Re: help ! nvidia driver and X
On Fri, 8 Jul 2011 10:04:08 -0400
mark <mark@neidorff.com> wrote:
> On Friday 08 July 2011 12:38:23 am briand@aracnet.com wrote:
> > howdy,
> >
> > got a new motherboard and I'm trying to figure out how to get
> > reasonable X working. using vesa and something very low resolution
> > right now.
> >
> > I tried googling on that error symbol and literally got nothing
> > back.
> >
>
> Hi,
>
> What motherboard/CPU/video did you wind up getting? I'm trying to
> decide on components to build my new system from and could really use
> any advice. (I'm not a "gamer" so the high end video is not of
> interest to me, but I think that something in the middle would be
> good. I also don't want a system with a lot of noise (I have
> tinnitus, so a quiet system is important to me..)
>
Hi Mark,
I think this qualifies as in the middle. I wanted decent speed and reasonable video, so I think our goals are comparable.
Here's the set-up :
motherboard Zotac GF9300-G-E
RAM Kingston KVR800D2N6K2/4G
CPU : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7500 @ 2.93GHz
Fan : Scythe Shuriken (rev B)
Power Supply Antec HE430
case : one of those antec "quiet cases"
RUNNING DEBIAN SQUEEZE :-)
It's a long story, but you'll find that this is a mini-ITX MB and I'm using a full size PS and a mid-tower case. I still haven't got a mini-itx case which I can live with.
This system is quiet. The antec PS is quiet, and the CPU fan is quiet and heat regulated so it spins slowly when nothing's going on. When it does rev up to full speed it's still pretty good. I am noise-hating also so I think you'd be happy with it. Case is critical. My case is one of those Antec quiet cases.
The NVIDIA on-board video chipset is heatsink cooled - no fan - so that helps.
Video works with nouvea (1920x1200).
ethernet worked out of the box (once I got the eth0 properly assigned)
audio's working
coretemp gives me the CPU temp and it looks right
fan regulation is working properly, i.e. high loads cause more rpms
haven't measured the power consumption, but the CPU is 65W TDP, so I expect my entire system is probably 100-120W or so. The video can't be too much or they couldn't get away with passive heatsink.
Downsides:
find a different cpu cooler ! that shuriken is a #$@%!, #$#%@%, unbelievable #$#%@ PIA to get installed. the ram must be installed before putting the fan in for one thing ! having said that the shuriken does do the job.
the start up config of the BIOS didn't find my hard disk ! I loaded fail-safes to make it work. Traced to the problem to a sata setting of "Linux AHCI". Humorously if you use that setting the disk won't be found, but regular AHCI seems to be fine. ugh - BIOS sucks.
amazing how much of a problem BIOS STILL is.
other than that it seems to have a lot of tweakability and seemed to detect the important stuff, i.e. RAM and CPU voltages/timings, correctly. System seems to be running well.
BTW this board is replacing an Intel DQ45EK which, although plays well with linux, but failed after 6 mos (channel A memory stopped working). Don't have meaningful reliability info for this board yet because it's only 2 days old.
I provide this information not as advertising but because I also have a hard time putting together systems which are quiet and play nice with Linux so I thought this would be helpful.
> Thanks,
>
> Mark
>
>
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