Good news and bad news.

Stan_Lite

Stan_Lite

Stan_Lite

Man of Honour
Man of Honour
Joined
27 Apr 2004
Posts
107,330
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In bed with your sister
First the good news.

I finished my second Bigadv WU on the SR-2 a couple of hours ago and now that I'm using the correct passkey, I got my points \o/. Also, I've finally made a start on getting the GPUs watercooled. I got the two 670s for the server blocked up and installed on Saturday, leak tested and started them running. I wasn't 100% happy with the OC but it was late and I was quite drunk so I set them going and was going to sort it out in the morning.

This is where the bad news comes in.
When I got up in the morning, there was a pool of water on the floor under the rig. The PC was still running as the CPU isn't watercooled, only the GPUs. One of the hoses had come off the barb. Obviously the loop was dry and the screen was blank. I switched it off, got it all dried up and tried again but one card is completely fried and the other works but only at 2D speeds :(

I've built several systems using 7/16" hose on 1/2" barbs without clamps with no issues. This is the first one that has failed. Needless to say I'll be putting clamps on from now on.

I'm not going to replace them for now as this project has already cost me a lot more than I intended. I've ordered a cheapo card to get it working as a media server again for now and will replace the damaged cards some time in the future.

I still have the other two rigs to do. The last bits I need should be arriving tomorrow so I'll get started on them. I'm watercooling the other two 670s and putting them in the old gaming rig; which will now be a dedicated Folding rig. I'm building a new gaming rig with some stuff I already had and a few new bits and pieces. I'll be watercooling the two 690s and putting them in there. I'll update this thread with progress when there is any (maybe then ozaudio will stop bloody emailing me asking why my PPD is down :p).

The SR-2 has picked up a P8105 which is running with a TPF of 18 mins at the moment; giving an estimated PPD of 222,000 :cool:

Actually, just checked and my stuff won't be arriving tomorrow - it's still showing as "Printed in our warehouse" :(
 
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Latest update.

Got the GPUs and CPU swapped out in the current gaming rig yesterday and got the watercooling installed and leak tested. All good and been Folding overnight. Only managed the same OC as when the two 670s were air cooled but it's a lot quieter - not quiet enough though. I never noticed because the GPU fans were so noisy but the golf ball fans I have on the rad are far from quiet. I bought plenty of gentle typhoons so I'll swap them out for a couple of those, hopefully that will quieten it down as it will be in the living room.
I wanted to use the 3770K out of there for the new gaming rig so I got a cheapo i3 3220 as I don't intend running a CPU client. They're all cooled from one slimline 240 rad so the temps aren't super low but low enough (CPU ~60C and GPUs about the same).

Time for a bit of a tidy up and then get started on the new gaming rig. I'll be taking my time over this to get it right as there are a couple of potentially tricky bits involved.
 
More bad news :(

I've managed to knacker the motherboard for the new gaming rig. Got it all together and fired her up but it wouldn't boot. Kept getting error code 55 on the MB (Memory not installed). Tried various memory combinations to no avail so I did a bit of Googling and the general consensus was that it was caused by bent pins on the CPU socket. Took it all apart and got the magnifying glass out and sure enough, there were bent pins. I straightened them up as best I could and fired it up again. I managed to get it to boot but only 2 RAM slots were available and they were next to each other and would only work in single channel. It would also only detect one of the 690s and the CPU was overheating badly.

I can't afford to replace it just now so it's gone on the back burner. I don't want to be without a gaming rig and I don't want the 690s sitting idle so I've switched the SR-2 back to windows and bunged them in there. All is working well except that I can't get any OC on the 690s. They work perfectly fine at stock but as soon as I try any sort of OC on them, the PC crashes with a blue screen. At least it's working.

I'll be keeping the current setup for the foreseeable future as I'm not spending any more money on it until I've got my credit cards cleared - which will take a while.

Between the SR-2 gaming rig with the 2 690s and the old gaming rig with the 2 670s still surviving, HFM is estimating 538,000 PPD. That'll have to do for now - at least it'll hold off ozaudio :p
 
Bit of an update. I've decided to keep the SR-2 with the 690s as my gaming rig so I'm going to make it permanent. Up until now, I was cooling the 690s with a radiator outside the case on a separate loop. I'm now going to put everything on a single loop and mount a second radiator in the front of the case. I've got it all stripped down but I've decided to make a few slight alterations so I've ordered a few bits and pieces to make a proper job of it. I should hopefully be finished in a few days, depending on deliveries but, in the meantime, my output will be down considerably. I'll post up some pics when I get her finished.
 
Got it mostly together and the loop built. Just leak testing now and waiting for all the air to get out of the loop. I'm using one of those bay res/pump combos. Excellent piece of kit but badly designed - the inlet for the res shoots the water (and any air bubbles) straight at the pump inlet meaning most of the air bubbles keep getting recirculated and it takes ages to get all the air out of the loop :rolleyes:

Once I'm happy with the loop, I just have to tidy up the cabling at the back and then I can start overclocking and testing.

I think I may have worked out why I couldn't get the 690s to overclock before (mentioned above). The PCI-E cables for the NEX1500 PSU have 2 plugs on each one. I was using one cable to power each card. When I checked the specifications for the PSU, the 12V rails are rated at 20A (240W) and have a trip limit of 25A (300W). A 690 at stock will draw 300W at full tilt and more if you increase the power limit and overclock them. I suspect I was overloading the 12V rails and tripping the PSU. I have set it up to use 2 separate cables for each 690 now - hopefully that will allow me to get a decent OC on them.
 
Got her built back up and now setting up for gaming and Folding. Finished overclocking and now testing for stability - so far so good, all stable and temps at perfectly acceptable maximums. running Prime95 small FFTs and Unigine heaven at the same time. CPU temp maxing out at about 46C and CPUs at about 67C. Got a pretty decent OC on the CPUs - running at 4.0GHz (50% OC). 690s are a huge disappointment though. Best stable OC is +45 on GPU, that's 957MHz with a boost of 1084MHz :(

Never mind, here are some pics:

Side on - check out the neat GPU cabling :cool: Tubing is XSPC 13/19mm and fittings are all monsoon. The monsoon fittings look really good but are a bit of a pain; you need to tighten as many as you can before installing as it's really difficult getting into tight spots with the tightening tool.

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Top rad - Alphacool NexXxoS UT60 Full Copper 360mm with 1450 rpm Gentle Typhoons in push pull configuration. You can just about get a fag paper between the bottom fans and the RAM - I've tried it :p

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Front rad from the side - EK Coolstream XTX240 with the same fan configuration as the top rad.

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CPUs - 2X X5650 Xeons with Koolance waterblocks. Oc'd to 4.0GHz

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GPUs - 2X GTX 690s in quad SLI with EK waterblocks. Paltry OC of 957 (1084) gpu and 6480 mem.

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Cabling at the back - about as neat as I can make it. The SSD isn't there now. I've come up with another plan for that and will update when all is complete.

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Front on. 2X Akasa fan controllers, cheapo DVD-RW and XSPC bay-res/pump combo with a D5 pump. Also showing front view of 240 rad.

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With the side panel on. I hate the side panel, it's fugly. Might consider modding it in the future.

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That's all for now. As I said, I'm currently setting up and benching, will update again when everything is finished. I also need to solder the power switch. I managed to pull one of the wires off when I was building it (clumsy sod). I've currently got the reset switch wired up as the power switch until I can find someone with a soldering iron I can borrow (not buying one to fix one switch as it will probably never get used again).
 
Been running for a couple of days now and all appears well. Took a screen clip. Happy with temps and ppd is good. With the 7810 WUS I'm getting just now, I'm getting about 580,000 between this and the other rig in the living room (~530,000 with 8900 WUs) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9786118/HFM/summary.html.

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I'll catch my Bigstan account in a couple of days. Not sure what I'll do after that. Bit bored with Folding now but I still want to do something. I'm thinking I might leave the other rig on Folding and do something else with the SR-2. Any suggestions for other projects which would make use of dual Xeons and 4 GPUs? I'd prefer projects that offer some tangible benefit to humanity rather than stuff like SETI.
 
MGP said:
And there was me thinking the real challenge for you would be keeping both accounts in front of me.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be able to do that without buying moar hardwarez anyway.

I've left the other rig on folding - currently around 170k PPD (still enough to keep me in top 5 for PPD in the team). Now running GPUgrid and Rosetta on the SR-2. Had a bit of bother last night, the Nvidia drivers kept crashing and the PC was freezing. I remembered that the R331 drivers didn't play nice with Folding so I rolled them back again to 327.23 not long ago and all appears to be well. Looks like the R331 drivers on the 690 are not suitable for DC projects :(
No idea what my RAC will be, will have to wait a bit.
 
.......... aaaand, it's all gone horribly wrong again. I was happy with the way things were going so I decided to replace the soldered switch and close the case up. Did that and tried a bit of overclocking on the CPUs (I'd had them on stock while I was trying out the BOINC projects). I couldn't get a stable OC at the same settings as before so tried different settings. Nothing worked so I set it back to stock and it's blue screening even at stock now :confused:

I've unplugged the soldered switch again, in case it was shorting or something but no change. I've set memtest running and will leave it overnight. I've had enough for now and I'm busy tomorrow. I may get something done with it over the weekend If I can be bothered. To be honest, I've very nearly had it with this bloody thing :mad:
 
Stan_Lite said:
.......... aaaand, it's all gone horribly wrong again. I was happy with the way things were going so I decided to replace the soldered switch and close the case up. Did that and tried a bit of overclocking on the CPUs (I'd had them on stock while I was trying out the BOINC projects). I couldn't get a stable OC at the same settings as before so tried different settings. Nothing worked so I set it back to stock and it's blue screening even at stock now :confused:

I've unplugged the soldered switch again, in case it was shorting or something but no change. I've set memtest running and will leave it overnight. I've had enough for now and I'm busy tomorrow. I may get something done with it over the weekend If I can be bothered. To be honest, I've very nearly had it with this bloody thing :mad:
Click to expand...

Well, I've narrowed it down to a windows update. A system restore stops the blue screens but, as soon as I reboot the PC, it re-installs itself and, if I shut down the PC with the 'shut down and install updates' button, it all goes Pete Tong again - even if I switch off automatic updates. If I had an earlier restore point, that might help but I don't. I need to find out which update it is and a way to stop it installing itself.

I'm off out in about an hour so I'll look into it when I get back.
 
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