Goliath

[riotcity76]

The goal of Goliath was to create a dedicated folding machine where I could maximize my points per day while minimizing the amount of power draw and heat it outputs. Since I live in Florida, this is important for me. The machine will serve a second purpose - it will act as a server/VM host for a test lab for different things...

Initially I thought I'd install VMware's ESXi hypervisor and from there create an Ubuntu VM for folding, a Windows 7 VM and any Windows server VMs that I'd want. However, both ESXi and Citrix's Xen Server are limited to having 8 virtual CPUs in a single VM. This is not going to cut it for me..

My current plan will be to install Ubuntu for the OS and then install VMware Workstation. Within workstation I'll be able to create my Windows/server VMs. Not quite as elegant as using ESXi, but it'll have to do until ESXi supports more vcpus in a VM.

The specs:

-EVGA SR-2 motherboard

-2 x Xeon hexcore E5645 processors

-2 x Xigmatek GAIA SD1283 heatsinks

-12GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 memory

-Seasonic X750 Gold PSU

-1TB WD Black

-Mountain Mods HPTX-SR2 motherboard tray (no case, this will be a naked computer)

I'm hoping to clock the Xeons at 3.4-3.6 for now. I will try to go higher when summer ends and it cools off, probably to 3.8 if I can.

The motherboard came in yesterday..the rest of the parts should be here today. I'll try to update this thread with pics whenever I get a chance. But for now, a little teaser:

 

[AMDFTW]

will this be ober 100k ppd?

 

[riotcity76]

Yes, and I'm hoping it will be over 150k ppd with the -bigbeta work units

 

[ruthless_villain]

face drop

will be a nice rig

 

[riotcity76]

No new pics, but more parts did come in yesterday. I'm still waiting on one of the processors and the motherboard tray...so for now I have the ram, one Xeon and one hsf and one random gpu in the SR-2. It powered on, but sadly I think I put the processor in the wrong socket for single boot (cpu 1 instead of cpu 0) and I did not get anything on the monitor. I didn't feel like changing the cpu over to the other socket, so I'll be testing it today when I get the second cpu. I also realized afterward that the SR-2 has a feature to manually disable individual CPUs via a jumper setting, which could have helped me test it with CPU1, but it was too late for me to try. Here's to hoping I don't have a bad motherboard

 

[hmmblah]

/drool

Can't wait to see this!

 

[Bungral]

ESXi 5 is coming soon and will support more than 8 vCPU's per VM if you can wait.

Got the email today from VMware that confirms VM will now support up to 32 vCPU's and 1TB of RAM.

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

They need to start making dual and quad CPU heatsinks for mammoth builds like this

 

[tinytomlogan]

PHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOs

Make the build log good enough and Ill feature this in the Folding Video and front page article. (not forgotten Kup has been chewing my ankles about it!)

 

[riotcity76]

ESXi 5 is coming soon and will support more than 8 vCPU's per VM if you can wait.

Got the email today from VMware that confirms VM will now support up to 32 vCPU's and 1TB of RAM.

Awesome, that's good to know. I'll definitely move over to v5 when it comes out.

PHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOs

Make the build log good enough and Ill feature this in the Folding Video and front page article. (not forgotten Kup has been chewing my ankles about it!)

I will do the best I can!

Been really busy with work lately so I haven't had much time to work on it. I did get the 2nd cpu tonight and thew it in, she booted up and I messed around with the bios for a few minutes. So everything is confirmed working at least

I've taken some pictures, it's just going to take me a little while before I can find the time to post them and finish the build.

 

[riotcity76]

Update!

So far so good...I got a chance to start messing with overclock settings and installing Ubuntu. My first impression so far is that the CPUs are running a bit hot, so tomorrow I'm going to reseat the heatsinks and reapply AS5 if needed. It seems like it might take me a while to finetune the BIOS settings as well. The board is very finicky and has already refused to boot after some minor changes. But with time I should be able to get what I want out of it.

Some pictures

Pulling the SR2 out of the box



The second Xeon processor (I already had the first one)



The Xeon seated in the socket



Closeup of the cpu



Both heatsinks mounted



Closeup of ram/heatinks



BIOS...notice the Xeon count x 2

Mountain Mods motherboard tray



Different angle



EVGA IO shield



24 Threads

Tomorrow I will post more pictures with everything mounted in the mountain mods tray. I will also be installing F@H to start testing for stability, so I may be able to provide some preliminary PPD numbers if I have enough time. Stay tuned!

 

[SieB]

loverly Xeon goodness!!!!

 

[daantjuh44]

Looking great !

What gfx card is that ? it looks like a Quadro.

 

[riotcity76]

Looking great !

What gfx card is that ? it looks like a Quadro.

It's actually just a Radeon X1950 Pro that I had as a spare.

Time for another update! I had a chance to mount the SR-2 on the Mountain Mods tray and mess around a little more with temps and F@H. This pictures below are what it looked like this morning, however I ended up remounting the heatsinks and changed the orientated of the first one so that its exhaust is blowing up and not straight to the second heatsink. This seemed to work a little, but I'm still not quite satisfied with the temps on the second CPU (the cores are generally about 8-12 degrees warmer than the first cpu and a couple of them were hitting 82-84C). It doesn't seem like my Xigmatek is cutting it in the summer heat...

Preliminary F@H numbers: I was getting about 150k ppd on a 6904 WU @ 3ghz. I shut it down though because a few cores were creeping into the mid 80s and that's just too hot for me. Once I figure out how to cool that second cpu better I want to go to about 3.4ghz for now which I'm hoping will be good for at least 170k ppd.

 

[critical]

You should get two extra fans and set them uyp for push/pull on the Xigmatek's... (slowest ones pushing faster ones pulling)

 

[riotcity76]

I'll definitely try that to see if it improves anything, but I have a feeling it's a bigger problem than that. The heatsinks themselves aren't that hot, and as soon as I start F@H the temps jump on the cpus at least 10 degrees within a second and keep climbing rapidly. To me it seems like the Xigmateks just aren't making proper contact with the heatspreader of the cpus...but I've remounted them and don't see how I could change anything. What I really want to do is throw my H50 on the 2nd cpu to see if it improves the temps. I have a feeling it will be a substantial upgrade...

 

[riotcity76]

I think I figured it out - the SR-2 comes with backplates already installed which was preventing the Xigmateks from making complete contact with the cpu when I had the Xigmatek backplate over top. See this thread for an idea of what I'm talking about.

I'm now using only the SR-2 backplate for both CPUs. CPU 0 still has the Xigmatek and CPU 1 has a newly bought Corsair H60 to try to keep temps under control. So far it's made a BIG difference. I'm at 3.4ghz running F@H (all cores at 100%) and all cores are in the 60s. I'm now tweaking the OC and voltage to get the most from it but Goliath finally seems to be under control

I'll try to get some pics up of the new setup in the next few days. It looks a bit strange with one H60 and one Xigmatek but it works.

Final PPD numbers will also be coming soon.

 

[BoS]

Jealous.

 

[riotcity76]

I'm now at 3.6ghz (190 x 19 w/ turbo enabled). It's not quite F@H stable, but I'm getting there. I just need to continue tweaking voltage. The good news is I've got some room to play with. I'm at 1.28 vcore on both CPUs. I'd like to keep it under 1.3 so I have a couple notches in the bios to play with before I get to that.

A little disappointing given that I seemed to be pretty stable at 3.4 (180 x 19) at only 1.25vcore. But not a huge problem. Final pictures will come as soon as it's folding stable.

 

[hmmblah]

Looks awesome. I would love to tinker with a kit like that. Soooo jealous.