Help with hardware set up

chex · 9 Dec 2015 at 07:07

I got a used workstation after a long time of owning only apple laptops.

It's a Dell T5500, 2x Xeon E5620, 1x 16G RAM module, 1x 2GB RAM module to activate the second CPU, Nvidia Quadro 2000.

Questions:

- Is the 2GB RAM module for CPU #2 too small? Not sure how it works.
- The GPU is not in a PCI x16 slot, would moving it to a faster slot make a difference?

Any other comments about how to set up hardware?

DaleTheWhale · 9 Dec 2015 at 08:44

Having it in the x16 rather than x8 will give some marginal gains, but no reason not to move it for the sake of it.

The RAM I have no idea, didn't realise it worked like that in workstations, ha.

chex · 11 Dec 2015 at 10:27

Yea, the second CPU is on a riser card with it's own RAM slots.

Another issue - it has 2x 250GB HDD installed but only one shows up in file manager/disk management.

I suspected it was set up as a RAID mirror but 'drives' section in the BIOS also shows only one HDD. 'SATA operation' is set to RAID Autodetect or AHCI. How can I tell if it's a functioning RAID set up or if there's a dud HDD?

StudentDavid · 11 Dec 2015 at 18:41

For the other driver which isn't showing try assigning a drive letter to it using disk management.

chex · 12 Dec 2015 at 16:01

It doesn't show in disk management, which is suppsedly normal for whichever raid is for mirroring drives.

FloppyPoppy · 12 Dec 2015 at 16:10

chex said:
Yea, the second CPU is on a riser card with it's own RAM slots.

Another issue - it has 2x 250GB HDD installed but only one shows up in file manager/disk management.

I suspected it was set up as a RAID mirror but 'drives' section in the BIOS also shows only one HDD. 'SATA operation' is set to RAID Autodetect or AHCI. How can I tell if it's a functioning RAID set up or if there's a dud HDD?

Depends on the raid setup. If it's in raid 0 and booting both drives are fine otherwise it would not be booting. You could verify this by checking the physical drive and checking its capacity! If you have two 250gb drives in raid 0 your capacity will be 500gb

If you have two 250gb drives in raid 1 it will only show as 250gb as its mirrored. You can test this by unplugging one of the drives. If both are working they should both work without issues on there own and have the same data exactly.

chex · 21 Dec 2015 at 19:48

Thanks, will try unplugging and booting.