Okay, I've got my dual socket motherboard and I'm sure you guys have all gone through
this at some point in the past where you're like building a new system and like the first
part arrives and you're like, oh wow, this is so cool to look at because I have nothing
else that goes with it.
But then, okay, it got real and two of my eBay CPUs arrived.
Basically these are 28 core 8176s or whatever they are, something along those lines.
I got those, then I got these, yeah, these.
These are 32 gig modules.
These modules have more RAM than what I would consider to be a high end gaming system in
one module.
And I was like, no way, now I can test it.
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I wasn't sure if either of them would be real or working.
So I actually ordered two sets of what claimed to be 28 core CPUs on eBay.
And look at this.
It's even marked on the spreaders.
This is a P8136 that the seller says is a 28 core.
But then I was like, hey, can you send me a CPU?
Zed screenshot?
And they're like, sorry, I can't.
And I was like, well, can you double check with someone that it's 28 core?
They're like, I can't.
So let's hold on first.
Let's double check this.
So absolutely nothing Intel Xeon 8136.
You can see I've Googled it before, but other than an eBay listing, oh, oh, and there's
a thread discussing that eBay listing and other people saying that this is really sketch.
So this takes up a lot more space on the bench than most motherboards.
Okay.
Step number one.
Does this fit?
Yeah.
Cool.
Um, if it turns on, I'm going to be turned on.
Okay.
So we've got dedicated eight pins, dedicated eight pins for each CPU.
That fresh eBay smell, that thermal compound all over it.
Okay.
So here's problem number.
I've lost track.
But this is a problem.
The LGA 3647 socket has no CPU retention ARM.
The way it's meant to be held in is by the cooling solution, but almost nobody is supporting
this socket because this is an enterprise Xeon socket.
Intel's workstation chips are actually using LGA 2066, but with a different chip set.
So ASUS went off the rails with this thing and there's like no coolers to support it.
And it's got this bizarro land mounting system here with like threaded stuff here and here,
and then these posts that are different size here.
So I'm hoping to just kind of wing it by literally holding the CPU in place or like the unknown
side, the random side, no one, no one knows what the hell's going on side, including the
seller.
But who knows?
How did you put 28 core in the listing?
You're the only people on earth with this CPU, as far as I can tell, where did these
come from?
Where did they go?
Where did they come from?
Cotton eye Joe?
Oh, this is really dumb what I'm doing right now.
Okay.
Wait.
Okay.
This is bad.
CPU just lifted up.
Okay.
I got it.
Jake.
I may need your hands at some point here.
Okay.
What do you think?
Is it going to boot?
Maybe.
Yeah, I'm going with a definite maybe on this one too.
Here we go.
Oh wow.
That was a whole lot of nothing.
Pretty anticlimactic.
Oh boy.
Um, now most dual socket boards, oh, uh, okay.
Postcode zero zero.
That's not generally a good sign.
Let's think.
Do you want to try the other one of these first or do you want to try the other chips?
Uh, I think you should try two.
Oh, I mean, that's even more janky.
It's more jank than I was kind of hoping to get, but.
Wait, hold up.
I got an idea.
Whoa.
That's heavy.
What's that?
Holy .
Oh yeah.
This is a titanium.
I think.
Holy crap.
Here we go.
Oh, that weren't a good sign.
Wow.
Crap.
Okay.
Well, hold on a second.
There could still be something else.
Uh, let's try the other chips.
Okay.
There's some action.
Um, they're warming up this time, so that's going to limit how long I can hold these in.
Okay.
Go ahead and hit the, uh, power.
My thumb's burning.
Okay.
It's time to consult the manual.
So it occurs to me we have actually seen this socket before in our Xeon Phi video.
This is that bizarro cooler that it used.
So this gives us a few more exciting options.
I don't actually know if this board is Xeon Phi compatible, but it's the same socket.
So maybe we could try this chip to see if it fires up.
Then we could try this cooler on one socket to see if maybe it is a mounting pressure
issue.
Still got options.
Oh, and of course it's torques.
Okay.
This looks like it may not actually be quite the same because there's like a, a thing here.
And what, what is this mounting system?
This is a narrow ILM.
This is a square ILM.
Okay.
So we're going for hopefully enough mounting pressure.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Whoa.
Hello.
Okay.
That's fine.
We've got a postcode this time though.
That's a better sign.
And also this is less likely to be CPU one anyway, so I'm going to put it back where
it was.
All right.
Okay.
One long, two short.
Great.
Reserved for future AMI codes.
Perfect.
Okay.
Let's try a different, uh, let's try a different chip.
Let's try the other one.
Yeah.
Well, it could be good as f**k, like leet as f**k.
Okay.
It's completely different, which is maybe good and maybe bad.
Okay.
So the manual says one long beep and two short means no memory detected.
So we put those CPUs back in and we're trying the higher mounting pressure on them.
Okay.
So kill it.
Okay.
So let's just put some more memory in because one of the, uh, classic symptoms of a bad
mount in the socket is that some of your dim slots won't work properly.
So, I mean, this is, if nothing else, a bad mounting system.
Okay.
So the working theory right now is that it's probably a mounting pressure issue.
So last attempt before I just patiently wait for a cooler.
I need to get up higher so I can put more weight on it.
Oh, wow.
That is terrifying.
Why did it just turn on?
I just put more pressure on the CPUs and the system turned on.
Do you want to turn it off for now?
Okay.
I'm going to put more pressure on.
Okay.
Let's try the other ones.
Okay.
Center down there.
Let's center down there.
Okay.
More weight.
And I'm good.
Have you tried clearing the CMOS?
No, actually.
Yeah.
It's the same as before.
Okay.
It's been like another week, two weeks.
I don't know.
The point is today was basically Christmas because first, and yes, it's only the 19th,
but it's still Christmas because first, check this out.
So I've got those engineering sample processors that I ordered when I thought that Intel wasn't
going to work with us on this.
But today, I also got, oh, look at this.
Oh, it's beautiful.
So these are Intel Confidentials.
I don't remember what SKU these are, but they're 3.2 gigahertz base, so they're a lower core
count.
And these ones, Xeon Platinum 8180s.
These are the top of the line.
But it was the kind of, I ordered new computer hardware Christmas where, get a little cricket
there, where I didn't have a piece that I needed still.
But then today again.
These are Intel thermal solution box coolers for the Xeon processor scalable family.
This is the one active cooler that I could find on the market for the square ILM socket.
I finally have everything.
We're still going to try that eBay processor first.
I really want to know if I got ripped off.
With how hard this is clamping down.
Honestly, I do not feel like I wasn't putting enough force on it before.
I really don't think that was the problem.
So theoretically, if these work, then I have two sets of 28 core processors.
If they don't, then I still have one because sometimes it's nice to be Linus Tech Tips
and have Intel send stuff over to you sometimes.
Do you get sweaty when you're working on expensive stuff?
A little bit.
Yeah, me too.
I need a graphics card.
Wow.
So the 8136 doesn't work.
Now I'm wondering if maybe there's a problem with our board at this point.
So let's try, let's try a retail chip.
So each of these Xeon 8180s is I think 8 or 10 grand.
Something like that retail.
No pressure though, you know.
I mean, don't they know that people drop things?
Okay, so this is with a very probably known good chip this time.
If this doesn't boot up, then I have my doubts about something.
Oh, did that just change?
Yeah, it did.
Does it just have a really, really long post?
How interesting would that be?
What if it has some kind of first boot process
where it has to go through some kind of detection thing
before it can then boot up properly the next time
and it's really long?
Okay, we are attempting a USB BIOS flashback
with their crash-free BIOS thing.
We have a problem though,
and that's that if you look at the BIOS revisions here,
the one with the higher revision number
is dated earlier than the one with the lower one.
So let's pull that out and try again.
I wouldn't have thought we could make it
worse, but we did.
00 postcode.
This is 2666 megahertz, 32 gig sticks.
I wonder if it's been a RAM compatibility thing
this whole time,
because I've never actually tried different RAM.
Okay, new plan.
We're going to try the 32 gig sticks
from 7Gamers1CPU instead.
So these are older, slower memory modules.
These guys are 2133 instead of 2400 megahertz,
which is like bleeding edge for servers right now.
Maybe we'll see better compatibility
if we try something a little bit older.
97, B2, 98, 99.
It was just RAM compatibility.
No!
Oh, come on.
Oh, it's up.
Oh, sick.
Overclocking.
Yeah, yeah, I want to overclock.
I mean, not now.
I want to get it like working reliably first,
but wow, you just key them in.
Look at this.
5 billion volts.
No.
Do I just type in auto?
Wow, that is jank.
Oh, there they are.
56 cores.
Let's boot it up.
Okay, it still won't boot into Windows.
Just a little more troubleshooting.
It's finally booted.
So these are the retail chips.
And check this out.
Take that, mother .
I still haven't tried firing it up
with all of the RAM in it.
This is the RAM strategy, okay?
Two sticks here, 10 on the table,
and I haven't tried any of the eBay chips
because I wanted you guys to come along for the ride.
Let's find out if anything works.
I'm like half excited and half terrified.
I really hope these work
because I am almost definitely past
any kind of buyer assurance deadline
through eBay at this point or PayPal.
I really, really hope this thing works.
Now that I've had the board booted up,
if this doesn't work,
then I'm pretty sure that I got scammed.
One thing I did find out
is that some of my posting issues
may have simply been related to memory training,
and if I had just waited longer,
which wasn't something that was easy to do
when I was holding CPUs into the sockets,
this is not a solid indication right now
that things are going to go well, though.
I actually hate that this TV
has, like, such a pretty screen saver.
Like, when I see a thing change,
I'm like,
Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay.
Hold on a minute here.
Whoa, okay.
They booted.
Genuine Intel CPU.
Zero thousand percent at.
All right, let's fire this baby up.
So our last CPU
got a score of about 7,000 in Cinebench,
and that was with retail 8180 chips.
I've seen engineering samples
that have more information than this,
but what we do know
is the base speed of 2.1 gigahertz.
We know that there are 28 cores.
That's really exciting.
So these are probably what they said
they were, which is 8176s.
Yep.
Xeon Platinum 8176s.
The eBay Gambit worked.
Nice.
And these are qualifying samples,
which I believe means,
generally, they are pretty close
to retail chips.
So this is not the be-all and end-all
of benchmarks, certainly.
But we can get an idea
of whether we're here
close to what we have
with the retail 8180.
I want to see what it turbos to.
Not bad.
Not bad at all.
Okay.
So that's a significantly lower turbo speed.
We were turboing up around 3 gigahertz
with the other one,
and our lower score does reflect that.
But
that's a hell of a chip
for what we paid for it.
Now let's try the mystery meat.
Platinum 8136 time.
Is this a straight-up scam?
Remember, this is the one
where the eBay seller
was unable to confirm
anything about it. Unable.
Okay.
Yeah, this is not looking promising so far.
It's just been on AF the whole time.
You might say it would be
disappointing AF.
Damn.
I wonder if I can still file a dispute.
Ah, here it is.
Ah, shoot.
The item is not there anymore.
Oh, that's not good.
Can I even leave feedback?
No, I can't. I can't even leave feedback anymore.
Wait. Hold on.
No.
View similar items.
2600 US dollars plus shipping. Brilliant.
So I guess the lesson we learned
then is
buying engineering sample processors
off eBay can work
or it can super not.
But if you order
a part number that doesn't exist
at all, then the odds of it super not working
from our sample size of one
seem to be pretty good.
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