Disguised D: Meet the ht2Pc

R-Type

R-Type

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - October 2011
Joined
Mar 6, 2006
Messages
2,801
As folders with significant others can attest, turning your home into a boxen nudist colony is not always an option. With that said, the challenge becomes finding ways to effectively pack as much folding power as possible into the PC footprints you already have in place.

After cramming pc's everywhere else, I recently set my sights on the living room and my lowly C2Q htpc. Below are the results of combining the biggest htpc case I could find with the smallest server board I could find and topping it off with a splash of dremel...

Specs:
Silverstone LC10B-E
Asus Z8NA-D6C
2x E5649 2.66ghz hexes
6x1GB Kinston Hyper-X 2000 ram
Kingston V100+ 64gb SSD
GT240 DDR5 (soon to be replaced with GT430 and Coolermaster Z1)
2x Xigmatek Loki's
4x AC AF9 92mm fans
Samsung SH-B123L Blu-ray drive
Corsair CX430

The resulting system is currently folding BigAdv under Windows with the hottest core at 67C and no fan (except for the temporary gpu) spinning over 1500rpms. I'm still working out the software loadout that will give me linux folding prowress with the streaming and blu-ray playback I need. Since the platform supports VT-d, I'm thinking I will just run Windows 7 in a virtual machine for media playback. Suggestions on this are much appreciated.

Photos







Comments, criticisms, and suggestions welcome!
 
Is that a cat I see? Either way that is pretty scary how you have packed so much into so little. I'm honestly shocked to hear that your temps are doing so well. I assume that is with everything closed up?
 
Very nice..... Remind me to get you the link for bd playback on irc when I get back from work
 
amdgamer said:
Is that a cat I see? Either way that is pretty scary how you have packed so much into so little. I'm honestly shocked to hear that your temps are doing so well. I assume that is with everything closed up?
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Yes that's our fat ass cat Carl, always interfering... (and one of the reasons nekkid systems make me nervous!)

Those temps are with the system closed up. The full loadout of mid speed pwm fans with strong static pressure plays an important role there. The other huge game changer is those Xigmatek Loki's (thanks DSee), they do a great job getting very warm and pulling the heat from the chips. The air coming out the back of this thing is definitely the hottest on your hand of any of my pc's but so long as the critical components are shedding their heat it should be golden.
 
R-Type said:
Yes that's our fat ass cat Carl, always interfering... (and one of the reasons nekkid systems make me nervous!)

Those temps are with the system closed up. The full loadout of mid speed pwm fans with strong static pressure plays an important role there. The other huge game changer is those Xigmatek Loki's (thanks DSee), they do a great job getting very warm and pulling the heat from the chips. The air coming out the back of this thing is definitely the hottest on your hand of any of my pc's but so long as the critical components are shedding their heat it should be golden.
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That is why I keep my cats outdoors. Because they tend to get everywhere, I would be nervous about them running around in the house and potentially pulling or scratching the many wires I have around the house. They are pretty cute though.
 
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Might post this over at the HTPC forum.

Show the guys there what they can do with all their equipment besides watch TV.
 
that's [H]ardcore .. lolz .. i setup my htpc with 2600k (with watercool), i thought it is cool, but nothing to compare to this :D
 
R-Type said:
He's more like a B2 Phenom; fat chip, no speed scaling potential.:p


I hooked the kill-a-watt up to the machine and it is pulling 275watts at the wall running 24 thread bigadv.

Jonnyguru indicates this psu is 83% efficient around that load which places the actual DC power draw around 228 watts for the whole system. Not too shabby. :)

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story2&reid=214
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Dont make fun of my chubby B2 Phenom! She only pulls 155W from the wall full load for 5500-6000 PPD ! :D Give an 8800GT a run for its money.

Anyways, 1980 called and wants your enormous CD player that you all a "HTPC" back. Fancy words dont make it play music better!
 
That has to be the most powerful HTPC in the world. Love it! I have GTS450s in my HTPCs and they have worked great for me.
 
That's great. Beautiful box. I'm using the same strategy. All my folding boxes are "real use" boxes. Nothing dedicated. I do have 3 HTPCs though.

How about encoding blu rays to mp4? Then you get around the DRM issues and you can get away from Windows totally and use Mythbuntu,
 
Thanks for all the feedback, I am ordering some replacement AFC8 fans for the stock rear 80's and the side 80 as I believe I can quiet this thing down even further while increasing static pressure.

I would like to avoid having to rip the whole blu-ray collection but could entertain it if need be. I'll make a thread in the HTPC area to gather suggestions on linux BD playback and see if we can entice some of them to join the insanity as well. ;)
 
i chose and alternate path and downgraded my HTPC to a zacate that pulls about 30w from the wall watching BD's... that way I can spend the power elsewhere :)

I ripped all my BD's to mkv's and haven't looked back. I'm sure it would make migrating to a linux-based htpc a lot easier if I ever went that route.. of course, I do use mine for TV viewing with an infiniTV4, so linux is out of the question for that
 
I agree. Having a single file is so much easier to handle than the native BD structure.

I ripped mine to mp4 using handbrake.
 
EWWW MP4 .....

anyhow R-Type, ill get you the link to do BD on linux.......i've had it for a while, youve just never reminded me on IRC
 
there's nothing wrong with mp4. I used mp4 on most of the videos for the website I used to work on (those that weren't flv for the embedded player)
 
i would rather have a file that is more widely supported
 
jebo_4jc said:
i would rather have a file that is more widely supported
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for the programs i use, .mkv is supported just fine, and is as good of a container as .mp4 .... then again i'm using XBMC/VLC, and a cowon S9...and android....all of which support .mkv
 
hm. it seems the mkv files I made weren't recognized by android for some reason.
 
I would have to bulk up on server side HD capacity to support ripping my bluray library, the added stress of serving those files up probably justifies a 4p G34 system as well...;)

If I were to go the virtual machine route, does anyone have any experience with VT-d? Does this let the guest OS have full access to the hardware acceleration abities of the gpu?
 
jebo_4jc said:
i would rather have a file that is more widely supported
Click to expand...
apple supports mp4 and not mkv... which seems as good a reason as any to pick MKV :D

seriously though, its easy to mux everything in, has good sub support and is open sauce. In all likelihood i'll be using an HTPC or some other computer to watch them all for the foreseeable future, so I don't care about device support (i don't believe in tablets or media streamers) and I don't re-encode ever, just re-mux.. gotta have that full quality yo.


R-Type said:
I would have to bulk up on server side HD capacity to support ripping my bluray library, the added stress of serving those files up probably justifies a 4p G34 system as well...;)

If I were to go the virtual machine route, does anyone have any experience with VT-d? Does this let the guest OS have full access to the hardware acceleration abities of the gpu?
Click to expand...

I've got 12TB in my server right now serving up BD rips, but its just running a puny down-clocked E6500 on a cheapo s775 board that used to have a folding GPU in it. As far as VT-d goes, I was exploring this option to some extent when considering upping the server hardware to sandybridge for folding. I believe that the ability of VT-d to pass GPU to the guest OS is highly dependent on the hypervisor in use. I believe it can be done on Xen, but not ESXi 4.1.. and Xen is a bigger PITA to set up. I was looking at VT-d more in order to give an OpenIndiana VM direct access to my SAS card while also hosting a linux VM for folding purposes, and I've never set any of this up myself so take it all with a heaping spoonful of salt
 
I like .mkv.

Nice home theater server folding boxen!
 
A few shots of ht2Pc folding away in his new home. Just need to work on software now.


 
I've been using the top of an old HTPC Silverstone case to hold the Tyan + 6174s using an Antec 900 side as a top. This makes me want to gut the original case and just pop it in there.
 
pjkenned said:
I've been using the top of an old HTPC Silverstone case to hold the Tyan + 6174s using an Antec 900 side as a top. This makes me want to gut the original case and just pop it in there.
Click to expand...

Believe me I thought about the logistics of putting the 2p g34 in there. Its definitely doable but you would have to heavily modify or completely forgo the hard drive and 5.25'' cages. I think the 5.25 would be the easiest to keep but at least on the ATX-E 2p Tyan I have, you would need water cooling to get the second cpu's cooler profile low enough. If you're using the SEB board with the two cpu's at the bottom then it might be easier.

I say go for it. :D
 
I want so much to contribute something worthwhile to this discussion, but it really boils down to: Awesome!
 
looks great RType.

I think I had that TV Stand, but in silver. I bought it from best buy.
 
jebo_4jc said:
looks great RType.

I think I had that TV Stand, but in silver. I bought it from best buy.
Click to expand...

Heh, its a $99 walmart special. Just as well though, at least I didn't feel bad when I took the jigsaw to the rear support to make a notch for the pc's power cord. :D

The one caveat with these full ATX HTPC cases is they are very deep, this is less than an inch from hitting the rear support and the power cord isn't that flexible.
 
R-Type - Now thats what I call a folding rig.

Activate: AMD said:
apple supports mp4 and not mkv... which seems as good a reason as any to pick MKV :D

seriously though, its easy to mux everything in, has good sub support and is open sauce. In all likelihood i'll be using an HTPC or some other computer to watch them all for the foreseeable future, so I don't care about device support (i don't believe in tablets or media streamers) and I don't re-encode ever, just re-mux.. gotta have that full quality yo.




I've got 12TB in my server right now serving up BD rips, but its just running a puny down-clocked E6500 on a cheapo s775 board that used to have a folding GPU in it. As far as VT-d goes, I was exploring this option to some extent when considering upping the server hardware to sandybridge for folding. I believe that the ability of VT-d to pass GPU to the guest OS is highly dependent on the hypervisor in use. I believe it can be done on Xen, but not ESXi 4.1.. and Xen is a bigger PITA to set up. I was looking at VT-d more in order to give an OpenIndiana VM direct access to my SAS card while also hosting a linux VM for folding purposes, and I've never set any of this up myself so take it all with a heaping spoonful of salt
Click to expand...

Folding/BOINC in a Linux VM definitely works under ESXi 4.1. I have been using an OpenIndiana SAN/NAS VM with SAS passthrough and then mounting two linux VMs (because the 4 core limit) from a NFS created datastore. Its been up about a week and I am currently running WCG on it. It runs about 80-85% of what I used to be getting on a headless ubuntu server. Mind you WCG gives a single unit to a core rather than using all the cores at once.

If you want I can see what I what numbers I get folding on the machine. My concern is the 4 core limit because of F@H multi-threadness scaling if you wanted to run bigadv.

My server hardware is a Xeon E3-1230 w/ 16gb of RAM.
 
R-Type said:
A few shots of ht2Pc folding away in his new home. Just need to work on software now.


Click to expand...

Haha, that is some stealthy folding! The only problem with adding stealth rigs like these to the farm is if your SWMBO ends up visiting this subforum and reading about it.
 
amdgamer said:
Haha, that is some stealthy folding! The only problem with adding stealth rigs like these to the farm is if your SWMBO ends up visiting this subforum and reading about it.
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As long as people don't start posting advice on scrapbooking or the Sims 3 in here, our hobbies are unlikely to cross paths online. :p
 
R-Type said:
As long as people don't start posting advice on scrapbooking or the Sims 3 in here, our hobbies are unlikely to cross paths online. :p
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The Sims 3 was pretty fun for a while, but when it really gets boring when it starts to get boring. I suppose you are safe as I just don't see most of the people here really getting into it though.
 
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