MP 7,1 Order for installing additional hardware when receiving MP7,1

[bxs]

Subject: Order for installing additional hardware when receiving MP7,1

I will likely be receiving my MP7,1 early next week, and I have several items I have purchased ahead of delivery to be installed in the new MP7,1.

1. Promise Pegasus J2i with its 8TB and an additional 16TB HDD
2. 12x 32GB R-DIMMs
3. Sonnet SSD M.2 4x4 PCIe Card
4. 1x Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB (for the Sonnet card)
5. 3x Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 SSD 1TB (for the Sonnet card)

I have already formatted the 8TB and the 16TB HDDs, and both are installed in the J2i's cage.
I have already installed the 4x Samsung SSD blades in the Sonnet card.
The 12x 32 GB R-DIMMs are nicely lined up in their shipping sleeve.

I'm trying to decide the order for installing these items.

My ordered MP7,1 will have the Apple's Afterburner card already installed - PCIe slot 5 is what I'm told.
My ordered MP7,1 will have the Radeon Pro Vega II graphics card already installed by Apple (above the PSU).
My ordered MP7,1 will have the Apple's stock 4x 8GB R-DIMMs installed in slots 3, 5, 8 and 10.

I want to test things initially with the MP7,1 as it comes out of the box to establish a set of baselines, such as...

• Making sure Catalina is up-to-date with 10.15.3
• For initial User Account setup I will not be configuring my Apple ID, nor any of the Apple suggested features such as sending Apple Diagnostic data and Location monitoring (I'll do these things much later once I'm happy with things).
• Geek Bench 4 & 5.
• STREAM for memory bandwidth values using the stock 32 GB RAM.
• AJA and Black Magic Disk test for the MP7,1's ordered 1TB internal SSD.
• Running a series of graphic tests using my Radeon Pro Vega II connected to my Apple 27" Thunderbolt 2 display using the Apple USB-C to TB2 adapter.
• Running a series of graphic tests using my Radeon Pro Vega II connected to my 65" LG OLED TV via HDMI cable.
• Running several instances of the chess game Stockfish.app to push/stress the processor and its cores.

If all of the above goes well, I'm then faced with the order of installing my 3rd party hardware as mentioned above.

What would you suggest the order be ?

I'm thinking

1. Remove the stock 4x 8GB R-DIMMs and install the 12x R-DIMMs, and test things, such Geek Bench 4 & 5, STREAM, and launch several instances of the Stockfish.app.
2. Install the J2i, and test the HDDs operations, i/o rates.
3. Install the Sonnet card in a 16x PCIe slot, and test things such as determining i/o rates. Do I need to check the Samsung SSD blade's Firmware revision for it being 2B2QEXM7 before attempting to format the blades ?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[AidenShaw]

Subject: Order for installing additional hardware when receiving MP7,1

I will likely be receiving my MP7,1 early next week, and I have several items I have purchased ahead of delivery to be installed in the new MP7,1.

One thing to do would be to do nothing (at first). Give the system a thorough stress test before opening it up and changing things. If it doesn't work right out-of-the-box - you want to know that, and not wonder about which of the addins caused the problem.

It looks like you realize this, but it can't be over-emphasized.

I'd also give it a 24-hour 'torture test' with Prime95 https://www.mersenne.org/download/ before proceeding.

 

[bxs]

One thing to do would be to do nothing (at first). Give the system a thorough stress test before opening it up and changing things. If it doesn't work right out-of-the-box - you want to know that, and not wonder about which of the addins caused the problem.

It looks like you realize this, but it can't be over-emphasized.

I'd also give it a 24-hour 'torture test' with Prime95 https://www.mersenne.org/download/ before proceeding.

I'm having difficulty executing Prime95. System indicates it cannot check for malware when I attempt to execute it. I have signed up as instructed.

 

[AidenShaw]

I'm having difficulty executing Prime95. System indicates it cannot check for malware when I attempt to execute it. I have signed up as instructed.

Don't sign up. At least on Windows, you can run the torture tests without registering.

 

[bxs]

Don't sign up. At least on Windows, you can run the torture tests without registering.

Thanks...
OK.... got it running. For some weird reason (suspect it was some needed time to reconcile with the Prime95's server) I now can run it.