in Ubuntu

Just a quick post. I recently did a fresh install of Ubuntu 17.04 on my Ubuntu PC which has an nVidia GTX 1050, and on the fresh install I no longer had 2560×1440 as a display option for my Dell U2713HM monitor. In fact, I was limited to a maximum… Continue reading

After-market coolers for LGA1366/1356 Xeon CPUs

This is based on a previous post I made on building a NAS server from a SuperMicro X8DTL-3F, and cuts to the chase for people who are googling for the relevant information on how to mount an after-market cooler to a LGA1366 server motherboard (a.k.a. serverboard). It covers the Cooler… Continue reading

Building a Xeon E5645 FreeNAS server with a SuperMicro X8DTL-3F

I’ve been running a small NAS server for several years using the excellent HP MicroServer N40L upgraded to 8GB RAM (officially its max, although I know some people have got it to work with 16GB), and with five WD Red 2TB drives, running FreeNAS v9. The N40L only has 4… Continue reading