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Mounting and Installation Considerations

The size of the PCB is standard 305 x 245 mm meaning that it should, theoretically fit into any mid ATX tower. There are two caveats, though, the first being that any power supply with less than 30A on the 5V line will be a major liability. The second caveat is that, in comparison to standard unbuffered, non-registered DIMMs the Registered ECC DIMMs require a much higher profile to accommodate the parity chip(s) as well as the registers and the on-board clock generator or phase lock loop (PLL). Where most unbuffered DIMMs nowadays are 1.05 to 1.25" high, registered DIMMs are on average 1.8" or 45 mm high which means that they will not fit behind a 3.5" drive bay.

Time to introduce the NengTYI RC02 heatsink with and without fan. A design reminiscent of the original Alpha coolers, all copper manufacturing and chrome plating to prevent oxidation on the internal compartments make these HSF combos a heavy duty, high quality cooling solution. Using a 6000 rpm fan, the strength of the RC02 is not so much the cooling capabilities that are still adequate but the extremely quiet operation. Mounting a 7200 rpm Vantec fan increased the cooling efficacy but the noise level as well. Suffice it to say that the two coolers kept the temperatures of the Palomino at 43 centigrades under full load and at an extremely favorable noise level. A drawback of the RC02 is the mounting clip, which is one of the worst in the genre causing anxiety attacks every time the HSF was changed but we talked to NengTYI and they are willing to do something about it.

This is a necessary consideration when looking at the Tiger as an upgrade solution. In case of e.g. the Antec KS282 used for this setup, the problem was solved by taking out the removable drive bay and mounting the floppy and HDD in drive bay converters or an Antec HDD cooler. This solution worked out perfectly well, however, the total number of expansion bays is reduced to a (not so) whopping three. There are other possibilities for mounting e.g. the HDD vertically in front of the mainboard and freeing up an additional drive bay but anyone interested in the Tiger should take a ruler first and measure the targeted case before plunging into the adventure.

BIOS

The BIOS supplied by Tyan is the Phoenix variation of Award's BIOS and there are basically no options to modify any of the settings. Contrary to most boards, here it is the F2 key that brings up the Setup screen. Another deviation from the standard is the flashing utility. The problem is not so much the description on the Tyan website as the established behavior and the conditioning of the user when attempting a BIOS flash which will cause the error message File not found if the PHLASH16.EXE command is entered in the DOS prompt. The correct syntax is PHLASH16 followed by the name of the binary file to program. In case one attempts to flash from a floppy, the same error occurs since the access time of a floppy exceeds the time limitation of the program. In other words, it is necessary to copy the PHLASH16 and the binary file to a separate directory on the HDD, then boot into DOS using a bootable floppy and only then access the directory and flash the EEPROM. As mentioned, the instructions are posted on the Tyan website, however, old habits sometimes cause one to overlook the obvious.

Screenshot of the hardware monitor in the BIOS after a few minutes of running applications and subsequent reboot. Note that the different voltages of the two CPUs are split-second screenshots meaning that only repetitive displays can give an idea of the real state of power and temperatures. A workaround would be to average the values over a period of a few 1/10 of a second to eliminate the noise factor. After running SMP supported applications, the CPU temperatures equalize at the same values, e.g. after 20 min of RC5, both CPUs were typically sitting at 42-43 centigrades.

Hardware Monitor

If the hardware monitor is accessed, the numbers look scary at first glance, both CPU temperatures are listed as 77 centigrades and the screen does not refresh automatically. The real values are displayed only after pressing any key which then refreshes the display which then shows the real values that typically run somewhere between 35 and 45 centigrades CPU temperature. Simultaneously, both CPU voltages are displayed and some major differential between the two Vre values can be indicative of the above mentioned stability problem, if such problems exist.

Unfortunately, there is, no current hardware monitoring software available that would show correct values. MBM5 sort of works, however, the values appear way off and trigger the alarm even when there is nothing to worry about.

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