Ars Technica's God Box

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Slartibartfast

Supreme [H]ardness
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Sep 25, 2004
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Ars Technica periodically does a system building guide, based primarily on price. Their "god box" this time around caught my eye, as they made some interesting choices.

Here's the url: http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200606.ars/4

Anyways, stuff that jumped out at me:

Mobo: K8WE. This made me a laugh a little, as I think we all know how a certain somebody around here feels about this board :D

CPU's: 2x 285's (can't really complain about that one)

RAM: They only went for 8gb. Some "god box" :rolleyes: :p

Case: Those coolermaster stackers have to be amongst the fugliest cases I've ever seen.

PSU: PCP+C 850. Did they not notice the 1kw's? The price difference is so small that the 850 seems like, well, a dumb choice.

Anyways, a somewhat entertaining quick read.
 
I'd be more curious to see if they've actually built this or if it's just somebody's Newegg wishlist...
 
Chris_Morley said:
I'd be more curious to see if they've actually built this or if it's just somebody's Newegg wishlist...
Click to expand...

I don't think they build them. They do these fairly often and never seem to do a review or anything of them.
 
Ars never builds them. If they tried, they'd likely wet themselves after screwing it up.
And who the hell uses Atlases? Answer; people who don't know a thing about SCSI. They severely underperform in RAID, when you can even get them working.
Ah well. See sig, as usual.
 
I feel the copied me and forgot some of the details

spec:
Dual Dual Opteron 285s
Tyan K8WE motherboard
16 GB Ram
Quad SLI xfx 7950 572/1556
Ageia Physx PPU
(4) Seagate 750GB SATA 300 drives RAID 0 ~ about 3 terabytes
8GB RamDrive- virtual
Dual linked power supplies
Apple Cinema 30inch @ 2560x1600 res
Windows Server 2003 64-bit












 
AreEss said:
Ars never builds them. If they tried, they'd likely wet themselves after screwing it up.
And who the hell uses Atlases? Answer; people who don't know a thing about SCSI. They severely underperform in RAID, when you can even get them working.
Ah well. See sig, as usual.
Click to expand...
Hehehehe, funny.
 
venturi said:
I feel the copied me and forgot some of the details

spec:
Dual Dual Opteron 285s
Tyan K8WE motherboard
16 GB Ram
Quad SLI xfx 7950 572/1556
Ageia Physx PPU
(4) Seagate 750GB SATA 300 drives RAID 0 ~ about 3 terabytes
8GB RamDrive- virtual
Dual linked power supplies
Apple Cinema 30inch @ 2560x1600 res
Windows Server 2003 64-bit
Click to expand...

What in the fucking world are you doing with that rig?
 
If we wanna play big systems...
*whips out customer order, WITHOUT customer name*

H8DCi
Dual Opteron 256
16GB (8x2GB PC3200 ECC Reg'd ATP)
Dual PNY Quadro 3450
LSI Logic Ultra320-2E
LSI Logic 22030RB
2x Hitachi 15K147 15000RPM 73GB 16MB - RAID1 OS - 22030RB
10x Hitachi 15K147 15000RPM 147GB 16MB - RAID5 Storage - 320-2E - Hotswap
2x DVD+-RW
PCP&C 1KW custom
 
AreEss said:
If we wanna play big systems...
*whips out customer order, WITHOUT customer name*

H8DCi
Dual Opteron 256
16GB (8x2GB PC3200 ECC Reg'd ATP)
Dual PNY Quadro 3450
LSI Logic Ultra320-2E
LSI Logic 22030RB
2x Hitachi 15K147 15000RPM 73GB 16MB - RAID1 OS - 22030RB
10x Hitachi 15K147 15000RPM 147GB 16MB - RAID5 Storage - 320-2E - Hotswap
2x DVD+-RW
PCP&C 1KW custom
Click to expand...


It's ok, you can tell them it's me :D
 
AreEss said:
If we wanna play big systems...
*whips out customer order, WITHOUT customer name*

H8DCi
Dual Opteron 256
16GB (8x2GB PC3200 ECC Reg'd ATP)
Dual PNY Quadro 3450
LSI Logic Ultra320-2E
LSI Logic 22030RB
2x Hitachi 15K147 15000RPM 73GB 16MB - RAID1 OS - 22030RB
10x Hitachi 15K147 15000RPM 147GB 16MB - RAID5 Storage - 320-2E - Hotswap
2x DVD+-RW
PCP&C 1KW custom
Click to expand...
how much did that cost?
 
I really can't say how much it costs, but my hobby does pay for itself...

Yet, there is something magical about not seeing the hour glass next to the cursor....
 
The box gets 'built' in the forums by committee, so you can be a part of the process and hear reasonings and such, bad or good.
 
EnderW said:
how much did that cost?
Click to expand...

Can't disclose exact total, since that would be identifiable. (Every system is quoted from scratch based on current pricing for components, and I'm very low volume.)
Suffice to say, each Quadro retails about $1400 by themselves (that's $2800), and the 147GB disks were $599 each (that's $5990.)
 
AreEss said:
Can't disclose exact total, since that would be identifiable. (Every system is quoted from scratch based on current pricing for components, and I'm very low volume.)
Suffice to say, each Quadro retails about $1400 by themselves (that's $2800), and the 147GB disks were $599 each (that's $5990.)
Click to expand...
identifiable?
how would I be able to find your customer with something as vague a price for a list of computer parts?
 
EnderW said:
identifiable?
how would I be able to find your customer with something as vague a price for a list of computer parts?
Click to expand...

For what they pay, they get to pass on the paranoia. ;)
Seriously though, the total pricetag doesn't accurately reflect the parts cost. Only the total system cost, which includes warranty, software, and a lot of other bits and pieces required to build these sorts of beasts.

Suffice to say, there are many new cars you can purchase for less than what this system cost. And they are not limited to Kias.

If you want to go by parts only, however...
Call it $500 for the board, $1720 for processors, $5000 for memory, $2800 for video, over $6000 for disks, over $600 on the power supply, over $500 on the chassis. Parts cost alone exceeds $17,000 - before the RAID card at another cool $1000 and the SCSI U320 card at another $250.
 
Price is subjective, some hardware is carried over from build to build.
For example I'm building my next box, should have it complete in about 2 weeks. I'm going to keep my first apple 30" and add a second sisde by side. I'm going to keep my current 4 sata drives and add four more, etc

The new god box:

Tyan thunder 4xxx with 4 dual core opterons (8 cores), 32 GB of RAM, Raid 0 - (8) drives SATA 300 at 750gb each ~ about 6 terabytes and (4) 7950 x2 for dual- Quad SLI on (2) Apple cinema 30'' 2560x1600 monitors
 
venturi said:
My personal old god box:

spec:
Dual Dual Opteron 285s
Tyan K8WE motherboard
16 GB Ram
Quad SLI xfx 7950 572/1556
Ageia Physx PPU
(4) Seagate 750GB SATA 300 drives RAID 0 ~ about 3 terabytes
8GB RamDrive- virtual
Dual linked power supplies
Apple Cinema 30inch @ 2560x1600 res
Windows Server 2003 64-bit
Click to expand...


...you already posted that
 
venturi said:
Price is subjective, some hardware is carried over from build to build.
For example I'm building my next box, should have it complete in about 2 weeks. I'm going to keep my first apple 30" and add a second sisde by side. I'm going to keep my current 4 sata drives and add four more, etc

The new god box:

Tyan thunder 4xxx with 4 dual core opterons (8 cores), 32 GB of RAM, Raid 0 - (8) drives SATA 300 at 750gb each ~ about 6 terabytes and (4) 7950 x2 for dual- Quad SLI on (2) Apple cinema 30'' 2560x1600 monitors
Click to expand...

... okay, calling it now. You're pricing out and you're calling it a Thunder 4XXX? Driving two dual DVI's off 7950s?
Uhm, no. Just no.
 
venturi said:
Price is subjective, some hardware is carried over from build to build.
For example I'm building my next box, should have it complete in about 2 weeks. I'm going to keep my first apple 30" and add a second sisde by side. I'm going to keep my current 4 sata drives and add four more, etc

The new god box:

Tyan thunder 4xxx with 4 dual core opterons (8 cores), 32 GB of RAM, Raid 0 - (8) drives SATA 300 at 750gb each ~ about 6 terabytes and (4) 7950 x2 for dual- Quad SLI on (2) Apple cinema 30'' 2560x1600 monitors
Click to expand...

All that money and you can't manage to set up a RAID5 array?

8-Drive RAID0 pretty much screams "I'm a moron."
 
Wow and I thought you guys were up on this.

its a Thunder K8QE (S4885) with 4 pci 16x slots.

I fail to understand your statement ... please do tell what you're trying to say???

I'm curious

2nd Raid O is for speed, and everything is backed up.
please tell me why it makes a difference to the point that you are calling this build a "moron"???
How rude.
 
You do know that 2 of those 16x slots are only 4x signal, right?

venturi said:
Wow and I thought you guys were up on this.

its a Thunder K8QE (S4885) with 4 pci 16x slots.

I fail to understand your statement ... please do tell what you're trying to say???

I'm curious

2nd Raid O is for speed, and everything is backed up.
please tell me why it makes a difference to the point that you are calling this build a "moron"???
How rude.
Click to expand...
 
venturi said:
2nd Raid O is for speed, and everything is backed up.
please tell me why it makes a difference to the point that you are calling this build a "moron"???
How rude.
Click to expand...

RAID0 provides insignificant increases in sequential read performance over RAID5 and almost no increase in IO/sec in non-server applications.

NAS is not a backup. Tape is a backup.

Finally, you're a moron based on your posting history here and at Ars Technica that demonstrates that almost every one of your posts is about how awesome your rig is. People like posters that give back to the community, not posters that come to inflate their egos by fishing for compliments.
 
So much for community forums:

1. I have posted so many tweaks and methodologies that this is at least irritating.
2nd . at the request of those that asked I've emailed out so many reg hacks and driver mods, game fixes etc
3rd. for three years I have gone through the gauntlet on every workstation build.

sad...


let the trolls and flamers out.

I'm signing off
 
venturi said:
So much for community forums:

1. I have posted so many tweaks and methodologies that this is at least irritating.
2nd . at the request of those that asked I've emailed out so many reg hacks and driver mods, game fixes etc
3rd. for three years I have gone through the gauntlet on every workstation build.
sad...
let the trolls and flamers out.
I'm signing off
Click to expand...

Look at your title. 'n00bie' - that means you haven't posted jack here. So we're supposed to take you at face value, with a system that costs more than some cars in parts alone?
Secondly, in what I can only guess was an attempt to wank, you attempted to one-up yourself after being one-upped by me. And proceeded to cite boards which simply don't do what you're claiming, period. The S4881 with dual 16x slots cannot accept 7950's as the slots are side-by-side. If you actually had a clue, you would know this. Instead you waited till you were called on it, and looked up the S4885 - ignoring the fact that the S4885 actually doesn't support the 7950 officially (or at all, according to prelims.)
We also won't mention that as of right now, the 7950's will not drive 4 DVIs in SLI, nor will they drive a pair of ACDs in SLI.

Frankly, based on your constant wanking everywhere, you've only served to destroy your own credibility. Help folks out? Ahem, yeah, sure. Looking through your own posts, all I see is you wanking about your rig. You haven't even managed to critique genuinely bad configurations.

So, yes, please do 'sign off.' I can assure you, your copy-and-paste wanking will not be missed. If that even is your system - which based on your insistence on bragging, I have begun to doubt as well.
 
looking at his previous post... seems like he just likes to brag and nothing more..... funny thing about excessive hubris
 
venturi said:
I feel the copied me and forgot some of the details

spec:
Dual Dual Opteron 285s
Tyan K8WE motherboard
16 GB Ram
Quad SLI xfx 7950 572/1556
Ageia Physx PPU
(4) Seagate 750GB SATA 300 drives RAID 0 ~ about 3 terabytes
8GB RamDrive- virtual
Dual linked power supplies
Apple Cinema 30inch @ 2560x1600 res
Windows Server 2003 64-bit]/QUOTE]

Now THAT is a Godbox.

Just watercool it, and it'll be even godlier.
Click to expand...
 
The quad SLI is a dissappintment in some cases and meets my expectations in others:

1 If you enable AFR for OpenGL, in MOST cases there is a substantial benefit. Even if an app is not present in the nvidia profile manager, creating the profile for AFR in OpenGL does seem to work. Works quite well/

2. Many direct X games work at least as well as regular SLI, but if SLI gives a theoretical boost of 2x, then quad SLI seems to only boost it 2.5x, not 4x.

3. DX seems to run better with SFR when it comes to predefined settings/profiles.

FEAR is the only app I have that I can select AFR, SFR, or AFR/SFR combo and get relativley good results across the board. Best image quality seems to be with combo AFR/SFR.

Doom3, Q4 etc - seem to perform poorly in anything other than AFR and AFR2

Hl2 lost Coast HDR 64-bit and the same for Episode 1 seems to take advantage of the quad SLI. There is a predefined setting for both, it seems to be SFR.

The prey demo runs better with regular SLI rather than Quad SLI. Hopefully a new driver release will fix it.

Battlefield works best in AFR or in mixed mode AFR/SFR.

Painkiller works over 300fps with SFR

Sturmovick works best in OpenGl mode and AFR

Lock On works best in AFR

Serious SAM 2 - AFR

UT2004 64-bit runs smooth but it wont seem to go over a 180fps NO MATTER how many cards or quad or single I use, or AFR or SFR. Don't get the logic. Seems an artificial barrier.

FarCry 64 gives best in AFR, but I believe the image quality is better in mixed mode AFR/SFR.

Bottom line:
If you can get the profile to work, or make your own, QUAD SLI seems to scale proportionally.

2 exceptions:
Prey demo - can't get anyhting better than regular sli to work with it.
GRAW- no benefit from Quad no matter what I try.

Note 1: resolutions are usully max eye candy at 2560x1600. However once you are over 60fps you need to focus on image quality. 300fps wont do you any good if there is a lessening of image quality.

Note 2: I usually max out anistrophic, so that's not an issue. But, AA is subjective. at 2560x1600 there seems to be little need for anything in AA, maybe 2x or 4x, but there is very little visual difference and even less (almost none) between 8x and up. At 2560x1600, the AA seems of little consequence IMHO. So I don't really care for benchies with AA over 4x.
Hope this helps.
 
venturi said:
I feel the copied me and forgot some of the details

spec:
Dual Dual Opteron 285s
Tyan K8WE motherboard
16 GB Ram
Quad SLI xfx 7950 572/1556
Ageia Physx PPU
(4) Seagate 750GB SATA 300 drives RAID 0 ~ about 3 terabytes
8GB RamDrive- virtual
Dual linked power supplies
Apple Cinema 30inch @ 2560x1600 res
Windows Server 2003 64-bit
Click to expand...

I can't help but think , "what a gigantic waste of money". There's most likely nothing on the consumer end that you could run that would utilize this sort of system. I have heavy duty SQL/Oracle servers that wouldn't even need this kind of hardware.

Oh, and the RAID 0 is probably a bad idea. With all that storage, why not go 0 + 1? At least you have SOME measure of redundancy, IF the system is as important as you implicate.
 
I don't even care for these "dream systems." Must be someone else's dream.

For the record, I do some Data Analyst work, but I don't realy need power like that, and I still spend an assload on computer parts, but after SLI/Crossfire, nice OC'd dual core, and some raptors... I dunno, I could give a shit less about having 4 cpus and all this other shit.

For some of you hardcore IT guys it makes sense. For most it's like the guy who has a viper..... but keeps it in the garage all the time. That said I still won't judge people. Hell maybe you have too much money to care! Great! But I don't get excited over this kind of stuff. To me I already have my dream rig, being better at being a server or some other niche use doesn't make me the least bit excited or jealous. 4 cpu cores, 16 gigs of ram.... bleh... who gives a fuck.

Again guys, I don't judge. It just amazes me that there is that much draw to these articles in mainstream media from gamers and regular enthusiasts. Maybe I should go to newegg, sort by price, now I've got an article. Whoopty.
 
texuspete00 said:
Again guys, I don't judge. It just amazes me that there is that much draw to these articles in mainstream media from gamers and regular enthusiasts. Maybe I should go to newegg, sort by price, now I've got an article. Whoopty.
Click to expand...

I posted the article because I thought they made some odd, if not stupid, choices. There's been a fair amount of discussion around here lately about systems that have a similar foundation, so it caught my eye. I'm not one to make wish lists on newegg of all the best parts just to drool over them.

I built the system in my sig primarily for longevity. I may not be using 4gb of ram now but I don't doubt it will be useful someday. There's a lot of headroom to add ram, upgrade the cpu's and the videocard(s). With intel and amd planning on quad-core cpu's next year, I don't doubt that we're going to start seeing a lot more multithreading in mainstream apps.
 
venturi said:
The quad SLI is a dissappintment in some cases and meets my expectations in others:

1 If you enable AFR for OpenGL, in MOST cases there is a substantial benefit. Even if an app is not present in the nvidia profile manager, creating the profile for AFR in OpenGL does seem to work. Works quite well/

2. Many direct X games work at least as well as regular SLI, but if SLI gives a theoretical boost of 2x, then quad SLI seems to only boost it 2.5x, not 4x.

3. DX seems to run better with SFR when it comes to predefined settings/profiles.

FEAR is the only app I have that I can select AFR, SFR, or AFR/SFR combo and get relativley good results across the board. Best image quality seems to be with combo AFR/SFR.

Doom3, Q4 etc - seem to perform poorly in anything other than AFR and AFR2

Hl2 lost Coast HDR 64-bit and the same for Episode 1 seems to take advantage of the quad SLI. There is a predefined setting for both, it seems to be SFR.

The prey demo runs better with regular SLI rather than Quad SLI. Hopefully a new driver release will fix it.

Battlefield works best in AFR or in mixed mode AFR/SFR.

Painkiller works over 300fps with SFR

Sturmovick works best in OpenGl mode and AFR

Lock On works best in AFR

Serious SAM 2 - AFR

UT2004 64-bit runs smooth but it wont seem to go over a 180fps NO MATTER how many cards or quad or single I use, or AFR or SFR. Don't get the logic. Seems an artificial barrier.

FarCry 64 gives best in AFR, but I believe the image quality is better in mixed mode AFR/SFR.

Bottom line:
If you can get the profile to work, or make your own, QUAD SLI seems to scale proportionally.

2 exceptions:
Prey demo - can't get anyhting better than regular sli to work with it.
GRAW- no benefit from Quad no matter what I try.

Note 1: resolutions are usully max eye candy at 2560x1600. However once you are over 60fps you need to focus on image quality. 300fps wont do you any good if there is a lessening of image quality.

Note 2: I usually max out anistrophic, so that's not an issue. But, AA is subjective. at 2560x1600 there seems to be little need for anything in AA, maybe 2x or 4x, but there is very little visual difference and even less (almost none) between 8x and up. At 2560x1600, the AA seems of little consequence IMHO. So I don't really care for benchies with AA over 4x.
Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

This is the reason I've stuck with my dual 7900GTX's. Two many problems with 7950GX2's and Quad SLI.
 
Dan_D said:
This is the reason I've stuck with my dual 7900GTX's. Two many problems with 7950GX2's and Quad SLI.
Click to expand...

Well, the K8WE still doesn't 'officially' support the 7950GX2's - I'd have to ask the person I know if he ever got one working. (I'm skeptical; the K8WE can't push 75W out both PCIe slots, and has numerous other issues.) I haven't seen tests on the H8DCn's as of yet.

In the meantime, nVidia went and pushed the QuadroFX 4500X2 which is, you guessed it, a 7950GX2. Zero gap between game and 'professional,' with the same problems on both (not working at all, no advantage, etcetera.) Insult to injury, they push it as a 1GB GDDR3 card when it's really only 512MB per GPU times two. Meaning no real additional buffer memory. You should hear what people say when I explain that to 'em. Especially the folks who need massive contig on the card.
 
Wow, It really seems like some people REALLY like to build uber-rigs. They certainly fun to look at..especially when you did not have to pay for them. With that said, I do have a few comments on the whole God-Box phenomenon.

People used to laugh at me when I told them that if I really wanted to, I could drop 15K on a computer in the next 90 minutes with zero difficulty (no me personally...just that it's possible). They always ask what would cost that much and then you get into things like raid arrays, monitors, quad SLi and so on. The problem that I have is that while it is an extremely fun thing to do...unless you are doing a lot of encoding, decrypting, rendering, or authoring work, the gains from a $5k system to a $15k system are pretty minimal. When you get to the >10k range, you almost would be better to do the rendering/encoding yada yada on a grid with DC rather than create one box that is crazy fast.

Personally, I feel like I had reached the sweet sopt on the graph of diminishing returns when it came to tweaking. An Sli rig, with a raid array and a dual core proc are really all you need to enjoy most of the activites I do. When I get bored...maybe I will try to squeeze another 50 mhz out of my cpu, or tighten the ram timings.

So where did all of my tech-engery get diverted to? Well, I like to look beyond the box and now I am all about setting up the tightest, house-wide network I can. Complete with servers, network storage, media distribution, wireless access and so on.

I find that managing the nuances of a small network is typically much more satisfying than simply cramming more hardware into a single enclosure.

With that said...the god-boxes are simply amazing and I do wish I had one....but I think that money will be better spent on my new Acura TL.

just my $.02
 
...and yes QUAD SLI is OFFICIALLY supported in the whql 91.31 64-bit drivers.

 
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