Build Log: 100,000 PPD by 1/23/2011

[shoota]

Ok I'm taking my wife to palm beach when this is done to show her how minuscule my setup is lol!

[OldChap]

Hey trn where are you fella? Do you have those rather attractive midwest electricity prices? or is it that like me you could build an sr2 or two each year with what you pay out in elec bills

[trn]

Hey trn where are you fella? Do you have those rather attractive midwest electricity prices? or is it that like me you could build an sr2 or two each year with what you pay out in elec bills

Probably somewhere closer to mid-west than UK prices :

Here is the undecipherable breakdown of my last power bill:

Customer charge: $5.90 per month
Fuel: $71.60
(First 1000 kWh at $0.038570)
(Over 1000 kWh at $0.048570)
Non-fuel: $85.74
(First 1000 kWh at $0.046990)
(Over 1000 kWh at $0.056990)

No explination of what Fuel vs Non-fuel is and why Non-fuel is more expensive Maybe when FPL is on Non-fuel their plants are running on pixie dust and unicorn farts?? I know power companies have 24/7 plants and then they have power plants that they turn on when the usage is high, so in S-FL daytime when everyone is blasting their AC's.

Also those numbers are deceptive. I paid $190.42 and used 1680kWh, so it works out to $0.1133 per kWh which is below the national average iirc.



And Shoota; if you come by i'll make sure to hide my power bills

[shoota]

Great idea lol. My highest power bill since I started crunching was $226. She flipped when she saw that

[MrMojoZ]

No explination of what Fuel vs Non-fuel is and why Non-fuel is more expensive

Fuel costs are exactly that, non-Fuel costs are everything else they can charge you for + profits. In theory they don't make any money off the fuel costs, so they show up on your bill separately.

[nanoprobe]

Great idea lol. My highest power bill since I started crunching was $226. She flipped when she saw that

What would she do if she saw my last one? $371.48

[shoota]

cut your nuts off, just like Rise's would lol

[trn]

Project Update:

1) I showed off my total Linux Noob Skillz over here http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=258554

2) Last night I got another package; xmas seems to always come a few days after I browse newegg or ebay . 3 x58a-UD3R's more RAM and 7 Hard Drives And yesterday I also ordered more stuff from Newegg; i forget exactly what but 5 more x58a-UD3R's were in that order. After messing around with the existing UD3R rev 1.0's to great results I had placed the order expecting more of the same (and I caught a nice 10% promo.)

Well... These latest UD3R's are Rev 2.0 which looks like a nice improvement over 1.0, more VRM's are always nice... However... the 2.0 Bios totally hates my L5640 A0's!!! FA bios would lock up when entering the MIT screen and FB doesn't lock up, but if I change the Bclk by even 1mhz then the system doesn't post and I have to reset the CMOS

I'm not sure If the problem isn't fixable somehow; thats my afternoon project now. F5 bios from Rev 1.0 runs great... i'm i'm lucky F5 can run or Rev 2.0 or I can find an older equivelent (sounds like a longshot )

3) Anyways... heres a rough 'Before' shot of the area I plan to turn into my Farm:

Those are my rads in front of the window, and the area with all the crap I plan on installing six linear feet of metal shelfing to hold the rigs.


And heres where I plan to install the radiators: The plan is to build a shroud that covers the window and allows me to install the Rads's at like a 45 degree angle or maybe even mount the rads above the opening horizontal (or nearly horizontal.) So any blowing rain doesn't fry the fans. I plan to construct this out of wood, and spray it black. My hope is that the Rads will collect all the heat dump from the CPU's and I can exhaust it right out the window.


And my new racking: Bought 1 at target today; plan to buy one more. Two side by side for 6' of linear shelfing should give me enough space.


You might have noticed my current problem: in the space there is NO POWER!!! which is a slight setback since i'm looking to run over 10 computers and water cooling gear here... Well on the wall directly across from my future farm is my breaker box, i'm hoping an electrician can run two 240v lines from my breaker box through my attic and down the wall which will give me enough power plus overhead and a couple of percent more efficiency than 120v. Looks like enough free breaker spaces for two 240v lines to my untrained eye


4) I love my Kill-A-Watt... this thing is the best $20 I ever spent, I wish I bought more Anyways... heres two OC'd L5640's running off 1 450W UPS, The 4.0GHz 920 I used to have on here was eating 280W!!!


5) I'm a stats-page-whore, seems like updates just don't come fast enough

6) Heres my 'Work Truck' that always makes DIY projects a challange since I can hardly fit anything more than a few groceries in the trunk let alone large shelving, 2x4's or the likes.


And some other new toys that shows up recently: Armada ARG's and a set of Marker Jesters... These 90F+ 1,000,000% Humidity days are making me wish I was at Alta-Snowbird or JHole in Feb



Well thats all for now... time to go try and make these Rev 2.0 UD3R's work And I might get started on building my radiator shroud this weekend (3 day weekend w00t!) because getting the mass WC system up and running will be the biggest challenge (and getting an electrician in to install the lines.) It also seems that no radiator shop is open on the weekend; and Fallwind is right... at least the bigger Rad is going to need a professional cleaning and acid bath or some extreme measures. I can still hear grit and junk tumbling around inside! The Rads are also going to take some work to seal up all the unused holes for transmision cooling lines or whatver these things are and the large rad is missing the cap and the cap hole is bent out of shape anyways. I'm pretty handy with some epoxy and McGyvering small stuff like that.

[Plan.B]

Nice pics. Let me guess: you are single and male? Living the dream, my friend, living the dream. Crunch on.

[shoota]

Lol I was thinking the same thing. Trn ur my hero and I'm serious when you're done I will make a trip over there to see it. If you let me that is looking forward to the next update

[Otis11]

Dude... if you open for tours, even I might have to stop by and see this thing when it's done.


You're not that far from Texas...

Seriously some impressive plans - and you've already pulled the trigger. Best of luck and let us know if we can help.

[Jaco]

Sorry to hear the latest UD3R doesn't like your L5640's.
It's all in the bios imo. check here regularly for the lastest updates :
http://www.jzelectronic.de/jz2/index.php

As a workaround , try to overclock using Easytune6.
I always set the voltages in the bios and boot with whatever BCLK is possible.
Once in Windows , jack up the BCLK and save your profile.

[Movieman]

I've been wondering about those A0's..
I know B0's work with the UD3 but never tried A0's

[Jaco]

My Westmeres work fine in the UD3R rev 1.0 & 1.6.
It's the UD3R rev2.0 that's having issues apparently... immature bios imo

[trn]

I shot Dinos a PM and he said they would look into sorting it out; so i'm feeling confident that its only a matter of time before they are working. I plugged a retail 980x into my last UD3R rev 2.0 (still FA bios) I had on hand, went into bios first time... and the M.I.T. page crashed just the same as with my Westmere A0! I was a bit surprised... but yeah, looks like just immature Bios and I know Gigabyte will sort it out.

[jcool]

Sucks to hear about the Rev. 2 having issues (I have one lying here as well)... never had an issue like that with A0 step processors on any GB board before. Had some minor ones, like turbo mult etc but it always got fixed by GB.
So hang in there, I am positive it's just a bios issue that can and will be fixed

[trn]

Nice pics. Let me guess: you are single and male?

I just looked back at my last set of pics; pretty obvious

I've been wondering about those A0's..
I know B0's work with the UD3 but never tried A0's

Sorry to hear the latest UD3R doesn't like your L5640's.
It's all in the bios imo. check here regularly for the lastest updates :
http://www.jzelectronic.de/jz2/index.php

As a workaround , try to overclock using Easytune6.
I always set the voltages in the bios and boot with whatever BCLK is possible.
Once in Windows , jack up the BCLK and save your profile.

immature bios imo

Seems just to be plain bad immature bios's for the Rev 2.0 UD3R's at this point; even a retail 980x B1 has the same problems as my L5640's A0's. I have confidence that Gigabyte will work this out... and probably (hopefully quickly.) I know what settings are needed for my L5640 OC's (1.2Vcore under load and 1.32v bios QPI for 18x205.) For now I have other issues to sort out.


Todays Progress:

1) This morning I installed Archlinux on a 980x B1 to see if I had better CPU usage than my Debian install. Well... same problem, My Arch install bounces around just the same, right now even more than the Debian machine; no normal recurring errors and Debian stopped throwing segfaults. Total CPU usage averages ~93%. Maybe I need to look at setting up Schedtool to force Boinc task into a higher priority. Also, Arch didn't reconize my 980x properly, It only see's 8 threads . I'm waiting for some results from this machine to hit the stats pages so I can show off my 8 threaded 980x So... still more Linux work to be done. I think as Shoota said, if everything went so easy what would I have to do

2) Started to build my Radiator housing today, the Radiators are going to be mounted horizontally just like shown; fans will be in the top of the box, and there will be a shroud to exhaust the hot air out the window below the radiators.



And this is just for a quickie mockup, the top of the box will be closed, hose holes will be drilled for the connections and fans in the top of the box.


3) Heres a rough diagram of how I plan to do the WC system; I'm borrowing what I hope are the most suitable features for me from Fallwind and Naja's Builds. Into the sides of the Res's i'm going to attach a PVC ball joint and cap that and install a Barb for 1/2" I.D. tubing. The idea being that the entire system is somewhat modular and I can shutoff the water to one pump (probably a 655 with 3 Enzotech Saphire CPU blocks on it.) Then I can work on that one sub loop while the rest of the system can keep running. I got this idea from one of Naja's builds were he had ball joints in his lines to shut them off individually. Res1 will be mounted above the radiators, Res2 will be mounted below the radiators and have a garden hose drain port on the bottom and the same set of ball joint + barb connectors.


4) These fans I have suck! They are out of the build, I need to find something better. They have high CFM, and since they are in my garage I wasn't worried about the noise, but I just put on on a Kill-a-Watt (let me profess my love for my Kill-a-Watt again ) 100W at full speed!! for just 1 fan!! and look at the size of my Rads, I need at least 4 so... 400W for fans? No thanks! I'll try some undervolted test on the Kill-a-Watt later to see if they can some how be tamed.


Thats all for now; tomorrows agenda: keep working on the Radiator housing and air exhaust.

[disturbed13]

wow you might as well go and get X of 140mm fans at 94 CFM and around 30 dB, i know that you dont care but you might as well
or get some deltas
those will tame them steamers

[OC Maximus]

Love it TRN, keep them pictures coming!!

[Movieman]

Cheering section arrives:

[trn]

Aww thanks guys

And here it is: http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?p...hostid=1330831 My '8' thread 980x; Linux Guru I am not

*edit, figured out the issue: zcat /proc/config.gz|sed -ne 's/^CONFIG_NR_CPUS=//p' = 8. So need to recompile or reinstall a new kernel.

[OldChap]

You might want to consider a mains fan or two.....Fit a thermostat in series too maybe?

example http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...=STRK:MEWAX:IT

It may be high watts but if only running part time ......

[trn]

Happy Labor Day!

I was able to get some labor done today:

Made good progress on the Radiator holder/window shroud enclosure:


Looking down through the radiator cutouts in the shroud:


View from outside the window. I plan to paint the interior and any visiable parts black and hang a small curtian or something in the top part of the window. When done the shroud will be very inconspicuous; just a black hole blowing out warm(er) air. Caught a little bit of a self portrait in the window.


And the rough idea is starting to take shape. Just imagine this with a bunch of computing equipment on the racks and a bunch of hosing and my home made reservoirs and thats the basic idea. The black racks are a bit over 6' tall and each one is 3' wide.


I also did some more power usage testing on the fans I have and got some favorable results this time At a full 12v a fan uses 100W but... at 7v - 8v range they use only 20W - 30W or so. I think I'll order 2 more for a total of 6 14" fans and run them at these lower wattages.

Todo next:
1) I really need to get these Rads professionally cleaned; All the rad shops I could find phone #'s for were of course closed on the weekend so i'll have to try and get this done durring the work week; total PITA but it needs to get done ASAP before it starts holding up my project.
2) Start working on my PVC reservoirs and fittings at nights.
3) I have more computer hardware incoming but no real place to build it for now or coolers to use. Going to order some WC parts so that hopefully I can start testing the WC loop later next weekend or the next week.
4) The electrical lines will be my big project for next weekend.

Thats all for now

[shoota]

good progress! keep it up

[trn]

I've made some progress working the last two nights. I got the two reservoirs completed mostly. I still need 10 more barbs (in the mail) and I haven't glued on the endcaps, they are only loosely placed on for the pictures.

The one on the right will collect the hot water returning from the blocks; on the left will be mounted below the Rads and that is were the pumps will hook up to. I have some 655's in the mail.


Detail shot of the Barbs, with a half inch hole drilled in the small PVC endcaps they didn't even require gluing. The threads self tap into the PVC and the rubber O-ring completes the seal.


I've included alot of valves and connections in the system. I spent the last two days PVC cementing, epoxying, and gluing in the hope that the system doesn't leak. I hope to do a test run this weekend, maybe 2 pumps running 2 sub loops of non-overclocked L5640's. I only have two fans until next week, but I can make that run for testing.

My big project this weekend will be to install the electrical. I've decided on trying to install (myself .) [XC] Hicks has given me enough confidence (and tips) to go for it... I've change from my original plan of running 240v lines; I'm going to stick with standard old 120v lines because UPS's and surge protectors and standard off the shelf accessories are more available in 120v. I figure 4 120v 20amp lines should be a good double what I need and I'd rather do the job once (and also not max out lines or trip breakers constantly etc.)