I'd take an i7-3930K and pair it with 6 GTX 590's. That type of rig should be able to post some pretty good numbers.

That's currently Not possible, As all currently known GTX590 cards take up 2 slots each, air or water cooling, in any case the motherboard You'd need doesn't exist as all the one's I've seen would support only 4, not 6. So until a 6 slot double spaced motherboard shows up, You won't be able to use 6 in One PC, Now in 2 or 3 PCs You could do this, Just not in one so far. Good Luck.

Also the biggest cases support XL-ATX which only supports 4-pci-e 16x slots.

Not so. If you water cool, you can replace the PCI plate on the edge and make the card single slot. It's certainly possible to do this with EVGA cards. Granted, you may have to be a bit creative with the fittings, but taking this approach does mean there is the chance of maxing out a suitably equipped motherboard with 590s. It would obviously cost a shed load of money to do, but the limitations need not be at the GPU level. Given a big enough case (Mountain Mods spring to mind), the limitation really then becomes budget.

---

I'd take an i7-3930K and pair it with 6 GTX 590's. That type of rig should be able to post some pretty good numbers.

That's currently Not possible, As all currently known GTX590 cards take up 2 slots each, air or water cooling, in any case the motherboard You'd need doesn't exist as all the one's I've seen would support only 4, not 6. So until a 6 slot double spaced motherboard shows up, You won't be able to use 6 in One PC, Now in 2 or 3 PCs You could do this, Just not in one so far. Good Luck.

Also the biggest cases support XL-ATX which only supports 4-pci-e 16x slots.

Not so. If you water cool, you can replace the PCI plate on the edge and make the card single slot. It's certainly possible to do this with EVGA cards. Granted, you may have to be a bit creative with the fittings, but taking this approach does mean there is the chance of maxing out a suitably equipped motherboard with 590s. It would obviously cost a shed load of money to do, but the limitations need not be at the GPU level. Given a big enough case (Mountain Mods spring to mind), the limitation really then becomes budget.

Then I guess You don't mind voiding your warranty when You cut off the 3rd DVI connector like below??

Yes, I guess removing the third DVI connector would almost certainly void the ol' warranty. The point I was making was more that you can fully populate a motherboard with 590s (at least from a physical perspective). Yes, it would take a leap of faith in the sense that you'd have no warranty to fall back on, but then again for a lot of manufacturers, simply fitting a waterblock voids the warranty anyway. Having said all of that, I think even the ever flexible EVGA wouldn't touch that mod!!!! Still, if you want to stack em high in a single chasis......

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what kind of RAC would a beast like that produce?

what kind of RAC would a beast like that produce?

Currently, not a lot! I'm not sure if anyone running a 590 (or two) has managed to get it up to full useful production yet - perhaps one of the owners of such a beast would care to step in and speculate.....

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It seems like maybe having a multi core server, with 3 to 6 gtx 590's and lots of ram, would give you an ultimate cruncher

If something like that is possible????

:)

Sounds like sky in the pie to me...

The top 4 computers on this project are all using
3 or 4 590,s.
It can be done.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/top_hosts.php

john3760

The top 4 computers on this project are all using
3 or 4 590,s.
It can be done.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/top_hosts.php

john3760

Yeah, but the catch is You have to be loaded to not feel that kick to wallet and I'm not loaded.

Me either, but if I was......


http://www.netstor.com.tw/_03/03_02.php?OTM=#


Regards,

A

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Question is, Would Boinc even recognize any video card in that chassis?


As far as I know, yes it would. You install a card into a pci-e slot that this thing plugs into, install the software, and it will be recognized by your OS.
As to how many GPU's Boinc can see, thats another matter.

Regards,

A

Edit:

Is there anybody here using something like this?

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The top 4 computers on this project are all using
3 or 4 590,s.
It can be done.

Of course it can be done but just by looking at their performance, it's clearly not working well. Too bottle-necked and probably problematic to fetch S@H work as well.

Personally, I'd rather assemble two or three separate machines with maximum of two single-GPU cards (like 580) each, using desktop motherboards and CPUs.
...and no hard drives, all booted over network off a central server :)

---

The top 4 computers on this project are all using
3 or 4 590,s.
It can be done.

Of course it can be done but just by looking at their performance, it's clearly not working well. Too bottle-necked and probably problematic to fetch S@H work as well.

Personally, I'd rather assemble two or three separate machines with maximum of two single-GPU cards (like 580) each, using desktop motherboards and CPUs.
...and no hard drives, all booted over network off a central server :)

That sounds like a great solution, could you point me to more information about how to set that type of thing up?

I currently have 3 rigs all running independent and even with a KVM switch for 2 for them its a chore keeping them all happy. Would be great to just use a server to be able to run all 3! Have you done this before or does anyone have experience with it?

---

My Computers:
â–ˆ Blue Offline
â–ˆ Green Offline
â–ˆ Red Offline

The top 4 computers on this project are all using
3 or 4 590,s.
It can be done.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/top_hosts.php

john3760

Yeah, but the catch is You have to be loaded to not feel that kick to wallet and I'm not loaded.

Me either, but if I was......


http://www.netstor.com.tw/_03/03_02.php?OTM=#


Regards,

A

This looks like a neat little box, but it does look cheap either. No price listed, so I'm sure its more than I can spend.

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My Computers:
â–ˆ Blue Offline
â–ˆ Green Offline
â–ˆ Red Offline

I googled it and it's £1200 for the version
with the 1000w power supply !!

but only £1000 for the version with the 400w supply. :)

john3760


that's just for the box you will need to buy your
graphics cards after that .

Personally, I'd rather assemble two or three separate machines with maximum of two single-GPU cards (like 580) each, using desktop motherboards and CPUs.
...and no hard drives, all booted over network off a central server :)

That sounds like a great solution, could you point me to more information about how to set that type of thing up?

I currently have 3 rigs all running independent and even with a KVM switch for 2 for them its a chore keeping them all happy. Would be great to just use a server to be able to run all 3! Have you done this before or does anyone have experience with it?

I haven't done this, but I know it definitely can be done in Linux and is being used (in supercomputer clusters, for example). S@H isn't using disk a lot so this kind of solution would be ideal to easily manage many machines (nodes).
If you google "boot linux over a network" you can find various tutorials.
I have no idea if this can be done in windows, though. Probably not.

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Of course it can be done but just by looking at their performance, it's clearly not working well. Too bottle-necked and probably problematic to fetch S@H work as well.

The limiting factor at the moment would be the network congestion- just trying to get enough work to keep the systems busy. And then the imposibility of building up any sort of cache due to the serverside limits.

Personally, I'd rather assemble two or three separate machines with maximum of two single-GPU cards (like 580) each, using desktop motherboards and CPUs.
...and no hard drives, all booted over network off a central server :)

It would help overcome the problems of feeding a single high throughput system, but the power usuage would be significantly higher for a given number of WUs processed per hour.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Google says that's:

UK£ 1200 = $1,861.32 U.S. Dollars
UK£ 1000 = $1,551.10 U.S. Dollars

Yup ,not the cheapest solution is it ?

john3760

(but he did sort of say if money was no object)

You do get a free alarm that beeps when the temps
are above 55 degrees. Possibly a bit irritating if
you crunch SETI :)

So the sweetspot is 1 590 or 2 580s.

& an alarm wants to be more like 85C not 55...

... http://www.netstor.com.tw/_03/03_02.php?OTM=#

This looks like a neat little box, but it does look cheap either. No price listed, so I'm sure its more than I can spend.

Indeed, on both counts!

Good neat solution, but why the ridiculous price tag? At that price, you may as well go for a normal motherboard and plug in a supporting CPU 'for free'...

Happy fast crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

... Would be great to just use a server to be able to run all 3! Have you done this before or does anyone have experience with it?

I haven't done this, but I know it definitely can be done in Linux and is being used (in supercomputer clusters, for example). S@H isn't using disk a lot so this kind of solution would be ideal to easily manage many machines (nodes).
If you google "boot linux over a network" you can find various tutorials.
I have no idea if this can be done in windows, though. Probably not.

I've been running s@h on a low power 2-core diskless system for a few years now. Boinc and s@h (and e@h) are given a 1GByte ramdisk (tmpfs) to work in. Snapshots of the ramdisk are saved by rsync to a flash device every 12 hours. It is all Linux and it all works well. (It also does real server work also :-) )

You might say that Boinc acts as a very good health indicator!

Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

What components will give the 'ultimate' s@h cruncher PC?

'Ultimate' is highest RAC for a single motherboard.



So what bits to get for:

1: Highest RAC per component cost?

2: Highest RAC per Watt?


And is there anything better if you were to abandon the old PC way of doing things?...

Have we drifted from ML1's post a bit?

1: Highest RAC per component cost?

2: Highest RAC per Watt?

Both of these would take a little bit of time and effort
to work out properly(haven't got the time & allergic to effort),
My budget PC would have to come in around £1500-£1800.

That takes care or the 580's and 590's(unless you only put 1 in).
Shop about and the 570's have dropped in price recently.
CPU wise I would go with an i7 2600 nicely overclocked.
GPU 4 x 570
Small ssd (dont need a massive hard drive for crunching,and you
could always attach an external drive if needed)
16 gig memory (mid range,as tha main crunching will be on the GPU's)


That should demolish a few WU's for the price.

'Ultimate' is highest RAC for a single motherboard.

Well if money wasn't an object,mmm.

EVGA SR2 £ 500
2X Xeon5680 £ 2200
48 GIG af the fastest ram available. £ 1000
A couple of SSD,s £ 600
That litte box AndyJ pointed out.
(hang on a minute that will only use 1 Pcie slot ,
and the board has 7)
4 of those little boxes with EVGA Classified Hydrocoppers. £16000
Small power station.
OOPS case,odds and ends,things you forgot till you were half way through the build and hadn't budgeted for (etc). £ 1000


total £21000


If I started to save now,we will have found ET by the time I could
afford this!!!

But 24 CPU threads & 16 fast GPU's, must be something of an ultimate cruncher.

john3760

EDIT Hello Martin (it took me so long to write this you've posted twice)