I give the following another try since I wrote it earlier and was not satisfied with myself.

A replacement of my three disc working PC system into a four disc working PC system would include two monitor cards - one dedicated to PrimeGrid crunching as well as Seti@home Cuda tasks. From some pictures available here, I know that some crunchers have tried putting three or maybe even four monitor cards inside their boxes.

This depends on the motherboard. Most motherboards do not support more than two cards at the same time. If I should want to have more at the same time, the motherboard would be quite an expensive one.

Same with the cards themselves as well. Some of the most recent cards having ultimate speed and processor capabilities are also very expensive. There has also been a discussion about how well suited certain cards are for the processing of CUDA-tasks.

The question becomes then - how do you set up such a configuration and possibly get it working? Everything I hear about the new or current nVidia cards is that they do not offer any particular CUDA-support and if any such is present, it is not favorized by either software implementation nor the manufacturer regardless of driver available (like the GTX 670, 680 or 690).

Even though the monitor cards (as well as the number of them) more or less are stealing the show, we may still be back at the main processor in the end when choosing a new system. It did not get that high mark at the start, but Intel's Core i7 990 X Extreme processor now gets 5 stars out of 5 with my vendor. My best guess is that my next choice for PC will have that processor included.

Thanks to all !!! It helps a lot. I appreciate.

Thanks to all !!! It helps a lot. I appreciate.

Keep this in mind if you whant to build a big cheap Seti cruncher: (focus on 1 & 2)

1 - Buy the best GPU your money can buy, it worth every cent. Nvidia ou ATI?, I can´t say anything about ATI because i use only Nvidia but the roule is the same, bigger is better. The Nvidia Gforce boards (Don´t thing to use Tesla on SETI is a waste of money) works ok and have a lot of support avaiable (most of the top crunchers uses nvidia so is easy to fix any problem). If you choose Nvidia, buy the 690, If you can't buy 2 690 now, buy one and in the future buy the second one (don´t make the mistake to buy 2 680 or a cheaper board in the future if you want to expand the host you will run out of slots to do that), but remember this for the PSU. Don´t try to bargain in this item, buy a brand new keppler GPU, your will notice the difference in your power bill.

2 - Buy the best quality PSU your money can buy, use the following roule, leave 30% or more spare power at least. Example 1 690 uses 300W + 300W for the rest of the Host, = 600W + 30% = 800W, a 850 W is OK, for 2 x 690 nothing less than 1200W or your PSU will blow in less than a year. This is the heart of your system, and the first source of problems in the future because it´s internal components (capacitors and other stuff) degrades with the past of the time.

3 - A medium I5 could feed 2 x 690, if you could buy a top I7 is better, but take something in mind, the CPU power makes no big difference in the RAC of a 2 x 690 host (maybe a top 2 x Xeon makes difference but is to expensive unless you are thinking to build a big server). You could choose a AMD equivalent of course.

4 - Use a good MB (i use ASUS) with PCIe 3.0 support, there are a lot of that in the $200 range, remember you need at least 2 PCIe slots, 3 or even more slots MB is better but are more expensive and is dificult to handle 3 or 4 GPUs because the heat.

5 - Use Windows 7/64 bits (linux cost 0 but all top crunchers uses windows for some reason), with a lot off fast memory (each GPU task takes +/- 100 mb just to run, at 3 WU per GPU a 2 x 690 runs 12 WU at a time + CPU tasks something like 2 GB just for them) 8 gb from a good brand is Ok if you thing only in crunchig.

6 - A good case with frontal cooling (the 690 have front and rear air exausts), there are a lot of cheap cases from cooler master or equivalent that have this feature. Don´t forget the front/rear big fans to help take out the hot air!

7 - Water cooling is better but is expensive and complicated on daily basis (you need to have a good experience to handle), air cooling work good especialy in the new 600 series from Nvidia. In the other had, you will need water cooling if you thing on a 3 or 4 GPUs hosts.

8 - HD, etc buy a good cheap one, makes no real difference for crunching basicaly the SETI uses very few HD space to work (< 10 GB in most cases)

And don´t forget a good and stable ISP (not necessary a superfast one i use 10MB cable on all my hosts), you will need a stable connection in order to feed this little monster with WUs or you will need to babysting in front of it to keep it feeded (this is one of the big problems when you have a big cruncher).

You could expect a no less than 100K RAC host (i will say easely 120K if you run optimized applicattions) if you could pay the power bill (expect nothing less than a 600kw/hr added to your month acount just for this host if it works 24/7). You could expect be on the first page of SETI top crunchers with one of this.

But be aware, this is ok only for Seti crunchers, not for game machine or other use (probabily in this case you will need a big CPU, a big HD and some other stuff)

Hope this help and Happy crunching...

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Thanks to all !!! It helps a lot. I appreciate.

Keep this in mind if you whant to build a big Seti cruncher: (focus on 1 & 2)

1 - Buy the best GPU your money can buy, it worth every cent. Nvidia ou ATI?, I can´t say anything about ATI because i use only Nvidia but the roule is the same, bigger is better. The Nvidia Gforce boards (Don´t thing to use Tesla on SETI is a waste of money) works ok and have a lot of support avaiable (most of the top crunchers uses nvidia so is easy to fix any problem). If you choose Nvidia, buy the 690, If you can't buy 2 690 now, buy one and in the future buy the second one (don´t make the mistake to buy 2 680 or a cheaper board in the future if you want to expand the host you will run out of slots to do that), but remember this for the PSU. Don´t try to bargain in this item, buy a brand new keppler GPU, your will notice the difference in your power bill.

2 - Buy the best quality PSU your money can buy, use the following roule, leave 30% or more spare power at least. Example 1 690 uses 300W + 300W for the rest of the Host, = 600W + 30% = 800W, a 850 W is OK, for 2 x 690 nothing less than 1200W or your PSU will blow in less than a year. This is the heart of your system, and the first source of problems in the future because it´s internal components (capacitors and other stuff) degrades with the past of the time.

3 - A medium I5 could feed 2 x 690, if you could buy a top I7 is better, but take something in mind, the CPU power makes no big difference in the RAC of a 2 x 690 host (maybe a top 2 x Xeon makes difference but is to expensive unless you are thinking to build a big server). You could choose a AMD equivalent of course.

4 - Use a good MB (i use ASUS) with PCIe 3.0 support, there are a lot of that in the $200 range, remember you need at least 2 PCIe slots, 3 or even more slots MB is better but are more expensive and is dificult to handle 3 or 4 GPUs because the heat.

5 - Use Windows 7/64 bits (linux cost 0 but all top crunchers uses windows for some reason), with a lot off fast memory (each GPU task takes +/- 100 mb just to run, at 3 WU per GPU a 2 x 690 runs 12 WU at a time + CPU tasks something like 2 GB just for them) so 4 GB is the minimum if you will use only for crunching, 8 gb if you thing anything else.

6 - A good case with frontal cooling (the 690 have front and rear air exausts), there are a lot of cheap cases from cooler master or equivalent that have this feature. Don´t forget the front/rear big fans to help take out the hot air!

7 - Water cooling is better but is expensive and complicated on daily basis (you need to have a good experience to handle), air cooling work good especialy in the new 600 series from Nvidia. In the other had, you will need water cooling if you thing on a 3 or 4 GPUs hosts.

8 - HD, etc buy a good cheap one, makes no real difference for crunching basicaly the SETI uses very few HD space to work (< 10 GB in most cases)

And don´t forget a good and stable ISP (not necessary a superfast one i use 10MB cable on all my hosts), you will need a stable connection in order to feed this little monster with WUs or you will need to babysting in front of it to keep it feeded (this is one of the big problems when you have a big cruncher).

You could expect a no less than 100K RAC host (i will say easely 120K if you run optimized applicattions) if you could pay the power bill (expect nothing less than a 600kw/hr added to your month acount just for this host if it works 24/7). You could expect be on the first page of SETI top crunchers with one of this.

But be aware, this is ok only for Seti crunchers, not for game machine or other use (probabily in this case you will need a big CPU, a big HD and some other stuff)

Hope this help and Happy crunching...

Thanks Juan for the great advides. I have been looking around in the past few days and you confirm my thoughts.

I am an electronic engineer here and I am doing a lot amateur radio and other electronics projects but I have not played with computers much in the past 10 years... and thing changes very fast so I wanted to have some advices before bying stuppid stuff. I have built many things in my life (audio amp, transceivers, tube RF amp, etc) but I have never built a PC before.

And those switching PSU... We tend to use Linear PSU in amateur radio as they are much more reliable. I have repaired a few switching in the past and I know how fragile they are. I agree with you its the heart of the system and I won't buy cheap PSU.

I have decided to build a ''usable'' machine for everyday uses and seti crunching so I will install just one 690 and use the extra money for a good case, psu, CPU, RAM, cooling, etc.

Thanks again and happy crunchin too !

I´m an electronic engineer to, but don´t especialize on computer area, just a hobby. As i´m old (52 years) i from the old DOS era and plays with amateur radio in the late 70´s, o good old days when everything was discreate and easy to understand and fix.

I agree with you the linear PSU are better and more realiable but the problems is the cost, compared with the switching PSU, my advice buy a good 1200W PSU if you thing on 2 690, i say it with confidence, one of my great problem to update my hosts to the 690 is because they have an 850W PSU so they can only run one GPU, even if they have 2 or more Slot (actualy i run a 580 + 670 on some of them beacuse the PSU capacity)

Something like this for 2 GPUs
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341046
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171055

or for 1 GPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011

If you look my hosts you my probabily dont belive but, the 2 with 60K RAC runs under this MB (not even PCIe 3.0, and a very slow I5 - at least was the cheap one i could find)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131711
One have a 590 and the other one 580+ one 670 due exactly because the 850 PSU can´t handle a bigger GPU. I buy 2 new 690 for them but did not arrive yet (everything here is Brazil is very expensive and complicated because the costums, takes more than a month to arrive from USA)

I belive you make an excelent choice buying one 690 now. You could expect something like >60K RAC on a single GPU host if you run the optimized SETI aplications if it runs 24/7.

If i could help you in anything please let me know, and please apologies my @$%## english.

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So far my build would be something like that...;

- Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Case.
- Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W Power Supply.
- ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 Intel Series 7 Motherboard.
- Intel Core i7-3770K (no OC).
- Corsair CAFA50 A50 Air Series Performance CPU Cooler.
- (1) EVGA GeForce GTX 690 Video Card.
- Corsair Vengeance Memory Kit - 8GB (2x 4GB).
- Western Digital Caviar Blue Hard Drive - 1TB.
- Sony Optiarc 24x DVDRW Drive.
- Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64BIT.

Approx $3000 with tax and shipping so within my budget and
I could always get another 690 later when the price goes down.

I prefer having only one 690 in nice and great overall machine
than 3 lying on the desk...

What do you think ?

Thanks

So far my build would be something like that...;

- Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Case.
- Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W Power Supply.
- ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 Intel Series 7 Motherboard.
- Intel Core i7-3770K (no OC).
- Corsair CAFA50 A50 Air Series Performance CPU Cooler.
- (1) EVGA GeForce GTX 690 Video Card.
- Corsair Vengeance Memory Kit - 8GB (2x 4GB).
- Western Digital Caviar Blue Hard Drive - 1TB.
- Sony Optiarc 24x DVDRW Drive.
- Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64BIT.

Approx $3000 with tax and shipping so within my budget and
I could always get another 690 later when the price goes down.

I prefer having only one 690 in nice and great overall machine
than 3 lying on the desk...

What do you think ?

Thanks

Excelent choices, you will build a beautiful machine. The ASUS Sabertooth is one of my dreams, but is so expensive here.

Just verify if the case come with the front fan because the front hot air exaust on the 690, if no buy one to keep the heat out of your case.

Another thing, dont´t remember exactly what is the best windows 7 (i still ussing XP on most of my hosts) or if the home edition have any limitation like the number of task (at least one of the XP home have a limit of 3 at a time), if yes thing about to use a professional version.

Just a curiosity, a host like this here in Brazil, because the taxes, cost more than $6000 can you belive that?

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- Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Case.

This is about the only part that I'd have a problem with as it isn't that good at keeping video cards that cool.

Personally I'd go with the Cooler Master 942 HAF-X case as it will supply plenty of fresh air for multiple video cards and it has castors under it, the only things that the Cosmos has over the HAF-X are its over the top price and support for more hard drives.

[Edit] Also when you lower the front cover on the Cosmos you also restrict the amount of air that the front fan can move through the case. [/edit]

Cheers.

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I am not good at understanding world economy... I guess that having
beautiful girls, nice weather, best football team and Anderson Silva
is not free ;)

BTW I have been to brazil many times. I use to be radio officer and
electronics engineer on board many cruise ships. The last time I went
to Brazil was a small trip Manaus - Belem 12 years ago.

I am 45 here and now working telecom field. my amateur radio call sign
is VE2MVE and you can look up my profil on QRZ.COM

Thanks again Juan ! I will keep you update on my project and most probably
ask for some more helps when I start to build my machine.

- Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Case.

This is about the only part that I'd have a problem with as it isn't that good at keeping video cards that cool.

Personally I'd go with the Cooler Master 942 HAF-X case as it will supply plenty of fresh air for multiple video cards and it has castors under it, the only things that the Cosmos has over the HAF-X are its over the top price and support for more hard drives.

[Edit] Also when you lower the front cover on the Cosmos you also restrict the amount of air that the front fan can move through the case. [/edit]

Cheers.

Thanks Wiggo you are right about that. But that Big Corsair case is so nice...
I will choose another one.

Cheers

- Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Case.

This is about the only part that I'd have a problem with as it isn't that good at keeping video cards that cool.

Personally I'd go with the Cooler Master 942 HAF-X case as it will supply plenty of fresh air for multiple video cards and it has castors under it, the only things that the Cosmos has over the HAF-X are its over the top price and support for more hard drives.

[Edit] Also when you lower the front cover on the Cosmos you also restrict the amount of air that the front fan can move through the case. [/edit]

Cheers.

Thanks Wiggo you are right about that. But that Big Corsair case is so nice...
I will choose another one.

Cheers

Believe me, the HAF-X case is huge (25" x 21.5" x 10") and will take just as big motherboards and video cards as the Cosmos will but at half the price. I got a HAF-X for my triple video card setup and was so impressed by its performance that I bought a 2nd one for my dual video card setup.

[Edit] The HAF-X is also very quiet even with everything set at full speed. [/Edit]


Cheers.

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- Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Case.

This is about the only part that I'd have a problem with as it isn't that good at keeping video cards that cool.

Personally I'd go with the Cooler Master 942 HAF-X case as it will supply plenty of fresh air for multiple video cards and it has castors under it, the only things that the Cosmos has over the HAF-X are its over the top price and support for more hard drives.

[Edit] Also when you lower the front cover on the Cosmos you also restrict the amount of air that the front fan can move through the case. [/edit]

Cheers.

Thanks Wiggo you are right about that. But that Big Corsair case is so nice...
I will choose another one.

Cheers

Believe me, the HAF-X case is huge (25" x 21.5" x 10") and will take just as big motherboards and video cards as the Cosmos will but at half the price. I got a HAF-X for my triple video card setup and was so impressed by its performance that I bought a 2nd one for my dual video card setup.

[Edit] The HAF-X is also very quiet even with everything set at full speed. [/Edit]


Cheers.

Look carefuly what Wiggo says, he must have more experience than me with this cases (we use diferent cases here of course), use the old rule "cooler is better", more/better air flow means less heat inside your case and will keep your GPU in more confortable temperature zone and allows you to squeze more RAC for it (the 690 does not tolerate OC easily if it works hot). Here we try to do the same by adding more fans because our cases have not good air flow.

Have a good day.

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