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Terror Australis
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Message 1227632 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 5:40:46 UTC
Last modified: 5 May 2012, 6:27:48 UTC

It was a dark and stormy night.....

Well actually it was a cold and miserable afternoon with nothing on the TV. While having a "cleanout" in the "Data Processing Centre" I found the box with all my retired GTS250's, a motherboard and a power supply. Having all the bits I decided to build the ultimate in my on-going experiments with PCI to PCIE adaptors and PCIE x1 to PCIE x16 adaptor cables.

The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS5 which has 7 expansion slots (2xPCIE 16, 3xPCIE 1 and 2x 33MHz PCI slots), fortuitously I had 7 spare GPU cards. As the rig is intended as a GPU only cruncher, for power consumption and heat reasons I decided to use an E7200 C2D processor. 4 GB of 1200MHz DDR2 RAM and an old XP Home installation on an 30GB IDE HDD completed the hardware.

It took about 3/4's of an hour to put the basic hardware together, another couple of hours to obtain a stable overclock to get the memory running at 1200MHz and load the appropriate software. I then started adding the additional GPU's, one at a time. It all went smoothly (almost too smoothly), as I added each card it was recognised and installed. The only problem was some dicey soldering on one of the PCIE extender cables.

"The Monster" as it is named (because it is put together from old body parts) has now been on line for 8 days and is performing very well. It has averaged around 63,000 cobblestones a day which equals 9k per card which is the ballpark figure for a GTS250 so the load on the system is not effecting crunching times much if at all

This is the completed beast



The 7th video card is located at the bottom left. Here is a close up



This is the completed beast in operation, some additional cooling was required :-)


The only teething problem was, due to the amount of memory allocated to the GPU's. The total amount available for the OS was barely a Gig. As a result I had to strip the OS back to the absolute basics and the box runs with no desktop and BOINC Manager shut down to conserve what's available.

The next plan is to install Linux on it and make it a REAL beast.


Slightly off topic. There was a discussion on the boards a few months back as to whether a top mounted or a bottom mounted power supply was preferable.
As shown below, I prefer top mounting :-)



T.A.
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tbret
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Message 1227647 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 6:07:49 UTC

Thank you very much for posting this.

I feel so much less like a geek and an inhuman nerd after seeing this.

May your Frankenstein Monster long embarrass my attempts at superciliousness.

If this doesn't earn you some type of title, there is something wrong with the Universe.

If we could figure-out why we do what we do, we'd probably be able to help a lot of heroine addicts.
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Message 1227648 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 6:08:16 UTC

Wow. Now that's a crunching machine. :-)
#resist
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Terror Australis
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Message 1227658 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 6:16:58 UTC - in response to Message 1227647.  

Thank you very much for posting this.

I feel so much less like a geek and an inhuman nerd after seeing this.

May your Frankenstein Monster long embarrass my attempts at superciliousness.

If this doesn't earn you some type of title, there is something wrong with the Universe.

If we could figure-out why we do what we do, we'd probably be able to help a lot of heroine addicts.

ROFLMAO !!!

Glad I could help :D

BTW. In Oz this is known as "Bush Mechanicing"

T.A.
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Message 1227667 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 6:38:25 UTC - in response to Message 1227658.  


very elegant cooling solution ... and nice to see how you integrated it into the desk to provide that homogenous look and experience ... :)
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Message 1227696 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 8:09:40 UTC

Nice pics of the monster should heat the home with that much power
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Message 1227761 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 11:19:58 UTC - in response to Message 1227696.  

Computers are always best when you build them yourself,
and you even moddead the case in true Frankenfurter style.
Who needs steampunk when you have your own demolition saw :¬)
That is the kind of quality botch job I would be proud to have built.

Nice pics of the monster should heat the home with that much power

He is on the wrong part of the planet to need much in the way of home heating . . .
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Message 1227871 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 16:00:21 UTC - in response to Message 1227761.  


Nice pics of the monster should heat the home with that much power

He is on the wrong part of the planet to need much in the way of home heating . . .


Though it is approaching winter there.

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Message 1227907 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 16:53:58 UTC - in response to Message 1227632.  

It won't look so cute once our Gov't brings in the rule outlawing brand names on fag packets. At least posterity will know your favourite ciggie!
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Message 1227910 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 16:57:36 UTC - in response to Message 1227907.  

It won't look so cute once our Gov't brings in the rule outlawing brand names on fag packets. At least posterity will know your favourite ciggie!


Sorry, what kind of packages?



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Message 1227920 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 17:03:26 UTC - in response to Message 1227910.  

It won't look so cute once our Gov't brings in the rule outlawing brand names on fag packets. At least posterity will know your favourite ciggie!


Sorry, what kind of packages?

Fags -- cigarettes in Aussie-speak ... and elsewhere:

fag1
n a schoolboy forced to do menial work for another, usu older, boy; a tiresome piece of work; drudgery; orig an inferior cigarette (for fag end), hence any cigarette. -- Chambers Dictionary

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Message 1227922 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 17:04:47 UTC - in response to Message 1227920.  

Be careful with American websites. Fag means something completely different here.


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Message 1227929 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 17:13:45 UTC - in response to Message 1227922.  
Last modified: 5 May 2012, 17:16:34 UTC

Be careful with American websites. Fag means something completely different here.

Oh, I know! There's an old joke that goes like:

US diplomat: Do you know Sir <insert famous name here>?
UK diplomat: Yes, very well. In fact I used to fag for him at Oxford.
US diplomat: I say, you Brits are *very* open minded!

(Which is, of course, a third meaning beyond the two we were discussing.)
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Message 1227936 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 17:22:35 UTC - in response to Message 1227929.  

Stick that next to the bed this winter and turn off the furnace.


Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
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Message 1227947 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 17:34:07 UTC

Yup, that's definitely Skynet Jr right there :)

Member of the People Encouraging Niceness In Society club.

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Message 1228035 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 20:22:57 UTC - in response to Message 1227871.  
Last modified: 5 May 2012, 20:30:04 UTC


Nice pics of the monster should heat the home with that much power

He is on the wrong part of the planet to need much in the way of home heating . . .


Though it is approaching winter there.


Yes, Arkayn that is true, an here it is supposed to be early summer,
Though i just ordered a 7970 to `help` with the heating in Cumbria this summer,
it is unlikely to get as `warm` here as it gets `cold` there . . . .

Edit -
You can tell it`s not a proper `Blue Peter` job, they always covered the labels :¬)
I hope the PCB standoff`s / board spacers that have been used do not have a excess of conductivity in there covering material, though this may help dispell a small quantity of heat.
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Grant (SSSF)
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Message 1228042 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 20:47:38 UTC - in response to Message 1227761.  

Nice pics of the monster should heat the home with that much power

He is on the wrong part of the planet to need much in the way of home heating . . .

South of the tropics it gets miserably cold in Winter.
It's bad enough up here in the north where i live. It has been know to get down to 14°c, usually it's around 18°c. Although anything below 24°c is way too cold.
Grant
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Message 1228043 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 20:49:11 UTC - in response to Message 1227922.  

Be careful with American websites. Fag means something completely different here.


An English friend of ours, just after arrival in the U.S., was met at the airport by a colleague and taken to her hotel. There was a meeting early the next morning and with the trans-Atlantic travel she was concerned that she would sleep through it.

As she went into her room she said to her male colleague, "Please, do come and knock-me-up in the morning."
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Message 1228072 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 22:15:09 UTC

You smoke tooooooooooooooo much
And not tobacco...
Good for you
Is not cellophane electrostatic?????

She sure is a monster


Michael Miles

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Message 1228092 - Posted: 5 May 2012, 23:32:47 UTC - in response to Message 1227947.  

Yup, that's definitely Skynet Jr right there :)

Where's a good old peasant mob with torches and pitchforks when you need one?
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Message boards : Number crunching : It Lives, It Lives !!


 
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