BUILD Time for a new machine

[Tywin]

I'm not sure why we're arguing about this. But, a retail boxed CPU with bent pins? Come on now. That really would be like getting a new car off the lot, driving it off, and then driving it back with a smashed quarter panel and then you claim that it came off the assembly line that way.

If pins are bent, I'm pretttttttttttttttttty sure that happened after the item left Intel's hands. Each binned item is mounted and tested, which would not be possible if the pins were bent, then the item is reinspected, then packaged in a retail box, then reinspected. Someone in the retail or shipping chain bent the pins, or the end customer. Almost certainly the end customer.

Three things: one, "almost certainly" is a far cry from "irrefutably":

I think the major gap here is your assumption that a bent/broken pin is irrefutably the fault of the end user; I refute that :p

Two: In none of the processors or motherboards that I have purchased have the pins or contacts been visible from outside the sealed packaging, meaning there's no way to verify their condition prior to purchase and opening of the packaging. A smashed quarter panel on a car is observable with visual inspection, something that you are required (at least here, anyway) to do prior to accepting delivery of the vehicle, and you sign off on the fact that you have inspected the vehicle and are content with its condition. For a comparable analogy, you need something that is not observable from the visual inspection, like driving off the lot and finding that the brakes don't work.

Aside: this is why analogies are bad: they abstract the discussion and bring with them a whole new set of assumptions on both parties, and merely muddy the waters; plus most people grab the first analogy they can think of without thinking it all the way through.

Three: I don't know why we're arguing either; @cyberjock made an incredible (literally, in that I find it not credible) claim Intel should not honour warranty on damaged contacts, despite this violating the social contract of modern capitalistic business practices. I would have to look them up, but I am almost positive that there are laws in place to protect consumers against receiving defective goods from the manufacturer. It was almost certainly a hyperbolic comment, but he posed the question so I answered.

 

[BigDave]

And Amazon kindly sent me a door for a Fractal Define R4 which isn't much use without the case they should have sent.

When you're finished you could post some pics in the off topic Build Pics Thread! I'd like to see them.

 

[DataKeeper]

I've received a retail CPU with missing pins. Maybe 10-12 years ago. Opened the box and noticed there few a few pins along one row which were missing. It was purchased through Newegg who replaced it free of charge.

No manufacturing process is perfect. If you buy direct from Intel your not gonna give a care over a single CPU in the long run. For most of us who purchase through retailers like Newegg, Amazon, local Ma&Pa shop we simply return it for a replacement.

 

[cyberjock]

Three: I don't know why we're arguing either; @cyberjock made an incredible (literally, in that I find it not credible) claim Intel should not honour warranty on damaged contacts, despite this violating the social contract of modern capitalistic business practices. I would have to look them up, but I am almost positive that there are laws in place to protect consumers against receiving defective goods from the manufacturer. It was almost certainly a hyperbolic comment, but he posed the question so I answered.

No, YOU are don't get it. If you unbox it and it's broken, you do NOT call Intel. You call Newegg. If you are calling Intel for an RMA with bent pins, YOU have almost certainly bet them as you have 30 days from purchase to return stuff to Newegg when it is broken.

And I'll say this. I look on the internet and I see dozens and dozens of people crying about bent CPU pins, etc etc.

I used to work at a military command where 1000 machines were built, by the IT department. Do you know how many CPUs we had with bent pins? ZERO. Not one.

When I talk to friends that have had bent pins they've RMAed with Intel, they have all always admitted to bending the pins themselves when talking to me. That didn't stop them from doing an RMA with Intel. But I have yet to see a single case where bent pins were squarely to blame on someone that wasn't the system builder. Not to say it doesn't happen, but the statistics are so small that it's not even worth giving that kind of argument merit.

I've also seen plenty of people that claimed to be IT guys for years that installed CPUs improperly and bent the pins because of how they installed the CPU. People aren't perfect, and there are FAR too many people that "work in IT" that shouldn't be. If I had to give a percentage, I'd probably say 20-30%. They are not adequately experienced to understand their job, they are not adqeuately trained to understand their job, yet they do their job and when they break something that is their fault, they are quick to always blame someone else. It was Intel's fault for shipping a CPU with bent pins. It was the PSU manufacturer's fault because they shorted out the motherboard with a screw. It was Microsoft's fault they got a virus. BULLSHI*T. It was YOUR fault for not knowing how to install a CPU properly. It was YOUR fault for shorting out the motherboard with a spare screw. And it was your fault for not installing antivirus on your computer before putting it on the internet.

 

[Tywin]

No, YOU are don't get it. If you unbox it and it's broken, you do NOT call Intel. You call Newegg. If you are calling Intel for an RMA with bent pins, YOU have almost certainly bet them as you have 30 days from purchase to return stuff to Newegg when it is broken.

Since we're leaning on anecdotes so heavily: In the past I've used Canada Computers, since it's local and I don't have to pay NewEgg's shipping, plus it is generally equivalent or cheaper pricing. When I have a defective product I don't return it to the store, I take it to their service desk where they fill out all the RMA paperwork, have me sign it, box it up and ship it back to the manufacturer.

I've also seen plenty of people that claimed to be IT guys for years that installed CPUs improperly and bent the pins because of how they installed the CPU. People aren't perfect, and there are FAR too many people that "work in IT" that shouldn't be. If I had to give a percentage, I'd probably say 20-30%. They are not adequately experienced to understand their job, they are not adqeuately trained to understand their job, yet they do their job and when they break something that is their fault, they are quick to always blame someone else. It was Intel's fault for shipping a CPU with bent pins. It was the PSU manufacturer's fault because they shorted out the motherboard with a screw. It was Microsoft's fault they got a virus. BULLSHI*T. It was YOUR fault for not knowing how to install a CPU properly. It was YOUR fault for shorting out the motherboard with a spare screw. And it was your fault for not installing antivirus on your computer before putting it on the internet.

What the hell does this have to do with anything, and who is it even aimed at?

 

[cyberjock]

What the hell does this have to do with anything, and who is it even aimed at?

You Win!

 

[adrianwi]

Did I mention that the E3-1231 processor I ordered didn't have any pins ;)

 

[DataKeeper]

Did I mention that the E3-1231 processor I ordered didn't have any pins ;)

Awesome thread recovery!

 

[cyberjock]

Did I mention that the E3-1231 processor I ordered didn't have any pins ;)

My mom doesn't have any pins either. ZING!

 

[BigDave]

My mom doesn't have any pins either. ZING!

"Honey, I think we need to take the dog to the Vet tomorrow, his fangs aren't dripping anymore, and he has not tried to
bite anyone for well over an hour."

 

[adrianwi]

Back on track and the final deliveries all arrived today :D

And after about 4 hours...

Installing FreeNAS :D

Flashed the SAS controller to 16IT but the BIOS and IPMI both looked up to date. As you can see from the picture, still haven't got to grips with the IPMI and doing things old skool :D

Enough fun for today, but will get all the drives connected tomorrow and create my pool. You can see my 2 old HP Microservers in the background, so the N40L will be loosing its 2x3 and 2x4 TB drives and I've got another 3x4 and 1x3 TB drives to create a 8x3TB RAIDZ2 pool. Should give me plenty of extra capacity (and redundancy) short term with the option of replacing the 3x3TB drives with 3x4TB drives and not having to rebuild the pool. My N54L with 4x4TB will be used as a backup once everything has copied across successfully and I've rebuilt my jails.

Should keep me busy for a week or two! Thanks for all the hardware advice and interesting discussion on bent pins :D

 

[adrianwi]

Well, it didn't go quite as planned and took slightly longer to transfer the data across but probably not quite as long to reconfigure everything but the new machine is up and running :D

It turned out that the extra 3TB drive I thought I had was a 2TB drive, so that didn't make it into the box. The remaining drives (5x4TB drives and 2x3TB drives) were configured in RAIDZ2 with jails recreated for owncloud, unbound, openVPN, Plex Media Server and PlexConnect.

The jails were much easier to set-up having done things a few times before on the HP machines, although openVPN caused some pain and was probably set-up 4-5 times before I finally got it right.

Plan is to buy a new 4TB drive for the next 3 months so I can replace the 3TB drives and have a spare in the machine ready to swap if one starts misbehaving. Will probably buy another 16GB RAM as it seems a waste having 2 spare slots on the motherboard and I was going to look at setting up a Windows 7 VM to run a java/sql application I currently have running on my iMac, so would be good to have a little more for that.

Just need to reconfigure the HP N54L box as a backup using ZFS replication, and stick the N40L on eBay.

Thanks again for all the advice and suggestions.