my goodness, the last dozen or so posts have blown my mind. i was considering doing something like what VW Bobier was doing (buying parts as the money came available over the course of a few months) but i figured even with a few month time frame i will probably be better off waiting and getting it all at once. the only thing i will probably do is if i see a good sale on a case, mobo, cpu, or gpu i'm looking for, i will just pull the trigger right then, even if i have to wait a few months for the rest. other than the case, this is unlikely to be what i end up doing as i doubt what i'm looking for will be cheaper now, than later (i7-3930k, a mobo with at least 3x pcie3.0 slots, and gtx 680's or 690's).
even though this rig will be used mainly for 24//7 crunchiness and i'm not a huge pc gamer, i still want the 680's or 690's because the 580's and 590's are barely cheaper. correct me if i'm wrong, but as far as GPU's for crunching rigs are concerned, the most important feature will be how many CUDA cores the card has, right? in that case the 3000 cuda cores in a 690 would be worth the extra 200-300 bucks as the 590's have just over 1000 CUDA cores.

what really scares me is how i'm going to cool this thing properly. as i've mentioned before, i have built rig's before, but never with any water cooling, and from observing the conversation on this thread regarding the cooling- i feel like i'm lost. for someone like myself who has ample experience with putting computers together, but none with cooling, am i in over my head with trying to put together a crunching rig (that i assume will absolutely need water cooling) like the one i mentioned above? can anybody suggest to me exactly what type of cooling i should go for? most of the CPU cores and all of the GPU's will be crunching 24/7..

Yanivicious, if you Goole, "computer water cooling article guide review", I'm sure that you'll find plenty of homework to do. ;)

Cheers.

---

my goodness, the last dozen or so posts have blown my mind. i was considering doing something like what VW Bobier was doing (buying parts as the money came available over the course of a few months) but i figured even with a few month time frame i will probably be better off waiting and getting it all at once. the only thing i will probably do is if i see a good sale on a case, mobo, cpu, or gpu i'm looking for, i will just pull the trigger right then, even if i have to wait a few months for the rest. other than the case, this is unlikely to be what i end up doing as i doubt what i'm looking for will be cheaper now, than later (i7-3930k, a mobo with at least 3x pcie3.0 slots, and gtx 680's or 690's).
even though this rig will be used mainly for 24//7 crunchiness and i'm not a huge pc gamer, i still want the 680's or 690's because the 580's and 590's are barely cheaper. correct me if i'm wrong, but as far as GPU's for crunching rigs are concerned, the most important feature will be how many CUDA cores the card has, right? in that case the 3000 cuda cores in a 690 would be worth the extra 200-300 bucks as the 590's have just over 1000 CUDA cores.

what really scares me is how i'm going to cool this thing properly. as i've mentioned before, i have built rig's before, but never with any water cooling, and from observing the conversation on this thread regarding the cooling- i feel like i'm lost. for someone like myself who has ample experience with putting computers together, but none with cooling, am i in over my head with trying to put together a crunching rig (that i assume will absolutely need water cooling) like the one i mentioned above? can anybody suggest to me exactly what type of cooling i should go for? most of the CPU cores and all of the GPU's will be crunching 24/7..

From what I've read pcie 3.0 will only gain one maybe 6-10% in speed at present, even with 600 series cards, so I don't think I made a bad choice, for Me a piece at a time doesn't matter, I mean sure I'd love to be able to buy everything at once, but that just isn't too feasible with Me, both legally and well I know what could happen, as I'm tempted to drive down the freeway for munchies all the time I'm awake as that's part of being severely depressed, except after breakfast and dinner, so saving can be hard, but I digress. Oh and a 690 isn't merely $200-300 more than a 590, the going rate right now is anywhere between $1050 and $1500 for an air cooled 690, EVGA hasn't even done more than show off their Hydro Copper 690, plus 3rd party 690 water blocks are only available from Koolance and XSPC right now, in limited quantities too, EK is making one, but its not for sale quite yet, I calculated that with 4 GTX690 cards and 4 Blocks the cost could be around(I hope Yer sitting down) $5,400.00, not cheap by any means and so far on the EVGA website the 690 cards that are in stock are 1 person is allowed only 1 card per sale so far...

So 2 months is better than 5-6 months per 690 to Me, after that 1.5yrs I'm sure I can come up with something, save up for a house w/a savings account that can't used as more than a backup funding source maybe, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

newegg gets the gtx 690's in every once in a while, for $999-$1050. i was under the impression that all of these cards have a fan in the center, and water vapor blocks built into both sides (over each GPU). i get the notifications from newegg when they are available but i haven't ever actually bought it. i don't know anything as far as the water cooling components for this card though.

i see the GTX 590's going for $800 at the least, that is why i said it's only a $200 difference (assuming you don't overpay on ebay or amazon for the gtx 690, as they run around $1300 on average on those sites..)

I just want to get the most bang for my buck, and be sure that the setup will last for years into the future. i have NEVER been sorry buying the top of line, it has always ended up being a wise choice over the long run. Also, if I am going to be going top of the line with CPU, I figure you might as well do the same with the GPUs ;-) I am aware it will be pricey, but that's why I work so hard, isn't it? I'm a stock broker, and the past 9 months have been a bit rough as clients/potential clients have been scared under the rug by the eurozone crisis, and most of my investments are in gold and silver stocks which have been weak since september, but now that these commodities are starting to turn around, the money will start rolling in again as it always does (this business can be cyclical, but generally pays off in the end. not all months are good months, not even all years, but the good times are REALLY good and more than make up for the slow months. in careers that are commission based, that is often the case). I studied astronomy in college but ended up selling out and switching completely to be a business major, thanks to the more than decent returns i was making trading the markets full time while i was in college. i figured i could get rich first, and then with the money thing taken care of, i could turn to my real passions (academics; particularly astronomy, history, economics..i would love to teach college level courses one day). so since i didn't end up going the academic route, i find contributing time and money to projects like this at least gives me a little bit of a "fix" for my "science tooth". i love to do volunteer work in general, but unfortunately have very little time for it thanks to an already too-busy schedule; contributing to seti@home, and eventually other DC projects once i have ample computing power, are my way of "helping out" and feeding my interests/hobbies simultaneously. i guess what i'm trying to say is, i think that dishing out the cash for the GPU's is worth it to me :) sorry to ramble, i tend to do that.

I'm not, I'm severely disabled and I exist on Supplemental Security Income, so I have to be thrifty, some times If there's a sale on coffee I'll buy 2 cans like I did last time, I'm here almost 24/7 with only a 15lb cat(possibly a Maine Coon or a mixed Maine Coon at least) for company, I'm just not too interested in going out into the desert, Mom would say the area is depressing and She'd be right. Maybe one day I can buy a mobile home on a foundation on it's own land, right now I'm stuck in a mobile home park with steps My right knee doesn't like anymore. I'm waiting for the USDA section 502 direct mortgage program to have funding and that may take a while as they've been starved of money to loan out for a few years, Just for a $36,000.00 mortgage...

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I had to swap power supplies in My current PC today, now I have an 850w Corsair 850TX psu powering everything, I also did a general cleanup while I was at it as the filters were filthy dirty and I was able to determine that the 590 is still mostly clean, so the filters are working, I also swapped a few fans, the new fans have leds, one's a 200mm Blue fan(below) and the other is a 230mm fan which does work, but not the leds on it, oh well. After I swapped the psus from the 1500w to the 850w I noticed stuff was working quicker and that the temps were lower on the GTX590 card, by about 8-9C, so I'm happy, I still need to put in the 1350w psu when I get it, but at least the problems of the mouse freezing and such have vanished... Oh and I can mount when I get the money after all the blocks and cards are bought a HAF-X door on the HAF-932 case, they fit and a 200mm fan fits where a 230mm fan does.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

interesting, i wonder why the PSU had an effect on those things you mentioned (besides the temperature, which i guess i could understand). why did you choose to downgrade the PSU?

interesting, i wonder why the PSU had an effect on those things you mentioned (besides the temperature, which i guess i could understand). why did you choose to downgrade the PSU?

The 1500w psu is/was failing, causing problems, drop in voltage most likely, which caused slowdowns in crunching and the video drivers to crash when I had 16GB of ram in the PC, 5-15 second freezes with just 8GB ram, etc. The 1500w psu will be rmaed to Silverstone asap for repairs or replacement under warranty, also the fan in the psu was going tick, tick, tick, etc, etc... The 850w is good enough for the moment and is a temporary psu only, a 1350w Enermax psu will replace it as that will power this PC with several GTX590 cards.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok I decided to breakout the XSPC dual bay reservoir/pump for the HAF-X, it does fit at least and it's fully assembled w/an led, no idea what color of course, maybe blue, plus there is a sata CD-rom drive as only the DVD+/-R burner will transfer into the HAF-X(942), not the DVD-rom drive...

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok I have 3 EK FC-590 water blocks & 1 EK 590 backplate for 3 GTX590 cards now, instead of merely 1 block and an EK 590 backplate, the back plate is in the top box, all 3 blocks are nickel plated and have a see through top, next is the 1350w psu for this PC, then the block for the Rampage 3 Extreme motherboard, then the 1600w psu for the R3E, after that there will be a 3 to 4 month gap as I save up money for a potential move, if I can buy a mobile home that I'm watching, then back to what I've tried to layout in My blueprint for the major PC parts that I'll need, the minor ones will wait as their more common.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok It's time to update the specs some and correct any errors...

PC specs:
(Galactica)

<Coolermaster HAF-932 Case>,
<ASUS P7P55D Pro motherboard, Bios 2003>,
<i5-750 cpu @ 2.81GHz>,
1-EK-Supreme LTX CPU Waterblock - Intel,
1-EK-P7P55D Pro water block,
3-BitFenix Spectre Pro Blue 200mm 148cfm fans,
<16GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1333 9-9-9-24-121-2T @ 1500.4MHz>,
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz Blue (9-9-9-24) 4x4GB,
3-GTX590 cards<1>,
<3-EK-FC590 GTX590 Nickel/Acrylic - Full Cover VGA Water-Blocks for Nvidia GTX590>,
<XSPC X2O DC-750 - Dual 5.25" Bay-Res Pump/Reservoir Combo>,
<Coolgate 120x360 radiator>,
1-Phobya XTREME 200 Radiator Products Model: PH-35185 Radiator,
Bitpower Fittings(Not compression) to fit 1/2"ID Tubing,
2-DangerDen Black UV DreamFlex All-in-One "Retail Pack" - 1/2" ID Tubing Products Model: TUB-222B,
<1-DEMCiflex Magnetic Fan Dust Filter - Custom 4 Piece Set for CM HAF-932>,
<WD Scorpio Black 500GB hdd>,
<OCZ Rally2 4GB usb flash drive>,
<Optiarc AD-7170s DVD-/+R DL burner>,
<sata CD-rom drive>,
1-Enermax Gold 1350W PSU(replacement for the ST1500 below),
<Silverstone ST1500 1500W psu>,
<Windows 7 Premium x64(currently Pro x64 is running here)>.

(Pegasus)

<Coolermaster HAF-X Case>,
<Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard>,
<i7-940 cpu @ 2.93GHz>,
<EK Red 1366 Cpu water block>,
1-EK-FB R3E water block,
4-BitFenix Spectre Pro Red 200mm 148cfm fans,
24GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz Black (9-9-9-24) 6x4GB,
4-EVGA Classified 1596 or 1598 GTX590 cards,
4-XSPC Razor GTX590 - Full Cover VGA Water-Block for Nvidia GTX590,
1-XSPC X2O DC-750 - Dual 5.25" Bay-Res Pump/Reservoir Combo,
1-Phobya Xtreme 400 PH-35311 Radiator,
1-Phobya XTREME 200 PH-35185 Radiator,
Bitpower Fittings(Not compression) to fit 1/2"ID Tubing,
2-DangerDen Black UV DreamFlex All-in-One "Retail Pack" - 1/2" ID Tubing,
1-Enermax Lepa Gold 1600W PSU,
1-DEMCiflex Magnetic Fan Dust Filter - Custom 4 Piece Set for CM HAF-X,
1-WD Scorpio Black 500GB hdd,
<Sata DVD-Rom drive>,
<Windows 7 Pro x64>,
<LG W2053TX Monitor (1600x900)>,
Iogear Dual DVI-Monitor/usb/audio switcher.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok It's time to update the specs some and correct any errors...

PC specs:
(Galactica)

<Coolermaster HAF-932 Case>,
<ASUS P7P55D Pro motherboard, Bios 2003>,
<i5-750 cpu @ 2.81GHz>,
1-EK-Supreme LTX CPU Waterblock - Intel,
1-EK-P7P55D Pro water block,
3-BitFenix Spectre Pro Blue 200mm 148cfm fans,
<16GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1333 9-9-9-24-121-2T @ 1500.4MHz>,
[not sure on the ram yet]
16GB Corsair Vengeance Blue DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz (9-9-9-24) 4x4GB,
16GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz Red (9-9-9-24) 2x8GB,
[not sure on the ram yet]
3-GTX590 cards<1>,
<3-EK-FC590 GTX590 Nickel/Acrylic - Full Cover VGA Water-Blocks for Nvidia GTX590>,
<XSPC X2O DC-750 - Dual 5.25" Bay-Res Pump/Reservoir Combo>,
<Coolgate 120x360 radiator>,
1-Phobya XTREME 200 Radiator Products Model: PH-35185 Radiator,
Bitpower Fittings(Not compression) to fit 1/2"ID Tubing,
2-DangerDen Black UV DreamFlex All-in-One "Retail Pack" - 1/2" ID Tubing Products Model: TUB-222B,
<1-DEMCiflex Magnetic Fan Dust Filter - Custom 4 Piece Set for CM HAF-932>,
<WD Scorpio Black 500GB hdd>,
<OCZ Rally2 4GB usb flash drive>,
<Optiarc AD-7170s DVD-/+R DL burner>,
<sata CD-rom drive>,
1-Enermax Gold 1350W PSU(replacement for the ST1500 below),
<Silverstone ST1500 1500W psu>,
<Windows 7 Premium x64(currently Pro x64 is running here)>.

(Pegasus)

<Coolermaster HAF-X Case>,
<Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard>,
<i7-940 cpu @ 2.93GHz>,
<EK Red 1366 Cpu water block>,
1-EK-FB R3E water block,
4-BitFenix Spectre Pro Red 200mm 148cfm fans,
[not sure on the ram yet]
24GB Corsair Vengeance Black DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz (9-9-9-24) 6x4GB,
24GB G.Skill Red/Black(F3-12800CL9T2-24GBRL) DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz (9-9-9-24) 6x4GB,
[not sure on the ram yet]
4-EVGA Classified 1596 or 1598 GTX590 cards,
4-XSPC Razor GTX590 - Full Cover VGA Water-Block for Nvidia GTX590,
1-XSPC X2O DC-750 - Dual 5.25" Bay-Res Pump/Reservoir Combo,
1-Phobya Xtreme 400 PH-35311 Radiator,
1-Phobya XTREME 200 PH-35185 Radiator,
Bitpower Fittings(Not compression) to fit 1/2"ID Tubing,
2-DangerDen Black UV DreamFlex All-in-One "Retail Pack" - 1/2" ID Tubing,
1-Enermax Lepa Gold 1600W PSU,
1-DEMCiflex Magnetic Fan Dust Filter - Custom 4 Piece Set for CM HAF-X,
1-WD Scorpio Black 500GB hdd,
<Sata DVD-Rom drive>,
<Windows 7 Pro x64>,
<LG W2053TX Monitor (1600x900)>,
Iogear Dual DVI-Monitor/usb/audio switcher.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok I've settled on the ram, it might be more costly, but that's life...

PC specs:
(Galactica)

<Coolermaster HAF-932 Case>,
<ASUS P7P55D Pro motherboard, Bios 2003>,
<i5-750 cpu @ 2.81GHz>,
1-EK-Supreme LTX CPU Waterblock - Intel,
1-EK-P7P55D Pro water block,
3-BitFenix Spectre Pro Blue 200mm 148cfm fans,
<16GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1333 9-9-9-24-121-2T @ 1500.4MHz>,
16GB Corsair Vengeance Blue DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz (9-9-9-24) 4x4GB,
3-GTX590 cards<1>,
<3-EK-FC590 GTX590 Nickel/Acrylic - Full Cover VGA Water-Blocks for Nvidia GTX590>,
<XSPC X2O DC-750 - Dual 5.25" Bay-Res Pump/Reservoir Combo>,
<Coolgate 120x360 radiator>,
1-Phobya XTREME 200 Radiator Products Model: PH-35185 Radiator,
Bitpower Fittings(Not compression) to fit 1/2"ID Tubing,
2-DangerDen Black UV DreamFlex All-in-One "Retail Pack" - 1/2" ID Tubing Products Model: TUB-222B,
<1-DEMCiflex Magnetic Fan Dust Filter - Custom 4 Piece Set for CM HAF-932>,
<WD Scorpio Black 500GB hdd>,
<OCZ Rally2 4GB usb flash drive>,
<Optiarc AD-7170s DVD-/+R DL burner>,
<sata CD-rom drive>,
1-Enermax Gold 1350W PSU(replacement for the ST1500 below),
<Silverstone ST1500 1500W psu>,
<Windows 7 Premium x64(currently Pro x64 is running here)>.

(Pegasus)

<Coolermaster HAF-X Case>,
<Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard>,
<i7-940 cpu @ 2.93GHz>,
<EK Red 1366 Cpu water block>,
1-EK-FB R3E water block,
4-BitFenix Spectre Pro Red 200mm 148cfm fans,
24GB Corsair Vengeance Black DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz (9-9-9-24) 6x4GB,
4-EVGA Classified 1596 or 1598 GTX590 cards,
4-XSPC Razor GTX590 - Full Cover VGA Water-Block for Nvidia GTX590,
1-XSPC X2O DC-750 - Dual 5.25" Bay-Res Pump/Reservoir Combo,
1-Phobya Xtreme 400 PH-35311 Radiator,
1-Phobya XTREME 200 PH-35185 Radiator,
Bitpower Fittings(Not compression) to fit 1/2"ID Tubing,
2-DangerDen Black UV DreamFlex All-in-One "Retail Pack" - 1/2" ID Tubing,
1-Enermax Lepa Gold 1600W PSU,
1-DEMCiflex Magnetic Fan Dust Filter - Custom 4 Piece Set for CM HAF-X,
1-WD Scorpio Black 500GB hdd,
<Sata DVD-Rom drive>,
<Windows 7 Pro x64>,
<LG W2053TX Monitor (1600x900)>,
Iogear Dual DVI-Monitor/usb/audio switcher.[/quote]

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ratio of SETI Credit earned vs. BTUs generated vs. Kilowatt/hours consumed?

Bobier, your setup sounds like it'll have plenty of horsepower, but MSattler is correct in his assessment. Your new machine thread got me thinking when I let my IBM Intellistation Z-Pro 9228 have 100% SETI for 7 days straight. That was an eye-opener to me, in more ways than one!

I built this rig from a corporate lease turn-in workstation, for gaming and Adobe Creative Suite manipulation of large images and videos. I installed two each Xeon Woodcrest 5160 dual-core 3.0Ghz CPUs with their nice 4Mb L2 cache and 1333Mhz FSB, 14Gb dual-channel FB-DIMMs, a 1 Terabyte Western Digital Caviar Black spinning platter thingy, and a 60Gb OCZ Vertex SSD for pagefile and ReadyBoost. The video card is a MSI Radeon HD 6870 1Gb model, not bleeding-edge but beautiful on Crysis, Dead Space 2, and Fallout New Vegas. The thing is driven by Windows 7 64 Bit Ultimate SP1. For SETI BOINC I use Lunatic's Optimized apps, which use the 4 Xeon cores as well as the Radeon GPU. I'd add a second or third Radeon card, but the Intel 5000x motherboard chipset supports neither SLI nor Crossfire, so that's the limit. Cooling of the Xeons is accomplished by a Koolance Exos-2 external unit, which actually looks factory-original sitting on top of the IBM workstation's case.






Crunching SETI full-throttle for a week showed me several things.

1. The CPU and water temps of the system never got much above 40 degrees C when crunching 100%. Each of the four CPUs in Task Manager showed 100% utilization, so Xeons have no problem doing the work.

2. My Radeon HD6870 does alright kicking out SETI Work Units, too. Not as fast as Fermi CUDA cards, but faster than the XEON 5160 cores. More on this later.

3. Those SETI Work Units that were finished on my Radeon GPU appear to run into trouble when the wingman is flying a CUDA. I've noticed many, many of my finished tasks marked as "completed, validation inconclusive". Following up on one of those tasks show that 3 additional wingmen were required, for a total of 5 whacks at it:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1011779423

This one Work Unit also showed me that there are machines crunching out there needing some TLC, obviously:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=6649038

That many wingmen and that many invalid/error tasks from one host represents a bit of an inefficiency, nicht wahr?

4. The 40 degree Celsius temp on the computer equated to a very warm office/guest bedroom. Outside temps that week were (non-typical for Wisconsin in June) low-to-mid 90s, and I was fighting the air conditioning on the entire 2nd floor, making even the master bedroom warm. Basically, I have a high-tech space heater running here, with pretty blue coolant making sure the computer's inside heat gets transferred to the room posthaste. Intel i7 CPUs, these are not.

5. I've since bought 2 each Intel Xeon 5365 SLAED units, which are quad-core Clovertown 3.0Ghz processors with 8mb L2 cache. I've also bought more FB-DIMMs to bump memory up to an even 16Gb to feed those 8 cores. The Exos-2 is rated to dissipate 750 watts of heat, so I'm confident adding 4 more cores to the mix won't overstress the cooling system. I won't get an upgrade in speed, but I'll have more grunt with a V-8 vs. I-4 for Adobe CS, etc. It also means I can run SETI@Home with 8 CPUs and 1 GPU for a boost in task completion.

6. Dual Quads are gonna throw even more heat, so this may become a fair-weather crunching prospect with respect to SETI@Home. I noted my June electric bill was $240.00 for that week of crunching and air conditioning. That's ok, I knew the risks, but I doubt I'd want to do that throughout the entire summer here.

7. 4 Xeon cores did a nice job spitting out SETI@Home Work Units, and I'm sure 8 of them will do even better. However, there's no mistaking that my Radeon GPU turned them over much quicker, and were I an NVidia person, I'd have results back to Berkeley at a really impressive clip.

As I see these monster SETI crunchers on the forum here, I did some cowboy math and realized that there's a metric buttload of BTUs being generated with each completed SETI@Home work unit, and more than a few kilowatt/hours of juice being converted at the same time to bits and heat in the process. My own guest bedroom and office is basically unusable when I'm running SETI@Home 100%, it's too darned warm in here. MSattler's freon-cooled cruncher is a beautiful thing for overclocking, but it also generates heat on the tail end, and that's gotta go somewhere. Loudbob's rig with all those GPU cards displays numbers that indicate it'll generate a lot more heat than mine will, and it appears to be living indoors, too. SciManSteve's radiators look like they probably replaced the central heating of the house, IMHO.

So do you folks all live north of the Arctic Circle with windows open, or did you have the utility company convert the wattmeter disk into a fan of sorts to assist in cooling those rigs? I know newer CPUs generate nore giggleflops per watt than museum pieces like my Xeon 5365s, but as the transition from CPU-intensive SETI@Home tasks to GPU-intensive SETI@Home processing happened, it's worth noting that those NVidia and AMD Radeon cards still run fairly hot, maybe even more so than the CPUs sitting right next to them in the cases. That heat's gotta go somewhere, so I'll wager folks are getting more creative than even the pictures show. This begs the question, where does one draw the line? Disposable income is disposable income, but a big electric bill to find little green men out there might just be too much for some...

Likewise, I'm under no illusions that I can bust into the top 100 hosts using CPU horsepower these days, at least with a single 8-core workstation. This is a GPU game now, with the former simply contributing support to the latter, while popping out an occasional WU by itself every now and then. I'm not saying you won't rack up a nice amount of SETI@Home credit, you're just not going to be getting the same amount of RAC our GPU-enhanced wingmen are.

As an aside, does this play a part in maintaining a given amount of contributors? I've noticed since I started doing this back in SETI Classic days that the total contributors are fewer, but I don't know if that's because the hardware balance of power has shifted (and the investment cost of those toys), BOINC is stealing them away for Einstein@Home, or if SETI@Home is just a benchmark you run when you're upgrading a computer and then leave it forgotten until you tweak the machine some more.

Well I can't buy the parts all at once, If I could and If I were allowed to have that much money on hand as it wouldn't be loaned money I would buy everything at once. I do have to keep a roof over My head and food around for Grace and Me. I do what I can.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I'd add a second or third Radeon card, but the Intel 5000x motherboard chipset supports neither SLI nor Crossfire, so that's the limit.

SLI or Crossfire isn't necessary for processing WUs.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Understood, but this machine is not a dedicated SETI-cruncher, so the purpose of the additional video cards would be for my own, non-SETI enjoyment first. No Crossfire or SLI support nixes that for me on this particular platform. Next big black IBM/Lenovo box, I'll keep an eye open for that feature, otherwise I buy the best single card I can swing.

Understood, but this machine is not a dedicated SETI-cruncher, so the purpose of the additional video cards would be for my own, non-SETI enjoyment first. No Crossfire or SLI support nixes that for me on this particular platform. Next big black IBM/Lenovo box, I'll keep an eye open for that feature, otherwise I buy the best single card I can swing.

I thought you could do SLI or CrossFire on any board. Where you just had to use the bridge adapters on boards that didn't support the feature. Otherwise the MB would handle everything so the adapters were not needed.

---

SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Understood, but this machine is not a dedicated SETI-cruncher, so the purpose of the additional video cards would be for my own, non-SETI enjoyment first. No Crossfire or SLI support nixes that for me on this particular platform. Next big black IBM/Lenovo box, I'll keep an eye open for that feature, otherwise I buy the best single card I can swing.

I thought you could do SLI or CrossFire on any board. Where you just had to use the bridge adapters on boards that didn't support the feature. Otherwise the MB would handle everything so the adapters were not needed.

Nope, for Nvidia the MB needs certain chipsets to support SLI and the bridge adapter is to speed up the comunications between the GPUs avoiding overloads on the PCIe/CPU (some old GPUs dont need the bridge, I think all the modern ones do need it).

I think it's the same for Crossfire.

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Thanks for the filler Guys, Ok now down to business, I just ordered the 1350w Enermax Maxrevo power supply for this PC for $250 w/shipping.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's