"Rate my Rig" thread

[Starglider]

Finally managed to order some PowerColor 7990s ('Devil 13' edition). Had to go direct to the UK distributor, apparently the whole of the UK only had two allocated. Have ordered four to start with, will be putting them all into GPU Compute Prototype #2 with eight custom waterblocks. Should be fun.

[Starglider]

Quad Radeon 7990s turned up:



These are the 'workstation edition' of the Powercolor 7990 Devil13; to the best of my knowledge we are the only customer to have these. Currently testing them with the original air coolers prior to fitting the custom nickel-copper waterblocks and integrating them all into the same machine;



I can happily confirm that the 'impossible to disable crossfire on dual-GPU cards' bug that made the 5970 and 6990 unusable for GPGPU has been fixed for the 7990.

[atg]

How I wish I had the cash for that. Not that I'd actually have a use for it...

ePenis FTW!

[Starglider]

How I wish I had the cash for that.

Enterprise computing operates on a different level; these cards are quite cheap by workstation standards, which is part of the appeal. The four 7990 cards combined cost less than the CPUs + motherboard and are about 20% of the total components cost (25% if you include the custom waterblocks). Even with the max-spec no-compromise components these 8 GPU workstations are still less than half the price of the 8-CPU Nehalem-EX database servers, which are themselves go for small change compared to the large scale IBM POWER and zSeries machines. Plus in all cases, hardware acquisition costs are usually dominated by software, integration, rackspace, power and support costs.

Not that I'd actually have a use for it...

There are AFAIK no consumer / gaming or even media workloads that would come close to achieving decent utilisation on this sort of machine; it would make about as much sense as using an 18-wheeler for your daily commute.

[atg]

While most of my work has been in the SMB space I have had some exposure to the enterprise world so I know what you mean when it comes to pricing.

I know there is no consumer use for it, hence the ePenis comment, as that is all it would be if I got one

[Starglider]

This is why three slot coolers are a bad idea;



The Devil 13 brackets are custom and pretty much integral to the card, so I'm going to have to truncate them with the bandsaw before mounting the waterblocks.



Had to remove the backplates to physically fit the top card into the slot; the clearance on the ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS is very tight. Will mount individual passive heatsinks on the rear memory chips. Seems a shame to throw away all this carefully engineered copper and aluminium, but alas Powercolor didn't want to ship bare cards;

[Starglider]

Following application of bandsaw, cards now fit into chasis;





When doing this kind of modification it is essential to wear appropriate safety gear.

[Darth Nostril]

I know there is no consumer use for it, hence the ePenis comment, as that is all it would be if I got one

Well there is a use if you are using a GPU based renderer.
Alas I use Vue 10.5 Infinite which is CPU based so my Quadro 4000 sits idle whilst a pair of networked i7s do all the hard work.

[Starglider]

Fit-testing the liquid cooling components;



There is more tubing on the other side of the case (to reduce the amount over the motherboard). This is a single-loop setup, albeit a fairly complex one.



I've used a mix of 3/8th and 1/2 inch ID tubing and barb and compression fittings, as appropriate for different bits of the loop. It's fairly restrictive but that problem is solvable simply by using two of the most powerful pumps available.

[Zixinus]

Ok, Stargrlider: what the hell are you using that for? Some sort of server machine or something?

Oh, and I was being bored while I discovered this: A GT630 card with 4 gigs or VRAM. Which sounds pretty good from where I can tell: that 4 gigabytes of VRAM is pretty rare (other 4-gig cards go for ten times as much as that) and the 630GT seems fairly new. Is it worthwhile for the price of roughly 74$ (56 euro)?

[Ace Pace]

Oh, and I was being bored while I discovered this: A GT630 card with 4 gigs or VRAM. Which sounds pretty good from where I can tell: that 4 gigabytes of VRAM is pretty rare (other 4-gig cards go for ten times as much as that) and the 630GT seems fairly new. Is it worthwhile for the price of roughly 74$ (56 euro)?

I'd comment on VRAM usage, but it's totally irrelevant. A 630 is a low end card that is incapable of utilizing 1GB of RAM, nevermind 4. Google.

[Zixinus]

Oh, and I was being bored while I discovered this: A GT630 card with 4 gigs or VRAM. Which sounds pretty good from where I can tell: that 4 gigabytes of VRAM is pretty rare (other 4-gig cards go for ten times as much as that) and the 630GT seems fairly new. Is it worthwhile for the price of roughly 74$ (56 euro)?

I'd comment on VRAM usage, but it's totally irrelevant. A 630 is a low end card that is incapable of utilizing 1GB of RAM, nevermind 4. Google.

Ah, so its worthless. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.

[XaLEv]

Can anyone tell me the thickness of the backplates used with the Hyper 212 Plus and Evo? I'm looking into the possibility of using one of them in a case without a cutout and I want to know if it would be too thick to fit between the board and the tray. The board standoff length is 8 millimeters.

[Beowulf]

It's about time for me to replace my system. I'm looking at the following bits:

Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116504
$229.99

ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131840
$195.99

EVGA 02G-P4-3667-KR GeForce GTX 660 Ti FTW 2GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130816
$319.99

SILVERSTONE Black FT03B-MINI Mini ITX Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811163197
$135.99

SILVERSTONE 450W SFX12V Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817256084
$99.99

SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5" 256GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820147164
$169.99

Crucial Ballistix 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820148561
$84.99

Antec Kuhler H2O 620 Liquid CPU Cooler System
http://amzn.com/B004LWYE4Q
$49.99

Silverstone Slot Load Optical Drive
http://amzn.com/B004X9PHFC
$69.60

Thoughts?

[Starglider]

Ok, Stargrlider: what the hell are you using that for? Some sort of server machine or something?

These particular multi-GPU workstations are used for
(a) Development & integration of auto-parallelising C++/Java/C#-to-OpenCL supercompiler.
(b) Dev & test of assorted finance pricing, reporting and fraud detection grid compute workflows.

Oh, and I was being bored while I discovered this: A GT630 card with 4 gigs or VRAM.

That strikes me as spectacularly pointless.

[Dominus Atheos]

Beowulf

Unless I am completely confused by that crazy case, that graphics card is too long to fit in it.

[Executor32]

I thought so, too, but then I remembered that I'd seen that case before. IIRC, the motherboard is mounted such that all the ports are at the bottom of the case, so expansion cards would be vertical and there would be enough room for that card.

[Beowulf]

Beowulf

Unless I am completely confused by that crazy case, that graphics card is too long to fit in it.

You are completely confused by that crazy case. Should fit fine. 10" card, case fits 10" cards. All the ports are at the top of the case, as the MB gets oriented oddly.

[Singular Intellect]

Just recently upgraded my computer system:

Rampage IV Extreme w/ DDR3 1866, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, PCI-E, 4-way CrossFireX / SLI
Core™ i7-3930K Processor, 3.20GHz w/ 12MB Cache
Zalman CNPS12X Triple Fan CPU Cooler w/ Blue LED
Vengeance LP 16GB DDR3 1600MHz CL10 Dual Channel Kit (2 x 8GB) (purchased 64GB total)
ZX Series 1250W Modular Power Supply

Next upgrade components I intend to purchase is a SLI GPU config setup (two or three cards), although on recommendations from others I'm holding off until newer GPUs become available later this year. Currently running a dual monitor display, but may upgrade those as well to two or three 1080P HD monitors, depending on sizes and available desk space.

[Zixinus]

Which would be a greater factor in performance?

Buying a Samsung 840 series 120GB SDD drive and then put all my games on that (for reference, I have old HHDs with unknown spin performance atm)?

Or upgrading my venerable XFX-made HD4850 with a HD7750 or higher? The HD7750 cards seem to be in what is an affordable price range for me atm, and would have double the GPU power (as this and this and this seem to be).

[phongn]

The 840 non-pro 120GB will have relatively limited write life. The 240GB (and the pro series) should last much longer.

An SSD will improve everyday usability and speed the loading of games. A new GPU will improve your framerates, particularly on newer games. You'll have to decide on what you want to have. (I went to an SSD)

[Ace Pace]

Performance measured in what?
For general usability, an SSD is the best thing you can do today, far more important than any other metric (unless you have a low amount of RAM).
For games themselves? Boosting the graphics power would indeed improve game perf

[Zixinus]

Forgot to mention, but yes, game performance. My graphics card seems fine atm, I can play games like Dead Space 3 or Skyrim just fine.

My worry is that my HDDs have become too slow. One of them still uses ATA connection (system drive), rather than SATA. I cannot tell either one's rotation speed.

Here's my rationale: Games nowadays are using bigger and bigger HD textures. So, I figure getting an SDD (a pro version of that 120gb one, for not much more) might be a better investment, as the difference between an HDD's and SDD's is massive right now and upgrading that way will make more a difference. New graphics cards on the other hand show up every few months, and if games run fine now, I can afford to wait until the card's GPU is three times or more faster than what I have now.

Is that wrong? I don't keep up with what's new in the PC hardware world very much.

[phongn]

If your machine uses SATA-1.5gb, even a mechanical hard drive can saturate that for sequential reads. Most texture reads should be that, and generally will only appear at level loading or somesuch. Your games will load faster, and levels will load faster, but the general in-play experience will not change.

The best advantage would be to have your system (and most-used applications) run off the SSD. The difference in usability will be absolutely shocking.

[Zixinus]

My motherboard's SATA connector is described by the manufacturer as "4x SATA 3Gb/s connectors supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices" (I have a . Assuming that's Gigabit, that's still 384 megabytes/s, and a benchmark on my better HDD says that its data transfer rate is speed is around 72.66 MB/s (the benchmark was done by a software called HARDiNFOR 7).
The SDD is am looking at (a Samsung 840 pro, 128gb) has the write speed of 390mb/s and read of 530 mb/s.

So, thank you phongn for raising that point, it was indeed one worth checking. Am I right then, then the motherboard isn't, and unlikely to be the bottleneck?

Because I then plan to buy the SDD, split it in two partitions. One for system and the others strictly as an install path for games.