Cisco B200M3 and additional spare RAM in stores

Dieselboy · July 07, 2016, 04:30:48 AM

I have a 5108 chassis with a B200M3 server inside.

This server runs RAM at 1333MHz at 1.5v (1.5v in performance mode, and 1333MHz because the CPU only supports this max value).

I am hungry for more RAM.

I have LOTS of DDR3 RAM in stores in 8GB sticks (like what is in the B200M3 server). The difference is, I have lots of this:
http://www.gskill.com/en/product/f3-2400c10d-16gtx

This RAM runs at 1.65v at 2400MHz and is not Cisco RAM.

I'd like to know if I can put it in the B200M3. I know I can run less MHz which means less voltage. But I don't know if 1333 is okay at 1.5v (the motherboard will provide 1.5v to the RAM).

I also don't know if it will invalidate a warranty, so will log a case for some Cisco insight here. Hopefully they will allow me to run our own RAM.

Posting here in case anyone knows or has any experience doing something like this.

wintermute000 · July 07, 2016, 06:08:59 AM

Mate straight away without even looking at any info, I'm betting the server requires Registered ECC RAM..... not l33t gaming RAM.

DDR3 'normal' RAM is not the same as ECC Registered (and then there's also ECC Unregistered... but that's normally only used by 'baby' Xeon E3s, not the full Xeon chipsets)

The good news is, registered ECC RAM is cheap second hand. Companies are constantly churning kit and the only buyers are us home-labbers. I grabbed 64Gb of used DDR3-1333 (REGISTERED of course lol) for something like 200 bucks to upgrade my DL380-G6, around 18 months ago.

Here's new... 100 bucks 32Gb! Pay attention to the ranks too, that may matter depending on the specific config (what size DIMMS are going into what slots etc.,, your server manual should have a long boring section describing all the possible combinations).

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Hynix-32GB-4x8GB-2Rx4-PC3-10600R-DDR3-1333MHz-240Pin-ECC-REG-Memory-/272213696298?hash=item3f61335f2a:g:i7QAAOSwzJ5XTrhA

deanwebb · July 07, 2016, 09:15:25 AM

AUS $100... That's like 5 bucks in American money, right?

icecream-guy · July 07, 2016, 11:04:32 AM

Quote from: deanwebb on July 07, 2016, 09:15:25 AM
AUS $100... That's like 5 bucks in American money, right?

at the current currency rate
100.00 AUD = 74.8789 USD

deanwebb · July 07, 2016, 11:06:41 AM

Quote from: ristau5741 on July 07, 2016, 11:04:32 AM
Quote from: deanwebb on July 07, 2016, 09:15:25 AM
AUS $100... That's like 5 bucks in American money, right?

at the current currency rate
100.00 AUD = 74.8789 USD

So I was close.

Dieselboy · July 07, 2016, 08:44:28 PM

Cisco basically said "Nooooooooooo" And Wintermute pointed out about the ECC type of RAM so unfortunately the sticks wont work. I have at least 128GB of RAM lying around going to waste. I hate wasting things!

Thanks again to the forum for the help

PS AUD was worth more than USD not too long ago!

PPS all this "Brexit" B.S. means 1 AUD is now worth 0.58GBP! It hasn't been this high in ages!

icecream-guy · July 08, 2016, 07:33:07 AM

Quote from: Dieselboy on July 07, 2016, 08:44:28 PM
Cisco basically said "Nooooooooooo" And Wintermute pointed out about the ECC type of RAM so unfortunately the sticks wont work. I have at least 128GB of RAM lying around going to waste. I hate wasting things!

Thanks again to the forum for the help

PS AUD was worth more than USD not too long ago!

PPS all this "Brexit" B.S. means 1 AUD is now worth 0.58GBP! It hasn't been this high in ages!

yeah, some people made some serious money in currency trading over the past week or so.

oh, and if your memory has hole in it, you could attach a key ring and make a key chain out of it. I used to do that with seriously old memory.

deanwebb · July 08, 2016, 08:40:34 AM

My wife made some earrings out of old RAM, but the best earrings she did were out of CTRL+ALT+DELETE keys from some old keyboards.

wintermute000 · July 09, 2016, 06:26:05 AM

Quote from: Dieselboy on July 07, 2016, 08:44:28 PM
Cisco basically said "Nooooooooooo" And Wintermute pointed out about the ECC type of RAM so unfortunately the sticks wont work. I have at least 128GB of RAM lying around going to waste. I hate wasting things!

Thanks again to the forum for the help

PS AUD was worth more than USD not too long ago!

PPS all this "Brexit" B.S. means 1 AUD is now worth 0.58GBP! It hasn't been this high in ages!

As you're the lord and master of your IT domain you probably don't have the same homelab needs as the rest of us

Otherwise, you could easily scavenge any non-ancient i5 or i7 desktop(Sandy or newer), chuck 32Gb RAM into it and hey presto homelab whitebox ESXi/KVM server.

Or just flog it on fleabay. Heck if only you mentioned this 6 months ago, before I went out and upped my workstation to 32Gb of l33t, l33t gaming DDR3 LOLOL

Dieselboy · July 10, 2016, 09:30:45 PM

I have stores full of AMD 8-core systems filled with 32GB RAM each (8 CPU cores running at 3.6GHz stock). When we had RHEV issues and needed some extra capacity, we built 2 Hypervisors out of those systems. They run very well but power consumption was 2A per machine! Also because of the different CPU type we couldn't live migrate between the Cisco Xeon CPU machines and the AMD CPU machines so this was only temporary until we done some remedial works.

It's amazing how a whole Cisco 5108 chassis consumes less power than a single PC with an AMD 8 core CPU and 32GB RAM

Because the systems are pretty beefy, I have one still running at the moment, running VMware. It runs 2x Guest VMs which are non-critical. If I needed a lab there's enough stuff here to build one!