Need a little help

[bigH2O]

Had a client ask me to build a machine for him. No problem. I couldn't believe what he threw at me $4500.00 worth of parts. 64GB of RAM, six 2TB hard drives. Best case, best mobo, best video card, no problem. He bought the parts and had them dropped shipped to me, so I don't have any money out of pocket. I build the system and start to install win 7 pro 64 bit.

Now the system is built, and I load the Win 7 DVD into the DVD drive, and the installation starts fine, but it gets to a point where everything is loaded into memory and ready to go and it pops up and says it needs a driver for the DVD drive before the installation can continue. WTF? It loaded all the install files off of the installation DVD, so what's the problem? I went to the manufacturer's website and downloaded the drivers. I burned a CD of the driver which the system won't recognize because it doesn't have drivers.I copied everything to a thumb drive following the instructions to try to get past this problem and the install program won't recognize any of it.

Any advice?

About the only thing I can think to do is to do a clean XP install, and then an upgrade to 7 from there, but I don't have a clean licesnse for XP that I can use.

[bigH2O]

Oh and I forgot to mention he threw an Intel Core I7-3960X processor at me... Over $1000.00 for that processor. I'm awed by it's presence. Also liquid cooling. This has been a really fun build up to this point, but I can't get the OS to install to save my life.

[Greg]

I'm not building anymore so I got nothing for ya my friend. Sorry.

[bigH2O]

Well I finally got Win 7 64 bit installed. I'm not exactly sure what I did but it involved a bunch of fiddling around with thumb drives and adjusting bios settings. Eventually Windows took over and installed itself. It's booting fine now.

Now the problem I'm running into is the RAM. 8 slots of DDR3 memory, 8 GB sticks per slot. 64 GB total. Boot the system, and it only recognizes 32 GB of memory. Reboot into the BIOS and go to the memory status page DIMM slots A1, A2, C1 and C2 all show up as "OK". DIMM slots B1, B2, D1 and D2 all show up as "Abnormal". I've swaped every module out for every other module, not a simple task. 8 sticks, 8 slots, 64 combinations. 64 boot cycles into Windows, 64 boot cycles back to the BIOS. Do the math. Every stick works in the A & C channels. But the B & D channels are dead.

Contacted the manufacture of the mobo yesterday (Asus P9X79) and he scratched his head for a while, and eventually told me that my memory was not on the ACL list. So I called the vendor to RMA the memory and get something else, but he didn't have anything that was on the ACL list. Jeez... this has been a nightmare of a build.

Then I get a call from the mobo manufacturer telling me that there's a good chance it's defective and that I need to RMA it for a new one. I started searching the internet and found numerous complaints about dead memory channels on that board. I've always liked Asus boards, but this one is trouble. It's blindingly fast, it goes from powered off to Win 7 fully loaded in about two seconds. If I could get the client to accept *only* 32 GB of RAM, I'd ship it as it is, but no... he wants the full 64GB of RAM (WTF?)

I've only had it for a week, so it's going back to the vendor and replaced with a Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5 board that will support the 64GB of RAM.

The client called me yesterday and I sweated telling him about the mobo problem, but he said no big deal, he thought he needed more USB ports on it anyway so he was going to drop ship me cards to add an additional eight USB ports. This mobo already has 18 USB ports on it. I don't understand this guy. 12TB of hard drive space, 64GB of RAM, the absolute fastest processor on the planet, 26 USB ports, and he's not even a gamer.

[bigH2O]

Oh, and as an follow up to this drama... This guy is wanting this system for a mobile trailer that he takes around to fairs and events to cut decals. I've got a machine that cuts decals that runs on a 486 processor with 2 GB of RAM and it never breaks a sweat.

Even my main production machine only has 4GB of RAM on a lower end quad core, and it handles 30 or more processes all at the same time without breaking a sweat.

The machine I'm typing from now has 12GB of RAM and a mid range quad core, and I cannot throw anything at it that will cause it to hiccup.

My mind is just boggled at this build. I did have to wipe the lip prints off the processor after kissing it before I applied the thermal grease for the water cooler pump though. Man, that processor is mean. I'm going to staple the box to the wall. It's a piece of art.

[Greg]

You're having fun, Ron. Cut it out. hehe

[bigH2O]

LOL. The fun has just begun. Gonna have to tear this baby down and replace the mobo. Gonna have to rip out the massive water cooler and remove the 1000W power supply to get the board out. Fun Fun Fun.

[Greg]

Any good gossip at the water cooler?

[bigH2O]

Nah, not much. The water cooler has a radiator on it that's about the size of your standard Ford Mustang (exaggeration), with a fan on each side in a push pull configuration. Actually I think it's 200MM, with two 200MM fans. The total depth is around 4", which extends way over the top of the mobo. It pulls fresh air into the case through the radiator rather than exhausting hot air through the radiator. The pump which mounts on the processor itself is a real pain in the behind to install, but once you get it on, it cools the processor just fine. Stress testing the system, which I've only done minimally since I don't have all the memory active, only shows it going up to around 90°F even with that behemoth processor. I'm satisfied enough with the water cooler setup. Just dread having to take it out and reinstall it.

The case itself has three 240MM fans, one for intake, and two for exhaust. I took out a 140MM fan to put in the water cooler setup, and still trying to figure out if I can figure out a way to mount it back in. The case is a beast. Cooler Master HAF 932. Full tower with 11 drive bays. Bottom mount (optional top mount) power supply mounting. I chose to bottom mount the power supply (which also covers part of the mother board) because of the weight. I didn't want the box to be too top heavy. The UPS guy dropped the power supply off at my shop the other day. I was on the phone so he just waved at me and walked out. I got ready to head to the house and snatched the box up and damn near threw my back out. That power supply must weigh 30 lbs.

This whole build weighs damn near 100 lbs. I put casters on it just so I can move it around. I can't imagine how much it's going to cost to ship it, much less the cost for 4500 bucks worth of insurance on it... but the client is just going to send me a FedX pickup tag on his account, so I don't much care.

[Zero Tolerance]

I was about to ask what this was going in...the space shuttle???

I have 16 servers here at work and the newest one only has 16GB of RAM and it serves almost 150 users. I normally run 8GB or less on my servers and each of them serve the same 150ish users.

I would think that a PC such as the one you speak of could be used to run 30 vector art programs at once, each with 30 open projects (not that anyone would do that...just stating the obvious "overkill" of the box at hand).

I guess ignorance can cost as much as stupidity.