I've ordered a couple of rigs with the following specs. Memory ended up on back order so waiting for it before the shop can complete the build.

Asus X99-A motherboard
16Gb Kingston DDR4 @2133Mhz (4x4Gb)
Intel 5820k CPU
Corsair H80 water cooling
2 x GTX750Ti cards
Intel 520 series SSD (120Gb)
1Tb WD black HDD
Fractal designs ARC midi case
Seasonic modular 750w power supply
No-name DVD-ROM

The price for the next chip up would have added about $500 (AUD). The top of the line chip was about $1100.

Even Intel recommend water cooling, hence the H80. I replace the Corsair fans with Noctua ones as they don't make as much noise and last. Had a corsair fan seize up on a previous rig.

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BOINC blog

Thanks Jim for your comments. I would use liquid cooling as well however because I can find to an electric wheelchair I am not prepared to do this. Reasons are if liquid runs out throughout the day I would not be able to top it up myself. I'm aware you can get a liquid gel however I am not sure but I think I would run into the same issues have a potential of it run dry. Hence why I am staying with air cooling. I look forward to seeing how your rig performs.

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Reasons are if liquid runs out throughout the day I would not be able to top it up myself.

Ready to install liquid coolers are of the sealed type. They are a closed loop & the manufacturer fills them with liquid & removes all the air- all you do is fit them like a normal heatsink, and then fit the radiator to the rear of your case, or better yet outside of the case. If any liquid does come out, the whole thing need replacing.

eg

H80i

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Grant
Darwin NT

Thanks for the link. I will consult person who will be building the machine and see what they think

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I have a couple of questions. I have been thinking the motherboard that I need for my computer I don't need anything terribly fancy I just want something that is good and supports the RAM disk function. Does anybody have any good ideas? The board I listed was far of Asus Rampage V Extreme. Does the H80i self concealed water cooler support socket 2011 V3? I am aware it supports socket 2011.

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Be careful of the Asus Rampage boards. I have 2 Asus rampage iv boards in 2 systems and I have had 5 failures. In one case the board was returned un-repaired. Other times I received replacement boards only to have them fail in short time. The general comment seems to be that when they fail it can be a very painful exercise however when they run, they run well.

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If you decide to try out third party ramdisk software then you would have more motherboards to choose from than just an asus rampage v. i don't know how good it is, but amd sells randisk software for under $20. the H80i does support socket 2011-3.

Be careful of the Asus Rampage boards. I have 2 Asus rampage iv boards in 2 systems and I have had 5 failures. In one case the board was returned un-repaired. Other times I received replacement boards only to have them fail in short time. The general comment seems to be that when they fail it can be a very painful exercise however when they run, they run well.

Thanks for the tip on the motherboard. What brand would you suggest going with? Staying with DDR 4 ram of course and preferably Asus I'd prefer to use the ram 4 RAM disk rather than software if I can as it is faster. Thanks for information on the cooler.

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lots of people like asus boards. their top-end boards have more features than i need though. asus ramdisk works on asus rog series motherboards only and the only member of the rog series that has x99 is the rampage v. it's software based, so you need to install the rog ramdisk software for it to work. i haven't tested any of it but i suppose third party ramdisk software would have comparable features to asus rog ramdisk.

lots of people like asus boards. their top-end boards have more features than i need though. asus ramdisk works on asus rog series motherboards only and the only member of the rog series that has x99 is the rampage v. it's software based, so you need to install the rog ramdisk software for it to work. i haven't tested any of it but i suppose third party ramdisk software would have comparable features to asus rog ramdisk.

Thanks. I could be wrong in saying this but I think the feature that free RAM disk software is lacking is the ability to automatically save when closing down a computer and been able to reload the particular piece of software back into RAM when the computer is restarted

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I read a review of AMD Radeon RAMDisk that mentioned that the free version will load at startup, save at shutdown, and auto-save. The only catch is a 4GB drive size limitation and some occasional ads asking you to buy the paid version. If you like the program you can buy 12GB, 24GB, 32GB, or 64GB versions. Also if you use a product like this it will add to the amount of time it takes your system to startup and shutdown, although an SSD would reduce that. But it sounds interesting, maybe I might try it out.

I read a review of AMD Radeon RAMDisk that mentioned that the free version will load at startup, save at shutdown, and auto-save. The only catch is a 4GB drive size limitation and some occasional ads asking you to buy the paid version. If you like the program you can buy 12GB, 24GB, 32GB, or 64GB versions. Also if you use a product like this it will add to the amount of time it takes your system to startup and shutdown, although an SSD would reduce that. But it sounds interesting, maybe I might try it out.

Thanks for the idea it sounds like a good one. However I am not sure Seti will benefit from a RAMdisk however it will preserve your SSD if you have one. I am intending to use it on World Community Grid. However I realised just how limiting it can be using a RAMdisk I was budgeting on only using 4 gag however I am not sure I will be able to do this unless I want to run one project at a time from World Community Grid. I will just have to see how things go

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I read a review of AMD Radeon RAMDisk that mentioned that the free version will load at startup, save at shutdown, and auto-save. The only catch is a 4GB drive size limitation and some occasional ads asking you to buy the paid version. If you like the program you can buy 12GB, 24GB, 32GB, or 64GB versions. Also if you use a product like this it will add to the amount of time it takes your system to startup and shutdown, although an SSD would reduce that. But it sounds interesting, maybe I might try it out.

Sounds like the free version of Dataram RAMdisk I've been using for years. When you open the configuration GUI there is a pop-up ad, but otherwise it runs in the background w/o any annoyances.
I've also configured it to save the image to disk every few hours in addition to the saving that occurs automatically on system shutdown.

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

Sounds like the free version of Dataram RAMdisk I've been using for years. When you open the configuration GUI there is a pop-up ad, but otherwise it runs in the background w/o any annoyances.
I've also configured it to save the image to disk every few hours in addition to the saving that occurs automatically on system shutdown.

Thanks for information. Can you let us know if you are running any projects and whether you notice a dramatic speed increase

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Sounds like the free version of Dataram RAMdisk I've been using for years. When you open the configuration GUI there is a pop-up ad, but otherwise it runs in the background w/o any annoyances.
I've also configured it to save the image to disk every few hours in addition to the saving that occurs automatically on system shutdown.

Thanks for information. Can you let us know if you are running any projects and whether you notice a dramatic speed increase

For a mostly idle system. I would see a speed increase of around 0.0% for the projects I run. It may actually be slowing down the science apps in some cases with the increased load on the memory. However I have not seen any noticeable changes either way.

Some of the systems I run BOINC on are servers with heavy disk i/o. So by moving BOINC to a RAMdisk it prevented BOINC projects from slowing down normal system operations. At home I used in on systems so that the disk could be spun down in order to save power.

By running BOINC on a RAMdisk for a HDD based system it can help reduce fragmentation, or for a SSD it would reduce the number of disk writes. Making the SSD last longer. A separate partition would also prevent fragmentation on a HDD & I have been running BOINC on my SSD system at home for a few years & the SSDs still report 99% life remaining.

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

Thanks Hal for your feedback regarding RAM disk software. Has anyone used a H80i sealed water cooler unit for CPU and can advise on what temperatures the CPU sits at under full load?

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Haven't used a water cooler myself, but from various reviews a device that is running at 90°c can expect to be reduced to 50°c with a half reasonable water cooler. With a better unit (such as the H80i) that can be reduced even further to less than 45°c.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Here we go, courtesy of Hardware Secrets.


EDIT- Ok, Hardware Secrets are a bunch of tools & don't like people linking to their images, so you need to go the link I provided above to their web site to see the results.
Summary- Intel stock cooler, 79°
H80i, 42° (on minimum setting. 36° on maximum setting).

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Grant
Darwin NT

I think they will produce mostly 1's and 0's.

Just catching up on the boards after a year or so and that just made my day.

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I am going to be building my new system soon. I would like thoughts on whether they would go with 6 core 5930 K or would you pay just over $800 more and go with the 8 core 5960 X apparently these are only 18% performance increase. Is there a major difference in CPU processing time between these 2 CPUs? I would have thought that an extra 2 cores 6 GHz would be more than 18% I am unable to find any 5930 K's/5960 in the top uses list.

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