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JustLong
Gawd
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2002
- Messages
- 782
So a friend of mine who has lots of money and donates all of his spare compute time to distributed computing asked me to build him a Quad Titan X rig. Having never tackled something so high end I was quite a fun build for me. While the machine is water cooled he only wanted factory sealed water cooling. This presented some challenges around radiator placement and case selection. It also didn't help that initially he had ordered a different case and the Titan X's weren't going to be water cooled so I got to build this machine twice.
Specs
A note about the PSUs. When we first assembled this machine we used an EVGA 1600w PSU. While it handled the sustained 1200w load it required a very expensive UPS that uses 20A dedicated circuit to run. We decided to go the dual PSU route and put each PSU on it's own UPS. While this does carry some risk if a single UPS were to go TU, it is working fine so far. In the future after he can have the electrician out he may move it back to a single UPS. The PSU selection was based on the built in PSU - PSU connection and we connected all the GPU to the 1300w and everything else to the 1000w. After getting everything up and running we found the GPUs pulled a lot more power than expected from the motherboard. We could have gone with slightly smaller PSUs, but we figured the extra headroom wouldn't hurt.
This was by far the largest case I've ever worked with. DVD for scale.
Getting the board prepped to install in the case. My friend chose this board as we wanted to make sure all four Titan X's had PCIe 3.0 16X lanes. He also wanted an M.2 slot and support for at least 64GB fo RAM.
As I mentioned this case is huge. It's an extremely flexible case with tons of cooling and mounting options. It support dual PSUs massive amounts of fans with many mounting options. It was difficult keeping it clean as there isn't a lot of places to hide wires in a case like this, especially with all the hardware installed in this build.
This wasn't the only machine I built for my friend. He also had me do a dual Titan Z, and a smaller machine with a single Titan X.
After getting his hands on one of the EVGA Titan X Hybrids he decided to make all of his Titan X's Hybrid cards using EVGA's upgrade kit. I was please with how easy they were to install and his temps went from > 80⁰ C to ~35⁰ C under max load.
The leftover Titan X parts. Anyone want to make their reference 980 or 980 TI look like a Titan X?
The only draw back to the case was the installation of 2.5" SSDs. While the case comes with 6 drive bays and we had 6 SSDs, his long term plan is to put 12 SSDs in the case. We found using a 2 x 2.5" to 3.5" adapter didn't allow us to connect power to the SSDs. I was able to get the 2.5" to 3.5" adapters to mound directly to the bottom of the case.
Installing the Titans. After installing the first Titan X and checking the water possible RAD placement options I found I had to change my original plans of having all four GPU RADS on one side and the CPU RAD on the other.
Unfortunately after installing the fourth GPU I realized that I had disconnected the FP headers to re-run them and forgot to reconnected them before installing the last GPU. Thankfully with the help of a flash light and one of the ifixit tools I was able to pop the PCIe retention clip without having to remove all of the other three GPUs.
A few misc. pics of the SLI bridge, bunch of radiators, and the very close clearance on the fans and cooling tubes.
Specs
- CPU - Intel Core i7-5960X ($1,049.99)
- HSF - Corsair Hydro Series H110i GTX 280mm ($124.99)
- RAM- Corsair DOMINATOR Platinum Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) ($786.29)
- MOBO- ASUS X99-E WS/USB 3.1 ($523.67)
- CASE - Thermaltake Core X9 ($129.99)
- GPU - 4 x EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN X 12G-P4-2992-KR 12GB SC + EVGA Hybrid Cooler for GeForce GTX Titan X 400-HY-0990-B1 ($1,029.99 + $99.94 ea)
- OS SSD - SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB ($347.97)
- SSDs 2 x SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 1TB ($421.99 ea)
- SSDs 4 x SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 2TB ($807.49 ea)
- PSU1 - Antec HCP Platinum HCP-1000 1000W ($249.99)
- PSU2- Antec HCP-1300 Platinum 1300W ($299.99)
- MISC - EVGA Pro SLI Bridge V2 ($34.99)
- MISC - 1 x Phanteks PH-F200SP_BK 200mmCase Fan ($24.99)
- MIC - 3 x BYTECC 2.5" to 3.5" adapters ($4.89 ea)
A note about the PSUs. When we first assembled this machine we used an EVGA 1600w PSU. While it handled the sustained 1200w load it required a very expensive UPS that uses 20A dedicated circuit to run. We decided to go the dual PSU route and put each PSU on it's own UPS. While this does carry some risk if a single UPS were to go TU, it is working fine so far. In the future after he can have the electrician out he may move it back to a single UPS. The PSU selection was based on the built in PSU - PSU connection and we connected all the GPU to the 1300w and everything else to the 1000w. After getting everything up and running we found the GPUs pulled a lot more power than expected from the motherboard. We could have gone with slightly smaller PSUs, but we figured the extra headroom wouldn't hurt.
This was by far the largest case I've ever worked with. DVD for scale.
Getting the board prepped to install in the case. My friend chose this board as we wanted to make sure all four Titan X's had PCIe 3.0 16X lanes. He also wanted an M.2 slot and support for at least 64GB fo RAM.
As I mentioned this case is huge. It's an extremely flexible case with tons of cooling and mounting options. It support dual PSUs massive amounts of fans with many mounting options. It was difficult keeping it clean as there isn't a lot of places to hide wires in a case like this, especially with all the hardware installed in this build.
This wasn't the only machine I built for my friend. He also had me do a dual Titan Z, and a smaller machine with a single Titan X.
After getting his hands on one of the EVGA Titan X Hybrids he decided to make all of his Titan X's Hybrid cards using EVGA's upgrade kit. I was please with how easy they were to install and his temps went from > 80⁰ C to ~35⁰ C under max load.
The leftover Titan X parts. Anyone want to make their reference 980 or 980 TI look like a Titan X?
The only draw back to the case was the installation of 2.5" SSDs. While the case comes with 6 drive bays and we had 6 SSDs, his long term plan is to put 12 SSDs in the case. We found using a 2 x 2.5" to 3.5" adapter didn't allow us to connect power to the SSDs. I was able to get the 2.5" to 3.5" adapters to mound directly to the bottom of the case.
Installing the Titans. After installing the first Titan X and checking the water possible RAD placement options I found I had to change my original plans of having all four GPU RADS on one side and the CPU RAD on the other.
Unfortunately after installing the fourth GPU I realized that I had disconnected the FP headers to re-run them and forgot to reconnected them before installing the last GPU. Thankfully with the help of a flash light and one of the ifixit tools I was able to pop the PCIe retention clip without having to remove all of the other three GPUs.
A few misc. pics of the SLI bridge, bunch of radiators, and the very close clearance on the fans and cooling tubes.
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