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Specifications, cooling & monitoring, memory

Test System Specification:

CPU & chipset cooling  

AMD's retail Opteron package's airsink has been the copper base Ajigo MF043-44 - this follows their design guide *.pdf specification for a 'High Performance Heatsink' extremely closely, & has a respectable C/W of 0.31 or better. An issue for some or many users may be that this fansink has a thin (15mm] variable-speed 70mm Delta fan - some feel this has an unpleasant tone to the noise at full speed - & a quieter 70mm fan with superior static pressure characteristics is difficult to source.

These fansink & frame assemblies, as secured to the motherboard, are over 100mm long, 75mm wide, & just under 60mm high. The DK8N comes with a pair of insulated metal backplates - one shown above fastened to the underside of its frame - which go under the motherboard, screwed to & locating plastic retention frames above (also provided). 

The fansinks are easy to install into the frames, which provide a very secure mount with the correct clamping pressure via a cam & spring.  If you think you might later upgrade from this default AMD cooling solution (some alternatives, such as the one below, use different backplates) we suggest you do not peel off & use the self-adhesive pads at the top of the DK8N backplates - once stuck on they're very tough to remove.

It is also worth noting when selecting an enclosure that removing the fansinks from their frames - to, say, replace the heatsink compound - is impossible without clear access from above to both ends. We suggest more than the usual care to remove any unneeded motherboard standoffs or other protrusions on the motherboard tray which might contact the board or backplates.

CPU & voltage monitoring  

The Iwill MPX2 we tested has a feature called 'Iwill Processor Shelter' - a hardware-level unattended shutdown, set at a danger-level temperature selected by the user - at 95C, say, to shut the whole shooting-match off if a CPU-cooling fan died. At present, the DK8N lacks this valuable feature - relying perhaps on CPU-level thermal tripping when meltdown looms.

We are most disappointed to see the similar 'Hardware Health Configuration' in-BIOS feature quoted in the DK8N manual is not enabled in the current 21st July 04 BIOS. It would be a comfort to control unattended shutdown events, especially when Opterons cost so much . . . .

 . . . an explanation for this may lie in the apparent inaccuracy of in-BIOS monitoring derived from the onboard Winbond 83627THF monitoring IC via the NFORCE3 SMB. 

Since no functional in-OS monitoring utility is provided by Iwill or NVIDIA, it is not possible to get a clear idea of the degree of error. However, temperatures as reported in-BIOS appear suspiciously unchanged in different (measured) ambient temperatures - all reports to date appear to show that all DK8N's report 50~ish C, no matter which model Opterons are installed, nor how they are cooled, nor which country the report comes from. In addition, the +3.3 voltage line is reported as 3.0x - unlikely when using a PC Power & Cooling 510W PSU

We feel these failures to control unattended shutdown events & provide accurate in-OS monitoring are unacceptable in an expensive workstation motherboard: NVIDIA have a 'System Utility' which functions in other NFORCE-based uniprocessor systems - this utility reports nothing of value in the DK8N, with an irritating message that function relies upon vendor-specific optimisations.

Since the Winbond 83627 family of monitoring ICs are well-proven, we feel the problem is likely to lie with the BIOS &/or the NFORCE3 Pro/250's SMBus: it will be interesting to see just how rapidly NVIDIA will help Iwill produce an effective solution to this credibility-level issue.

DK8N memory & memory settings  

We would suggest the first task of any new DK8N owner is to test their memory using a Memtest bootable CD or floppy: in order to get correct reporting from this excellent free utility you first need to enter the DK8N BIOS & disable 'USB Legacy Support' - so best to use a PS/2 keyboard for this test.

Despite suspecting the DK8N might be picky about memory, for performance reasons we chose OCZ 'PC3200' low-latency 2-3-2-6 DDR - this to our fury had one faulty stick among the four we purchased; though for once a 'lifetime guarantee' meant something -  OCZ replaced the memory within 48 hours. We estimate that using 2-3-2-6 'low latency' memory is worth around 5~7% extra bandwidth over ordinary 2.5-3-3 or 3-3-3 stuff.

We would anyway suggest caution when choosing aggressively timed memory: some of it is specified at 2.7v or more, while the DK8N has no DDR voltage adjustment & is rated for the Jedec norm of 2.5v. Our OCZ stuff is rated at the outer limit of Jedec specs at 2.6v; & it is possible that a full load of eight sticks of this or similar 'low-latency' memory, especially if larger sticks than we used, might run into voltage-drop issues.

The only 'low latency' 400MHz Registered/ECC DDR we know of specified to run at 2.5v is Mushkin stuff: we do not specifically recommend this brand or model, having received poor service from them after being sold expensive faulty memory.

Iwill told us they have so far tested full eight-stick quantities of the following brands & models of Registered/ECC DDR in the DK8N:

In-BIOS memory settings allow tweaking of timings, otherwise these are read off the memory's SPD; more importantly, there are various optional ECC settings available. We chose to enable 'DRAM BG Scrub' (BG=background) at 640ns - this does not have much if any performance cost & is a slight extra security-blanket. 

We also experimented with enabling 'chip kill' - this is an aggressive scrub option & adds an extra latency cycle: you will see what if anything this option 'costs' in the benchmarking section of this review - the results surprised us.

For 32-bit Windows [non-NUMA] you can enable node interleaving for maximum performance; for 32-bit & 64-bit NUMA-aware operating systems you need to disable node interleaving.