Well as some of may know I've been working on a SR-2 based system, the last of the parts arrived last week so at the weekend I managed to complete the build, I've added some pics below, not the best quality as they are off my phone as I couldn't find my camera, I'll add some more when I get chance. The system uses 2 x Xeon X5670 processors with Coolermaster V6GT cooling them, the build went ok only problems I had was lack of space round the CPU sockets to install the mounting plates for the HSF, I ended up having to modify them before they would fit. The board is lot bigger than it looks in the pictures, even in a Lian Li PC80 case which isn't small it's a tight fit! Heat! This system generates some serious heat, I've had to run the system at stock speeds for now as overclocked it was getting too hot for my liking running 24/7, I've got some work to do on the cooling system which I'm hoping will bring the temps down so I can run overclocked again. Due to this I haven't tried folding on the GPU's yet so i'm not sure what effect they have on the SMP PPD yet, but will report back later. On to the folding performance which we're most interested in, as you can see below it's a beast!, results are from HFM on Project 2686: @ 4.2Ghz - 130,000 PPD @ 4.0Ghz - 120,000 PPD @ 3.2Ghz - 90,000 PPD After I've sorted the cooling I need to try some different overclocks see which is best PPD vs heat etc and to see what impact the GPU folding has on the SMP PPD to see if it's worth folding on both or not. I've only managed to snag two bigadv workunits since it's been setup and the PPD on the standard wu's isn't anywhere near as good, I'm hoping the lack of bigadv is only temporary. Dave
watercool the CPU's? Would be awesome, constant 4.2 on both chips. Very nice looking rig mate, worth the money?
I suggest putting it center place in your living room this winter. it will heat the whole family. I also would like to know if it was worth the money. Do you intend to just fold on it or use it for other things.
Would love to type more and ask lots of questions, but have to go and get something to remove all the drool from my keyb. WOW what a rig.
Really nice Dave and thanks for taking the time to post the pics A few questions: What settings did you change from stock to achieve the 4.0 and 4.2 OCs? Which memory did you go with and what speed/timings are you running it at? What are the black modules/drives between the board and the drive cages at the top of photo 2? I don't recognise them from the standard P80. What method did you use, if any, for securing the SR-2 to the P80 where the standoffs don't line up? Were the ppd scores with NUMA turned off or on? Sorry, maybe more than a few but you'll have to forgive me, I get all excited about shiney new tech
Would love to watercool it but I don't have any experience with water cooling and this isn't the rig to learn on, might try one of my other machines and then once confident water cool the SR-2. Also there's not much room left in the case so I might struggle to fit the water cooling kit in. To me it's well worth the money, so far it just rips through any task and should last me a good while as it's now my main machine, it's a bit OTT but that's me all over lol.
Awesome Rig Dave!! I too would be interested in the questions that Phoenicis asked Also those PPD scores were they just the CPU's or the 2 GPUs as well? (what GPUs are they BTW?) Oh and jealous me? Never! Dear santa......
^ The scores are for Project 2686 - which is one of the -Bigadv work units, so it may be CPU only... He should run the GFX too and see what the highest total ppd achievable is (although heat may be an issue, I assume the heat he refers to is only from CPU folding...) How long is it taking to do a -bigadv unit Dave? All the best PB -sidenote- do you know that if you were to complete the -bigadv work unit in 2h50min you would acquire the highest score (currently) possible - a maximum 250,000 for 1 WU
To answer the questions: What settings did you change from stock to achieve the 4.0 and 4.2 OCs? - Just upped the base clock and increased the core voltage & IOH/ICH voltage. Which memory did you go with and what speed/timings are you running it at? - I'm using ECC Memory as I valued the reliability over max overclock so it's running at stock speeds/timings. What are the black modules/drives between the board and the drive cages at the top of photo 2? I don't recognise them from the standard P80. - They are SATA Hot Swap caddies. What method did you use, if any, for securing the SR-2 to the P80 where the standoffs don't line up? Just used the plastic stand offs that came with the board. Were the ppd scores with NUMA turned off or on? - PPD was with NUMA on, I haven't had to chance to try with it off yet. Also scores above are just the SMP client running bigadv. I've sorted the cooling out now and turned the AC up which has helped a lot, I've now got it running at 3.8Ghz and 2x 460GTX folding, heat is ok and after a fair amount of trial and error I've got them folding and using one of the virtual cores so has only impacted the SMP client by about 5,000 PPD so is a net gain. It's currently got a 2684 WU which seems to be a lot slower but I'm not that familiar with bigadv so not sure if it's normal?
Many thanks for the responses and I'm glad that heat is going in the right direction. It's normal. The 2684 was the first bigadv to arrive on Windows and is the slowest by far. Next came the 2685 (much faster), then the 2686 (faster again) and then the 2692 (slightly faster again) which was a Windows port of the Linux 2682 wu. A 2692 can run almost twice as fast as a 2684. You've done well to only have a 5K slowdown with the introduction of 2 Fermi GPUs. A word of caution in case you're running the -smp 23 flag to allow them their own core away from the bigadv. There's a known bug that causes this to EUE certain standard wus that you're bound to encounter inbetween bigadv wus. If you're running on all cores please completely disregard this cautionary note Any further details on the settings/values used to achieve the OCs mentioned would be really interesting. They're pretty impressive OCs straight out of the gate
Thanks for the info, I am running -smp 23 as it was the only way to stop it affecting the SMP client too much, is there any work around for the bug? As for the overclock settings, at it's current 3.8Ghz IOH/ICH is set at 1.35V and VCore at 1.25V everything else at standard, for 4.0Ghz I used the same settings but I needed 1.3V VCore so temps were a lot warmer, I can't remember the settings used on 4.2Ghz off the top of my head I'd have to check, also not sure if it was 100% stable as I only ran it for a couple of hours due to the heat.
Awesome rig DG, do you have a feel how much juice it pulls from the mains when folding? I'm really interested in PPD/Watt
I've no idea to be honest, I have no way of measuring. It has a 1200W Power Supply but I don't think it's maxed out. The bit-tech review has some power figures if that helps at all?
Fantastic build mate.... If you dont want to watercool, have a play with the corsair H70, fantastic cooler and lets you "dip your toe" in I think it would look ace on that board... Cracking though really really good...
Thanks for the details, that doesn't seem a lot of vcore for this board. Sounds like you've got some good chips with plenty of potential. I'm not aware of a workaround for the -smp 23 issue unfortunately. A thread discussing it, with comment from Kasson, is here. Based on testing carried out by a member over at the [H] forum, I believe that the next safe number down from 24 is 20 or 21 (can't remember which). This was too much of a hit on ppd so I think he ended up moving his GPUs to another rig pending resolution of the problem. Not sure what impact the bug currently has on the dog slow 670x wus. I mention this only because that's all I seem to getting at the moment
The deed is done You weren't kidding about temps Dave. Dare not go higher than 4GHz for now. In a closed case, using H70s and without any GPUs running, the chips are sitting at about 70 degrees C. With the above OC the rig's pulling between 510-545w from the wall while folding bigadv.
