Intel's E7205: Granite Bay Hits the Streets
by Evan Lieb on November 18, 2002 9:56 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Tyan S2662: Board Layout
There weren't too many issues with the S2662's layout.
In the Tyan S2662's case, the ATX (20-pin) connector is nicely placed on the right-hand side of the motherboard. This is the best place to position the ATX connector, expect that we would have liked it just a bit higher by an inch or so. This makes the installation/uninstallation of the HSF as well as any other components much easier, since the bulky ATX wires aren't obstructing your path.
There are a total of four fan headers on this motherboard, all of them positioned well. There are two fan headers each located on opposite ends of the motherboard that are positioned well enough sp that you won't have to worry about maneuvering wires inside your case. The other two fan headers are located at the top. One them, the CPU fan header is located so that we are able to unhook the CPU fan line without having to tug on the wires themselves. The other fan header is located on the opposite side of the CPU clamps, right where it should be. This way, if your case supports it, you can have a fan at the top of the case pushing air out and not have to worry about positioning the fan wires anywhere special.
The ATX12V connector is predictably placed on the left-hand side of the motherboard near the I/O ports. This location isn't ideal at all, and not just because it's on the wrong side of the motherboard but also because it's so low down on the motherboard. By placing the ATX12V connector in this particular position, you are unable to move the ATX12V line away from blocking the uninstallation of the HSF due to the fact that the ATX12V is placed so low on the motherboard and also because the ATX12V is relatively short (otherwise, if it weren't so short, we wouldn't be complaining about how low the ATX12V is being placed on the board). Still, this isn't just regulated to Tyan, as most motherboard manufacturers position the ATX12V this way.
You should have no worries about the placement of the Primary and Secondary IDE connectors, since they are close to the DIMM slots, which are located above the AGP slot. By positioning the Primary and Secondary IDE connectors (and Floppy connector) this way, we avoid the difficulty of having to extend IDE cables to reach the uppermost bays of a large ATX case. We also completely avoid cable entanglement with the video card by having these connectors placed above the AGP slot area.
The distance between the DIMM connectors and AGP slot is far enough apart from each other so that we don't have to uninstall the video card if we wanted to install/uninstall memory. This is a very welcome feature, as it is always a plus if a DIYer can cut down on some of the more mindless "busy work" activities of building a computer (like connecting a keyboard, mouse or monitor for example).
There are two USB 2.0 headers located towards the bottom of the motherboard, but not all the way down at the edge and towards the PCI slots as we would have liked. With this positioning, it's difficult to tell if Tyan has made troublesome to maneuver USB bracket wires. For your reference, Tyan doesn't include any USB brackets with their S2662 motherboard.
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hrumsey - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Regarding previous comment:And I told this thing to show e-mail address. hrumsey@charter.net if anyone has questions.
It also removed paragraph indents that would make the above post a bit more readable- apologies.
And a clarification: The ZCR card could be seen to be flashed only because a jumper change is needed to put them in flash mode. In normal mode, the Thunder K8S Pro S2882 BIOS was squashing the Adaptec 2010S / 2015S BIOS.
Damn, I hope Google indexes that comment well.
Speaking of which, for you-know-who:
Tyan Thunder K8S Pro Adaptec 2010S 2015S ZCR RAID BIOS problem incompatibility bug hang failure download flash PCI-X
Tyan 2882 K8S Pro Thunder ZCR Adaptec 2015S 2010S RAID bug hang failure problem incompatibility PCI-X flash BIOS download
Thunder Tyan 2882 K8S Pro ZCR Adaptec RAID 2010S 2015S BIOS incompatibility problem failure hang PCI-X BIOS bug flash download
wildly incompetent screen-reading technical support monkeys
beta-testing on customers
See previous comment
hrumsey - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Anandtech's evaluation covers how good Tyan's tech support is in the absence of any real problem for them to deal with. I would suggest that this is not an adequate criterion.Our experiences were different.
The issue of product quality is relevant here, since it makes the quality of technical support more important if the product is poor. My company tried Tyan boards several years ago, and gave up when along with 4 DOAs, 3 quick in-service failures gave a defective rate of almost 50%. I mistakenly thought almost 10 years would be enough for the company to straighten out.
We ordered 3 Thunder Pro S2882s for a client taking a website inhouse who wanted a 64-bit option- this was before Intel's 64-bit Xeons showed up.
All of the following happened under time pressure, which isn't unusual, and why better support than Tyan's is necessary:
One of the three boards was DOA; wouldn't flash any of three Adaptec 2010S ZCR cards; the other two would. Tyan's tech support essentially kept assuming we were doing something wrong and, and at one point asked if we had the current BIOS on the ZCR cards. They must not have any sort of decent database, since the problem had to be explained anew every call. After they admitted the board was bad, they failed to warn us of their shipping deadline for replacing the board (which they will do, and with an E. Coast vendor and them in CA was necessary).
All the boards failed to see the ZCR cards. First tech said that couldn't be happening, second knew about the problem and said the "E" BIOS fixed it. It didn't. We delivered servers with drives unmirrored.
Site setup was busy for a while. When I finally had a chance to work on ZCR problem, Tyan could find no record of the problem (none of the emails we exchanged except ones I sent had case #s in the header). I explained everything again, and once again had to assure them again that we'd gotten the obvious stuff right. First tech said he didn't know how it could be happening, and thought I was missing something. Got email next day from supervisor acknowledging there was a problem and saying (again) they had a new BIOS out that would fix the problem. Downloaded, sent tech onsite to install. Didn't work, same result- ZCR card option grayed out in BIOS, system hangs. When I had a chance to go down and work on it personally, once again, no record of case. I went through everything from scratch once more, assuring them that yes, we'd read the FAQs and yes, the system was plugged in, and yes, we had tried every possible combination of their two blasted relevant jumpers, and that in fact there were about eight other germane parameters we had tried which none of them had thought of- and all of this while wasting valuable onsite time. When I finally convinced them that 1) we were competent and 2) it wasn't working, I was told I'd get a call back "shortly" from the responsible engineer. Three hours later, in a darkened factory, at 5:14:55 just as I was leaving, I got a call back from the engineer who actually knew what was going on. He finally admitted we had everything right. He had no solution, but agreed with my suggestion for testing and said he'd check- he lacked authority(!)- to see if management would authorize the replacement board I'd been asking for. And they did, but there shouldn't have been any question.
Next trip down I replaced the board in one server, picking the server in whichhe Gigabit Ethernet ports had failed- and it still didn't #$%^& work. Tyan said it had been working the day before for them with a 2010S ZCR card, and until today, I didn't know whether they were lying or not. I cussed some and ordered $1200 worth of controllers to replace what Tyan couldn't get right 5 months after the product's release.
Today I checked and saw that they have a new BIOS for the board available that "Fixes PCI ZCR card hangs system during POST". It's the third BIOS for which they've made that claim, and you know, it really doesn't matter whether they're right this time or not. And if they're not, it doesn't matter whether they're just mistaken or actually lying- theend result is the same.
We saw five of their high-end server boards. One DOA, one in-service failure, all five with a major design flaw. Eight years is enough time to take care of company-wide failures. Any company that will release a $500 server board with a 40% failure rate, and without first ensuring that everything on it actually works, and who then can't tell for five months whether or not they've fixed the resulting problems, and whose tech support is staffed with folks who can't deal those problems- well, that's a company whose products you want to steer very clear of.