NZXT Phantom Renderfarm

[Shademaster]

Hey Guys!

I am building 3 new systems for my 3D animation renderfarm at the moment:

The black one is my workstation with a XFX 4890 with Musashi cooler (most excellent cooler). The white one is one of the renderslaves. The Red one will be here tomorow so I can start building on that this weekend!

All my systems are:

Core i7 970 at 4.2 Ghz, rendering 24/7

12 GB of memory (corsair)

Gigabyte UD-5 motherboards

Spinpoint F1 103SJ HD

Corsair HX850 PSU

Corsair H50 for the CPU.

Nexus 120mm fans for the case

Noctia NFP 120mm x2 for the H50

Coolermaster 200mm for the sidepanel

I currently have 5 of these systems. 3 of those will be build in the NZXT cases. Eventually I will have to expand my farm to 9 computers total. I am thinking all NZXT Phantom cases

.

My aim is to eventually upgrade these machines to GPU rendering workhorses, hence the Full tower outfit and big PSU.

A note about airflow, I have been experimenting a LOT with proper airflow. With pure trial and error I managed to get my black setup absolutely quiet (quieter than a MacPro) with a very cool case temp and almost all fans on lowest setting. Putting the H50 radiator in the 5.25 bays has helped tremendously in keeping the hot air from the Motherboard and GPU. This way my GPU keeps very low in temp, my motherboard get's more than enough cooling under the highest overclocks and my CPU keeps just as cool as if I mounted the radiator the back of the case set on intake. Win win right?

The white one is getting new fans installed today and the black one will have it's HD trays removes and replaced with ultra silent fans.

Thanks a lot for your replies!

Yours,

Daan

 

[ionicle]

wow thats a powerhouse!

please forgive the n00b question

but what is rendering

and why does it need such insane power?

 

[alienware]

3D rendering, animation rendering. Guzzles power. Needs lots of ram.

Nice rigs there

Always made me laugh how FF means OK on the LED segs. I used to call it "F***ing fine" when I had my DFI

 

[Shademaster]

Thanks guys.

They are rendering stuff like this:

(everything is 100% CG)

This requires some serious rendering muscle to pull of in Animations, let's just say I will never ever have enough computing power. There is always something that can drive up rendertimes to the months or years if you want.

 

[stevenwright6379]

if i needed this much power i would of looked into having SR-2 motherboards

nice systems though the 970 part makes me jelous

 

[Shademaster]

if i needed this much power i would of looked into having SR-2 motherboards

nice systems though the 970 part makes me jelous

Oh certainly. A SR-2 with 2 x5650's is next

.

The 970's have been performing exceptionally well. I managed to OC one of them to 4.8 Ghz. I set them to 4.2 and a lower vcore to keep them 24/7 safe.

 

[ionicle]

jeez, are you sure they're not just photo's? they look real ..

 

[Shademaster]

jeez, are you sure they're not just photo's? they look real ..

In the first tree pic you can see the ground is white. I forgot to make it a natural texture and left it default white

.

 

[ionicle]

if im honest, i didnt even notice

lol

 

[Brooksie]

Amazing skills, awesome photos of the rig aswell, any photoshop to them or just pure camera skills?

 

[Shademaster]

Amazing skills, awesome photos of the rig aswell, any photoshop to them or just pure camera skills?

Thanks man,

Just raw import and a little desaturate over some images to pull out the colors.

Trick is to shoot at ISO 100 on a tripod, that way you don't need a flash. The shot's of the black one use shutterspeeds of 30 seconds or something

.

 

[stevenwright6379]

Oh certainly. A SR-2 with 2 x5650's is next

.

The 970's have been performing exceptionally well. I managed to OC one of them to 4.8 Ghz. I set them to 4.2 and a lower vcore to keep them 24/7 safe.

looking forward to that

 

[Shademaster]

looking forward to that

I am wondering though, do you or anybody here now of a case that fits the SR-2 well? SO far I have only been able to find 2 cases or something. I am not against a little modding to get the job done

.

 

[AMDFTW]

any case that has room for E-ATX i beleve

the CM ATCS 840

corsair 700d

silverstone Temjin TJ07

lian li PC-P80

Silverstone TJ09

 

[killablade]

any case that has room for E-ATX i beleve

the CM ATCS 840

corsair 700d

silverstone Temjin TJ07

lian li PC-P80

Silverstone TJ09

No mate the SR-2 has XL-ATX so you cant use it with all of those cases

Found a sticky on the EVGA forums that lists the cases that will allow full use of it though

* Lian Li PC-V2120

* Mountain Mods U2-UFO, Extended U2-UFO, Ascension, Extended Ascension, Pinnacle 18 or Pinnacle 24 with HPTX tray assembly

* Lian Li PC-P80

* Danger Den Black-Series - LDR - Tower 29

* LittleDevil PC-V10

You can however mod some cases to fit the SR2. I beleive the Corsair 800D is one of them. I also think they released a special ATCS 840 SR-2 edition that can fit the SR-2.

 

[AMDFTW]

ahh feck me it must be big.

i would get the ATCS version then

or the armoursuit PC80

 

[stevenwright6379]

good thing to do is go on youtube and look for SR-2 builds and see what people are using

@ AMDFTW this is the SR-2

 

[AMDFTW]

lol yer i no what it is dude.

but i though it was E-ATX

 

[alienware]

EVGA's site has recommendations on what case to use. IIRC this board is bigger than EATX. It also needs a lot of cooling and if you are even thinking about overclocking it then the chip cooler on the board needs upgrading.

 

[Shademaster]

EVGA's site has recommendations on what case to use. IIRC this board is bigger than EATX. It also needs a lot of cooling and if you are even thinking about overclocking it then the chip cooler on the board needs upgrading.

Yea I saw some youtube rigs that had a very cool looking boxy setup that was from I believe the DangerDen (could be wrong). I was just wondering if there are normal Full Tower sized cases like the 600d that fit it. Means I can keep the cost down on the case.

I was thinking of fitting 2x H70's to the motherboard and fitting them to the top part of the 800d. The 800d has 3 120mm fan slots so that means I can create a nice venting system at the top to keep temps down.

Anyone got any ideas about cooling this beast except for a watercooling loop?

I am actually thinking about designing a case completely from scratch from this thing. A bit in Thermaltake Level 10 style

.