robertfontaine

Bumping this thread as I've got the X9DRG-QF REV 1.02 in my basement. I haven't seen it post yet but I have hopes ... I hadn't quite realized how big this board is. Questions: 1) I need a new enclosure. I was planning on an e-atx (z9pe-d8 or d16 but this showed up and I am building an HPC box - 4 Xeon Phi's). The board sticks out the side of my TT Core X9 a good 2 inches. (I just bought it ) * The supermicro 747 superchassis is lovely but until one falls from the sky at an obscenely low price it is not to be. * The same for the Lian Li D8000. Awesome but not a priority in the budget. Are there any good alternative for inexpensive 4 or 5u cases OR retail computer cases that will take this board and has the pci slots in the back to support it? This is going to end up as a compute node so I don't need much disk and 2.5 ssd fit anywhere. The phis will be water cooled but I can mount the rad/fans on the exterior if there isn't room. 2) I have 2 - ES QA8X v1's. that don't post with this BIOS (2665 8 core 2.3GHz). The board is at the current BIOS revision 3.2. Supermicro has provided me with 1.0c (the original shipping BIOS) and I have a C0 on temporary loan so that I can post the board and downgrade the BIOS with afudos. Is anyone aware of which BIOS revisions allowed this board to run with B0 stepping v1 E5's? I will be upgrading to C0's ( The 10 core 2780's on taobao are tempting) at some point but I want to start building my environments. 3) Are the early SLI modded ROMS available? I tried downloading them but got a not authorized message for all but the most recent one on the site. I could use a collection of ROMS so that I can find out what works best with the chips I currently have. Thanks, Robert