Just got my new desktop, and I'm puzzled by the Windows Experience thing:


I've got a SSD in there, is that normal? I thought an SSD would rate a bit higher than that.

Other specs:

AMD Radeon HD 6600 Series for graphics.

I'm not sure what's up with that. Mine's 5.9, too, as was my last machine. Everything else is 7.8/7.9. I've got SATA3 drives and controllers, too, while my last machine only had SATA2.

Is AHCI enabled?

Well thanks to a run of ailing hardware unable to cope with the newest software and good old fashioned hardware failure I've had to replace a whole bunch of components in my rendering rig. (Admittedly some of it had been transplanted over from my old rig when I built the new one and fully intended to replace in time but I had hoped to eke just a little more use out of them)
Rig now currently looks like:

iCute 800w PSU
Asrock X58 mobo
i7 920
12 gigs DDR3 RAM
Quadro 4000 (replaced a pair of ailing FX 570s)
OCZ Petrol 64 Gb SSD (new boot drive ... seeing as the boot HDD had to be replaced why the fuck not? )
Samsung 1Tb SATA II HDD (replacing 1Tb SATA that just crapped out on me, purely storage for saved files and content)
WD 400 Gb SATA HDD
Benq HD 27" monitor (replaced pair of 6 year old 19" riddled with dead pixels)

Well thanks to a run of ailing hardware unable to cope with the newest software and good old fashioned hardware failure I've had to replace a whole bunch of components in my rendering rig. (Admittedly some of it had been transplanted over from my old rig when I built the new one and fully intended to replace in time but I had hoped to eke just a little more use out of them)
Rig now currently looks like:

iCute 800w PSU
Asrock X58 mobo
i7 920
12 gigs DDR3 RAM
Quadro 4000 (replaced a pair of ailing FX 570s)
OCZ Petrol 64 Gb SSD (new boot drive ... seeing as the boot HDD had to be replaced why the fuck not? )
Samsung 1Tb SATA II HDD (replacing 1Tb SATA that just crapped out on me, purely storage for saved files and content)
WD 400 Gb SATA HDD
Benq HD 27" monitor (replaced pair of 6 year old 19" riddled with dead pixels)

Sorry for the late reply, but yes, AHCI is enabled.

Best of luck with that drive.

Meh it was cheap, even if it lasts only long enough to be out of warranty is good enough, I'll probably be looking at upgrading again or building a new system by then.
And if it does go down its only the OS and software on there, all my content & saved files are on the HDDs, swapping out a drive and reinstalling only takes a couple of hours tops.
It's till the bottleneck in my system dragging my Windows Experience down to 7.1 but I can live with that.

I'm thinking of picking up a couple large HDDs for storage. Would I be better served by a couple (or few) 500GB drives, or a single larger drive? My understanding is the higher capacity drives are not as reliable?

Just buy a single big drive unless you plan on doing some sort of RAID-6 array.

The time has come for me to build a new workstation, which will also be used for the occassional on-site sales demo. I'm thinking of;

Motherboard : EVGA SR-X (dual LGA2011)
Processors : 2 x Xeon E5-2687W (8 core 3.1 GHz Sandy Bridge-E : overclock to ~3.5 GHz)
Memory : 12 x Kingston 8 GB DDR3-1600 Registered ECC (96 GB total)
GPUS : 6 x PowerColor LCS HD7970 (3GB GDDR5 / 1050MHz core / 1425MHz mem / integral waterblock : overclock to ~1.2 GHz core)
Primary Drives : 2 x Samsung 830 Series 256 GB (SATA3) in RAID0 (512 GB usable)
Secondary Drives : 3 x Seagate Barracuda 3 TB (SATA3) in RAID5 (6 TB usable)
PSU : Twin Corsair AX1200 (2400 watt total) with dual-start bridge
Case : CaseLabs MAGNUM STH10
Appropriate EK CPU waterblocks, twin pumps (split loops) and quad dual 120m fan radiators TBD

Contraversial item is the SR-X; I like the SR-2 in my current machine, but the SR-X has an idiotic configuration of using only the 40 PCI-E lanes from CPU0 + bridge chip; the CPU1 lanes aren't used at all. I'm strongly tempted to switch to the ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS, which has a sane PCI-E setup using both CPUs and no bridge chips. However it only has eight RAM slots and 64 GB sounds a bit small these days (I'm increasingly noticing the 48 GB limit on my current machine). Does anyone know of a decent dual LGA2011 board that fits into EATX, has 6 PCI-E 16x and has the full 16 DIMM slots? TYAN S7053WGM4NR would be an option - although might have to get a bigger case - if it had 6 x physical PCIx16, but for some idiotic reason four of the slots are physical 8x (cost savings on a $600 MB, really?). Two PSUs is kind of annoying - I'm running a pair of Zalman ZM1000-HPs in my curent machine - but I don't know of any >2kw solution unitary solution that fits in an ATX form factor, has appropriate cabling and doesn't come from a really dodgy manufacturer. The STH10 actually supports quad PSUs, which I find amusing (maybe one day AMD will fix their driver crap and I can have that 12-GPU sextuple 6990/7990 setup; EK make the single-slot waterblocks, but anything over 8 GPUs is still impractical for AMD cards).

Tempting as it is to go with 4 x 7990, firstly AMD dual GPU cards are still unreliable for compute due to driver issues, even if you restrict yourself to 8 GPUs (might be fixed for GCN but frankly I doubt it). Secondly it will be a few months until the fitted waterblocks come out and I need this machine now. Maybe next time. Also tempting to fit 512 GB SSDs, they're fairly cheap now, but I'm not really expecting to get datasets over 200 gigabytes on my dev machine in the near future. Then again, would save time copying to/from HDDs... but I don't do that manually very often. Vertex 4 was also tempting (I have quad vertex 2s in RAID-0 in my current machine) for the insane random RW performance, but the Samsungs are better balanced and huge amounts of serial RW is a big factor when initiating and completing jobs. Much as I'd like to replicate the all-passive six-reserator cooling solution on my home machine, this one will have to travel semi-frequently, so integral radiators. At least the big 120mm radiator fans are a lot quieter than six GPU blowers would be. Probably need quad dual rads considering that I'm asking them to dissipate 2000W under load; that's one 120mm fan for each GPU and CPU.

Strike that, I found an affordable 16 GB DDR-1600 DIMM (Hynix DDR3-1600), so I can go with the ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS after all (128 GB in 8 slots). Also the SR-X is using the shitty unreliable bolt-on Marvel SATA3 again, while the ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS has proper six-way SATA3 on the primary southbridge. Might as well put another SSD in there to populate all SATA3 ports, 3 x Samsung 830 in RAID-0 for 768 GB sounds good (although practically the southbridge will probably saturate).

Also I found this which is just daring me to populate the full 7 GPUs. Only problem with that is that I wanted to leave a slot free for a dual 10GigE NIC, mainly in case we need to get another of this config and pair them for a live cluster demo. I suppose that's unlikely though, if you need to demo that you inherently want a realistic config and that means production servers with SAN etc.

My network configuration is beginning to flake out, so in lieu of actually trying to figure out what's wrong, I'm going to go the easy way, and replace all the network bits (well, almost, the 100 Mbit switch will likely go to the living room). I'm pretty sure it's due to the age of all the bits (almost 6 years for the oldest bit).

I'm looking at:
Netgear WNDR-3700
TRENDnet TEG-S80G

to replace the existing 3 wireless routers and wiring closet switch.

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"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan

It's pretty rare (outside that Asus board you mentioned) since most people who need PCIe x16 are driving GPGPUs and those are dual-slot designs. EATX can't normally handle that (outside of watercooling, but that's pretty rare).

EDIT: Can anything actually use the additional bandwidth of a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot right now? You could go something crazy like the X9DRX+-F (10 x8 slots!)


Why don't you just go rackmount at this point?


Can you give up a PCIe slot for something from FusionIO?


I have a WNDR3700v1 running an IPv6-oriented OpenWRT build that's pretty solid. Apple's Airport Extreme is very good but it's expensive for what you get.

Yes, 7970 will in bursts when loading data and retrieving results (which happens continuously in streaming mode, subject to keeping system RAM filled). I hear with the Nvidia 690 and presumably AMD 7990 it can actually be noticable in gaming, it's a couple of % on 7970 gaming I believe (don't follow the gaming benchmarks that closely).



That's an interesting config, didn't know about that board. Not that useful for GPGPU since they're only x8 physical and if you used breakout adapters you might as well go for 7 x16 and break it to 14 x8 electrical / x16 physical, but probably useful for people who want lots of FPGA boards / NICs / etc.



Because I want to run it under my desk when it isn't on loan, I will need to physically lug it into some meetings (when you're making arguments about consolidation, nothing beats having 50 rack servers worth of demonstrable compute in one box sitting on the table) and it's going to have some beauty shots and go on the new web site as a 'developer GPU appliance' (vs the 'sever dense GPU appliance' - marketing guy is working on the branding). 4U server cases and 3000w 2+1 PSUs are really heavy and awkward to lug around.



I confess its tempting but we're not currently bottlenecked enough on local disk often enough for those server-grade PCI-E SSDs to be justifiable, at least not for development. The next-gen production server prototype will be developed later this year and hopefully I can trial one then. Our current standard prod server (recommended, customers actually buy the things) is the Tyan FT77-B7015, but even ignoring the outdated Teslas they try and force on you it's a little long in the tooth now; only 288 GB max (and the manufacturer only certifies it to 144 GB), limited to the old Westmere Xeons etc. I've sold the other directors on trying to make our own custom 'server appliance' using PCI-E breakouts, custom case fabrication and some of the other crazy stuff I've seen on the Bitcoin mining forums. Some of the guys there seem to have managed to get 12 AMD GPUs running OpenCL stable (in Linux only, Windows is a lost cause), that leaves 16 to 32x for NICs and SSDs (depending on motherboard). If we can get something like that sufficiently reliable and supportable it should sell.

ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard and 128 GB of DD3-1600 RAM (8 x 16GB sticks) have arrived, E5-2687Ws and case are still on the way. Need to spec the watercooling now, my provisional loop design is;

Twin dual-5.25-bay resevoirs feeding twin Laing D4 pumps (1500 litres/hour each), routed to twin EK-Supreme CPU blocks, routed to upper and lower inputs of Aquacomputer TwinConnect MAX 7 manifold, which feeds seven Aquacomputer 7970 waterblocks in parallel. Upper and lower outputs of TwinConnect MAX 7 go through Y splitters to four EK CoolStream RAD XT 480mm radiators, each with four 120mm fans, with outflow back into the two reservoirs. This is essentially a dual-loop system with 1 pump / 1 CPU / 3.5 GPUs / 2 rads / 1 resevoir in each loop, but with the upper and lower loops connected in the middle of the MAX 7 manifold.

Each radiator is rated for 500 watts at 1000 RPM and 800 watts at 2000 RPM, effective heat load is approx 2000 watts (2400 watts under FurMark + SuperPi but no practical OpenCL is that bad), so should be able to run maxed out with relatively little fan noise. Could get away with triple-fan rads actually, which is good because I'm not sure 4 x quad rads + 2 x oversize PSUs will fit (will measure once the case arrives). Unlike the SR-X (which has sucky active fan needing replacement by chipset waterblock) the ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS has passive heatpipe cooling, simplifying the loop a little vs my SR-2 (which had two chipset blocks). Looking at forums some people don't trust parallel config on the TwinConnect MAX 7, but the temp differential from first to last card on 7 serial GPUs would be ridiculous, and I thing feeding equal (high) pressure from both ends should eliminate concerns about the last card getting insufficient flow. I did have some differential pressure issues (and hence different resevoir fill levels) with paired reserators on my SR-2 config, but I think that was because it's a semi-sealed configuration, shouldn't be a problem for a sealed loop.

Parts still trickling in, most of the electronics have turned up, but missing the GPUs and most of the watercooling;



I've built the MAGNUM STH10 and added hot-swap bays for 4 x SSD and 3 x HDD. Upgraded the SSDs to Kingston MaxIOPS 3Ks and the HDDs to 4 TB Samsungs. Ended up with twin Enermax Platimax 1200W PSUs as the Corsairs were unavailable from my usual suppliers. The most exotic component is not electronic at all though;



The AquaComputer TwinConnect MAX-7. This is what makes time travel seven GPUs possible (in a desktop case at reasonable noise levels).

I only ask that when your bid for world domination goes into effect, you give me the courtesy of a PM so I can take my vacation early this year.

Makes my old Water Cooling rig look like a joke.

On a semi-relate note, I finally got something new for the office. Price comparing on Dells website lead to me finding their actual workstations had lesser hardware than their Vostros for $200 more. I can only assume this went to the case, which is dumb. The Vostro has a smaller form factor, so I asked Dell support (big mistake) if my old Nvidia GTX 260 would fit, so I could save money with just the onboard GPU. The tech responded with "it will fit any aftermarket card." My decision to purchase was also weighted by their good deal on W7 Pro and a bundle of Acrobat with Office for like $180 (this let me just give my old PC to another coworker without worrying about licensing. Long story short: there's nothing you can't fix with the liberal application of a hammer. That didn't even solve the issue that the PSU didn't have all the connections I needed for the GPU. Luckily, I had an old 500W lying around my father-in-law dumped off on me.

My sister's new rig is a MacBook Air 11" and that thing is one of the finest little laptops I've had the pleasure to work with. She has the 8GB RAM/128GB SSD model and we carved out 25GB for a Windows 7 partition with Office 2010 (usually running in VMWare Fusion).

It's ridiculously light, it gets good battery life, it doesn't creak when you pick it up (unlike her old netbook - which in its defense costed maybe a third as much). The RAM + SSD pretty much lets her run Windows+Office without any performance problems in a VM (and Fusion's integration lets you open a file in the finder and pass it through to Windows!)

At the moment it'd probably be my recommended small laptop (or maybe the X230, but that's not quite as small and light)

I built most of the system;



however the 7 x zero slot spacing AquaComputer setup does not actually work. The total height of the graphics cards + water blocks exceeds the PCI-E slot spacing by approx 3mm, with the result that only a max of three can be placed side by side and even then they are slightly bent and hence the ports are out of alingment with the manifold. Obviously this flushes my faith in German precision engineering down the toilet, particularly since the head of the company assured me in email that this would work. However I may be able to resolve the issue by changing the screws that came with the waterblocks, which are cheap ones with fat round heads, for socket set (grub) screws, which have no protruding head at all.

Okay, in light of this:



I am open to suggestions on building a new system. Since I tend to do this sort of thing only once every five to six years or so, I am generally not current on quite the latest hardware trends. I know a lot of people here follow that sort of thing more closely than I do, so I would appreciate some input on what I have been planning (on a roughly one hour notice):

• Case: Antec P280 (needs to be large, needs to be silent, currently have Antec 180B)
• Motherboard: Asus P9X79 Deluxe Intel X79 LGA2011 ATX
• Processor: Intel Core i7-3820 3.6 GHz LGA2011
• RAM: Whatever doesn't blow the budget but goes to the higher end of what the mobo can use
• Graphics: Sapphire Radeon HD7870 2GB GDDR5. I'm open to suggestions on the graphics card, since this is the area I know least well, but for the past six years I've had ATI cards and have had good experiences with them. If there is a comparable and comparably priced Nvidia card, I'd like to know the pros and cons.
• Hard Drives: OCZ Vertex 3 - 240 GB 2.5" SSD SATA III for the OS + some standard SATA3 drive for games and bulk data.
  PSU: Whatever is enough for the rest of the rig, but an emphasis on being both quality and quiet
• Peripherals: The old ones work well, not into these.
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

I would appreciate any advice as soon as possible, since I'm going to go and buy the kit on Monday, or on Tuesday at the very latest.

The main criteria here are that the rig is intended to last for several years without a whole lot of replacement parts and still be able to perform well. It also shouldn't cost absolutely ridiculous amounts of money, though with the proposed setuap it's going to run somewhere in between €1500 and €2000.

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Warwolf Urban Combat Specialist

Why is it so goddamned hard to get little assholes like you to admit it when you fuck up? Is it pride? What gives you the right to have any pride?
–Darth Wong to vivftp

GOP message? Why don't they just come out of the closet: FASCISTS R' US –Patrick Degan

The GOP has a problem with anyone coming out of the closet. –18-till-I-die

Why do you need a big case? Do you have many hard drives to run? Fractal Design's cases are pretty good and quiet.
Unless you go six-core or need lots of RAM, LGA 2011 is unnecessary.
You probably want at least 8GB of RAM, though if you go LGA 2011 you'll probably do something like 16GB (4x4) for quad-channel goodness
PSU - I like Seasonic or Corsair.
SSD: Do not buy OCZ. Intel is preferred (320 is very reliable, 520 and 330 are speedy), and the Samsung 830 is also good.

If you want increased reliability, you might consider getting a Xeon CPU + ECC RAM (e.g. Xeon E3/E3v2, Asus P8B WS)

Thanks for the input. I really appreciate it.

You're right about the case, I want a large one, but not a gigantic one, and the P280 is right up there. I took a quick look at the available stuff and didn't notice the P183 version that was up and which is about the same size as my current case. I've liked the Antec P-series cases because with twice as powerful fans and other components they are only half as noisy as what I used to have before.

I took a look and the Intel SSD drives are so much more expensive than others for the same size that it pushes them right out of my price range. Meaning I'll just be getting a pair of standard SATA3 HDDs.

For the rest of it, like I said, I'm not current on all the new hardware, but the reasoning is that if I get decently priced newer, higher end equipment, I won't be needing to upgrade much of anything for several years. Paying a bit of a premium right now means I won't have to worry about any of that for a long time.

For the current machine, the only things I've had to replace or upgrade were a graphics card and adding a second hard drive (the one that now has all my data) because I took precisely that approach back in 2006 too.

And in any event it turned out that I'll have some more time to plan the purchase since I was overruled. Just a replacement hard drive for the current machine, meaning an just OS reinstall for now. That alone should give me quite a performance boost when all the old crap gets wiped out.

Is there anything in the hardware pipeline in the next 1-3 months I should pay particular attention to?

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Warwolf Urban Combat Specialist

Why is it so goddamned hard to get little assholes like you to admit it when you fuck up? Is it pride? What gives you the right to have any pride?
–Darth Wong to vivftp

GOP message? Why don't they just come out of the closet: FASCISTS R' US –Patrick Degan

The GOP has a problem with anyone coming out of the closet. –18-till-I-die

I'd strongly suggest finding some room in your budget if you can (if not now, then later): SSDs are the single biggest advance in computer responsiveness in a long time. You will notice the difference. Rumor has it that Intel is planning for price cuts in August.


Not as far as I'm aware.

The price cut rumor alone is enough to make me hold off, since for my current needs I can manage quite well with the rig I have. If they do cut prices, I may well end up paying the same for a 240 GB SSD drive that I would for a much smaller one right now. There is also the chance that the prices of the other planned components will shift downward in that timeframe, though it doesn't much matter even if they don't.

And if I have to pay somewhat more, then that's how it is and no way around it. In which case the room will appear in the budget. It's a matter of being willing to pay, instead of being unable to pay for it.

Thank you again.

---

Warwolf Urban Combat Specialist

Why is it so goddamned hard to get little assholes like you to admit it when you fuck up? Is it pride? What gives you the right to have any pride?
–Darth Wong to vivftp

GOP message? Why don't they just come out of the closet: FASCISTS R' US –Patrick Degan

The GOP has a problem with anyone coming out of the closet. –18-till-I-die