Hi guys, Just looking for a little advice here. I'm currently in the process of building my new workstation. I've already bought all components listed below and am in the assembly and test phase of the build. I've encountered a few issues and wonder if some of you might be able to help point me in the right direction Current specs: ASUS Z10PE-D16 WS, Corsair Obsidian 900D, Corsair AX1200i + CX600M PSUs, 2x Xeon E5-2620 v3, 4x 16GB Crucial DDR4-2133 ECC Registered (12 slots free), 2x EK Supreme LTX waterblocks, Independent cooling loops for CPU and GPUs, 3x EVGA GeForce GTX 980Ti SC+, 3x EK-FC Titan X waterblocks, 512GB Samsung 950 Pro NVMe SSD (boot/OS - possibly adding a second in future on a PCIe to M.2 adapter) 12x 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD (software RAID-0 - scratch/games), LSI SAS 9211-8i HBA, Corsair fans used throughout, LG BD-RE drive. The CPUs are cooled through a Black Ice GTX 360mm rad with push-pull fans. The GPUs are going to be cooled through a pair of 240mm rads. XSPC non-conductive coolant used in both loops. XSPC 1/2" ID compression fittings, XSPC 1/2" ID hose, XSPC dual pump bay res, 2x Laing DDC pumps (high performance/high flow models - I forget precisely which one) OS is Windows 10 Pro x64 I'm also contemplating a new 10GbE NIC, but haven't made up my mind which one yet. Potentially the Intel X540-T2. The current issues I'm facing are power-related. When powering up the system with all three GPUs installed, I get a series of beeps indicating no VGA. When I remove one of the GPUs and run with two, I get a message during POST saying that the board experienced a power surge on last boot. The system is stable with two GPUs installed, including when running 3DMark Advanced benchmarks. I originally tried building this with just the AX1200i PSU installed, then added the CX600M (which I grabbed from an old ITX build I no longer use) via a PS_ON splitter. This does not seem to have helped. I'm now thinking that I need a beefier PSU to drive this beast. Power consumption calculations I've done online indicate that the system draw will be around 1700-ish Watts, which is obviously a little higher than the 1200W output of the AXi. Any tips? Thanks, Sarah
Some quick and dirty calculations have my numbers closer to 1000W, and that would be 100% load on everything, which you wouldn't see even a third of at start-up. Have you tested each 980 and the PCIe slot they plug into? The motherboard product page mentions q-code logger and dr. power features, have you looked into trying to diagnose the problem with those? Edit: Also try using Corsair Link with a laptop to monitor the power usage at bootup.
Thanks for the tips! I checked it again with each card installed individually, then adding one, using different slots, etc. I found that with one GPU in the first grey slot, and with a second GPU in the second grey slot, it would fail to POST. What was new this time around was that I could actually see the Q-Code display at the bottom of the board while it was booting. I noted that it beeped (8 short) whilst displaying "d4" on the LED readout. This correlates to "PCI resource allocation error. Out of resources". My immediate thought when seeing that was "Ah-hah! I spy a BIOS bug! Maybe there's been an update since I last tried using this machine?". It turned out I was right... and there had been several updates posted since this time last year when I last tried working on this beast. I used the BIOS Flashback feature to update the BIOS from a USB stick, and waited patiently for it to finish. The machine then had the audacity to work properly... with all three cards installed. Cheeky thing! Now that it's POSTing correctly with all three GPUs, I can begin the process of watercooling the cards and moving onto the next stages of the build Oh, and it's running perfectly on just the AX1200i now, for further insult to injury. I may need a beefier PSU in the future when I start absolutely hammering the system running F@H, but for now it should be fine. Thanks! Sarah
