My secondary "compute" server started acting up, funny boot messages from Ubuntu. Ancient 4 core Intel i5-2500K CPU. During a restart, the level 2 cache test failed at 40%. Re-seating the CPU in the LGA1155 socket didn't help ... I didn't expect it to.
So, Friday morning I purchased three used LGA1155 CPU devices from the Free Geek Store (now online via eBay): an i5-2500 (no K), an i5-3470s, and an i7-2600; I paid $131 for all three, including 3x shipping (ebay won't combine orders). The CPUs arrived here in Beaverton less than 24 hours after I ordered them. Lighting fast service! I had just enough old thermal grease to try one of them. I wasn't sure whether the faster devices would work on the older motherboard. But the i7 does work - now I have 8 compute cores rather than 4, which will help with some of the large calculations I do. If the i7 fails someday, I have two spare CPUs; perhaps someone else will need one. The next step is to upgrade the compute server to a Samsung 870 EVO solid state drive, which should speed up memory swapping / caching for my large array calculations. Perhaps someday, I will rewrite the calculation programs with OpenACC so I can use the math coprocessor on the nVidia graphics card. Probably not, OpenACC memory models make my brain hurt, which already hurts from some of the array convolution math and accuracy optimizations. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected]
