Hopefully I'm in the right place

[JDub]

Hello OC3D! :wavey:

I am the "Multimedia Specialist" for a large video, light and sound rental & staging company based in the Midwest of the US. We do large, mostly corporate and National Association, live events all over the US.

We've been in business 53 years and I've been here for 20 of those.

I mostly create content for our client's live events (national conferences, sales and marketing meetings, awards shows, etc.) And when I'm not doing that, I oversee our computer rental department.

I'm putting together a new rig for content creation based around Adobe CS6 (video editing in Premiere, After Effects animations, transcoding to various CODECs requested by clients, etc.)

This, unfortunately, will be a 0% gaming rig with zero overclocking.

So, why am I here?

Quiet cooling for high end components.

I intend to water cool this new rig to keep a pair of E5-2687W Xeons and a pair of GTX580s at decent temps while being as SILENT as possible.

In my searching, I don't think I can air cool these two CPUs and two GPUs on an Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard as quietly as I can with water.

But that's why I'm here.

To pick your brains. :stickpoke:

I believe this is still the right place to be, even though I'm not overclocking.

Anyway, here I am.

Thanks in advance. :notworthy:

-JDub
:noobsign:

 

[tinytomlogan]

Welcome fella, the CPU's wont and dont get hot at all. Sadly there are NO overclocking options on them though.

580's can be quite warm though so you will need a decent rad for that, you need to choose your case first though......

 

[JDub]

Wow! An immediate response from the "big guy" himself!

Thanks Tom, I am truly not worthy.

I don't intend to OC them (especially since I can't, lol) I just want to pump enough water through some 9fpi radiators to keep everything cool with fans turning as slowly and silently as possible.

The case I'm 98% set on is the NZXT Switch 810 (based, in large part, to your excellent reviews)

I've done a mock-up of sorts with my idea thus far.

 

[airdeano]

mmm i like the plan, but i don't think those Apogee drives will "suck" water from
the reservoir as shown in the diagram, especailly mounted so low. unless the
system is 100% bled of air, then it's work on a hydraulic principal. but with the
front 240 inverted, air will surely collect in the up-ended tank.

airdeano

 

[JDub]

Thanks for jumping in.

I was afraid of that. My hope was that the water level would reach the Apogee Drives since the fill line was higher. I thought I could keep the fill line full enough.

So my only option is a bay res in the top bay?

 

[airdeano]

yeppers.. but with the SR1 thickness and fans you are prolly going to only have
a single bay res and personally, that'd wreck the look..
just gotta keep the res close to the pump to prevent a dry start or air pocket.

if you'd use a MPC35x pump on a bitspower top mounted along with the tube res
(like Tom's ORCA tribute) and use 2 standard CPU waterblocks. now you can roll
with the plan.

a pair of Raystorm CPU blocks (for dressyness) or RASA blocks, bitspower top
and tube res adapter, and either the D5 or MPC35x pumps will flow just fine
with the dual CPU/GPU blocks and dual radiators.

airdeano

 

[JDub]

The funny thing is, In my original design, I had the Raystorm blocks but I was uncertain if a single pump would cover all of the 90 degree turns I was envisioning. plus, since this will be a 24/7/365 machine that I will often walk away from and leave rendering, I was interested in dual pumps for safety. plus I thought the ADii's looked kinda cool But that's not of primary concern.

If I might ask, do you think that a MCP35X2 would fit under that res where it is? Next to that giant power supply?

If so, then that's how I'll go.

I know I should just get the big pieces in the case and measure before I order the pumps/blocks. But I have a tendency to research the snot out of something before I jump in.

I'm this close [holds fingers really close together] to ordering the big chunks of this design. I just like to have it all in my head before I pull the trigger.


Thanks for your input.

 

[airdeano]

The funny thing is, In my original design, I had the Raystorm blocks but I was uncertain if a single pump would cover all of the 90 degree turns I was envisioning. plus, since this will be a 24/7/365 machine that I will often walk away from and leave rendering, I was interested in dual pumps for safety. plus I thought the ADii's looked kinda cool But that's not of primary concern.

the right single pump can, and that's be the 35x or D5.

If I might ask, do you think that a MCP35X2 would fit under that res where it is? Next to that giant power supply?

yes

airdeano

 

[JDub]

Thanks a ton.

One last question. at least for now.

Am I correct in assuming that water cooling the way i'm planning, should result in a quieter rig than I could achieve with those CPUs and a pair of GTX580s on that motherboard using "traditional" air cooling methods?

Thanks again.

 

[Excalabur50]

G'day Welcome to the forums.

 

[Goldskis45]

If its not gaming at all It would probably be worth it to go Quadro or Firepro?

 

[JDub]

If its not gaming at all It would probably be worth it to go Quadro or Firepro?

Thanks for the reply,

I'm building this to run Adobe CS6 software 98% of the time. (ie. no Smoke, no 3DS Max, no Maya, etc.) I used to edit on Avid but I'm now full into Adobe.

Given this, I was under the impression that OpenCL support for Premiere's MPE was only for Mac's and I'm fairly certain that After Effects' Ray-traced 3D engine is CUDA only, so that's why no AMD cards for me.

As far as Quadro vs GTX goes and unless I'm mistaken, a CUDA core is a CUDA core and GTX cards benchmark (assuming PPBM is a reasonable benchmarking tool) as high and in some cases higher than their Quadro brothers (sisters?).

So as long as the above is true, then it comes down to cost per CUDA core.

and since a Quadro 6000 (which is based on the GeForce 400 series) has 448 CUDA Cores and cost $3,700 and a GTX 580 3GB (which is based on the GeForce 500 series) has 512 CUDA Cores and cost $575, I'm going with the GTX.

Now it's arguable that the Quadro is more rugged, stable, reliable, etc. But at nearly 6 1/2 times the price, imo, that's too much $$

Sorry I was so long winded about this, but I was struggling with the Quadro/GTX thing myself in the beginning and nearly went blind researching it. This is just my conclusion.

 

[airdeano]

Thanks a ton.

Am I correct in assuming that water cooling the way i'm planning, should result in a quieter rig than I could achieve with those CPUs and a pair of GTX580s on that motherboard using "traditional" air cooling methods?

Thanks again.

im gunna say yes. but, when you are loading up the GPU(s) this is when the
"quiet" happens. from my benching and overclocking 580(s) in SLI i was able
to stretch the power and achive faster renders with CS2 and 4. but the air
coolers were kicked in 75-80% making some racket. put 'em under water
cooling and still had the power, less temperatures and less loaded fan noise.
as for the CPU.. doubt you'll really tell and power gain, but the water-cooling
is also about vanity... sure, you could WC the GPU, but that would look
lope-sided so include the CPU(s) in the reindeer games, too.

airdeano

 

[JDub]

but the water-cooling
is also about vanity...

LOL, looking badass is definitely a giant plus!

But if someone can tell me I can cool this quieter with just heatsinks and fans, then I'm going to listen.

I looked at cards like the Gainward and at least one other that I can't recall, but it appears that I can't get them here in the states (prolly some UL listing BS) and I'm still not sure they would be quiter.

This would be my first WC build (not counting the self contained solutions) and I'm looking forward to the challenge.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't secretly rooting for water cooling since it would look beast in the edit suite! :rock:

Thanks for the info.

 

[Goldskis45]

Thanks for the reply,

I'm building this to run Adobe CS6 software 98% of the time. (ie. no Smoke, no 3DS Max, no Maya, etc.) I used to edit on Avid but I'm now full into Adobe.

Given this, I was under the impression that OpenCL support for Premiere's MPE was only for Mac's and I'm fairly certain that After Effects' Ray-traced 3D engine is CUDA only, so that's why no AMD cards for me.

As far as Quadro vs GTX goes and unless I'm mistaken, a CUDA core is a CUDA core and GTX cards benchmark (assuming PPBM is a reasonable benchmarking tool) as high and in some cases higher than their Quadro brothers (sisters?).

So as long as the above is true, then it comes down to cost per CUDA core.

and since a Quadro 6000 (which is based on the GeForce 400 series) has 448 CUDA Cores and cost $3,700 and a GTX 580 3GB (which is based on the GeForce 500 series) has 512 CUDA Cores and cost $575, I'm going with the GTX.

Now it's arguable that the Quadro is more rugged, stable, reliable, etc. But at nearly 6 1/2 times the price, imo, that's too much $$

Sorry I was so long winded about this, but I was struggling with the Quadro/GTX thing myself in the beginning and nearly went blind researching it. This is just my conclusion.

The cost is like that because of the drivers and what the cards "goals" are.
Here is the short and sweet
GTXs are designed to just pump out frames for the most part at whatever the cost.
Quadros are designed to be able to handle many many more polygons at once and keep a somewhat constant frame rate (as far as display goes).
Thus for doing things in CS6 Quadros generally way outperform GTXs.

In the cuda requirement area of that program I'm not very versed so If AMDs really don't apply to what you are looking for it would be great if someone piped in to yay or ney it...

If a Quadro 6000 is in your budget, But it ends up that AMDs will work I would highly recomend a Firepro W9000... Overall I see it proforming better than a 6000 plus it can be CrossFired... there are only 6 SLI supported motherboards for Quadros... So Upgrade-ability is something I always look at.

EDIT: I found a page that might be of some use to you, I'll PM it to you. Saddly you wont be able to PM me back if it helped or not because of post minimums. But give me a shout out if it pertains to your situation.

 

[airdeano]

LOL, looking badass is definitely a giant plus!

I looked at cards like the Gainward and at least one other that I can't recall, but it appears that I can't get them here in the states (prolly some UL listing BS) and I'm still not sure they would be quiter.

verify with block manufactures that said cards actually have a block avalable.
im my quest, pretty much a gtx580 reference card is pretty much the only
cards to put under water, without major surgery or some uni-block install.
i ended up using EVGA 015-P3-1582 GTX580 SuperClock and finally had a
cool over clock (787 to 920) with only a small voltage bump. the temps were
49°-58° (depending on ambient) on 3hr Heaven benchmark. and when
hitching vids 38°-42°. when appling after effects, just south of 50°. cut
render times and upped productivity on monster length vids.

airdeano

 

[Bang]

Welcome to the forums mate.