Fractal R4 Graphics Workstation

[burgerkong]

Mainly used for Maya and 3DS Max, our budget was $3000 give or take a bit. Didn't want to wait for the new Haswell-E Xeons to come out so we went with an Ivy Bridge-E setup. Specs:

-Intel 4930K (plentiful because people are still unloading them from the Retail Edge summer deal)
-eVGA GTX780 SC 6GB
-PNY NVIDIA Quadro K2000
-Asus X79 Deluxe
-2 x Corsair Vengeance Pro Series 16GB DDR3 1866MHz
-2 x WD Red 4TB WD40EFRX
-Samsung 840 EVO 500GB
-Fractal Design Define R4 in glorious black
-Seasonic XP-760 Platinum 760W SS-760XP2
-Noctua NH-D14 (probably switching out the fans for a pair of Swiftech Helix's)

It took a while to source everything at a good enough price. We went with a Quadro and a GTX combo since the 780 is a fantastic card for GPGPU for the price and while that's at 100% utilization, the lowly Quadro will pick up the slack for viewport so we can view the render without lag issues. Ram has also gone up in price significantly - originally I was going to spec 64GB but found it hard to budget for, so we are sticking with half of that for now (even though the board supports up to 128GB, though I suspect this is with a Xeon - plus 16GB sticks are ridiculously rare outside of buffered ECC server ram). I was also going to setup RAID 10, but having a budget killed that, not to mention RAID systems need maintenance once in a while.

Worked on the drive dampening system tonight, just some fabric elastic and cable clips (as well as some thin felt pads to avoid clanging etc. Works pretty well. Also going to drill out the drive cage to improve ventilation, it looks pretty obstructed.

 

[Adidas4275]

looks like the start of a nice build

 

[burgerkong]

Thanks, but the build has halted (AFTER I spent a few days routing cables). THE EFFING MOTHERBOARD TRAY ISN'T SQUARE WITH THE BACKPANEL.

I went to install the motherboard for the first time today, as well as both graphics card just to double check the positioning and to my horror the backpanel doesn't line up with the PCIe bracket, it's roughly 4-5mm off. I trued to shove the bracket so it touches the panel, bad idea as that just pried the card out of the slot on the motherboard - the lock won't latch onto the card because it has not been inserted deep enough. I supposed as long as the card works and is recognized by the motherboard it's GTG, but since this is a build for a client, I want as little trouble as possible. Not sure what to do ATM.

Pissed.

 

[Deathskythee]

did you install the standoffs?

 

[Unknown-One]

Reminds me of how I mounted my hard disks in my R3: http://i.imgur.com/FcrMc.jpg

Old pic, but I'm still mounting my hard disks the same way. Kills a TON of vibration.

Only-problem I see with your method is that the drives can swing around if the case is moved, and attaching cables could cause them to shift or rub against the inside of the drive cage. I went with bungee so they were snug enough that that wouldn't be a problem.

 

[fantabulous]

Suspension mounting WD Reds in a Fractal R4 seems a bit overkill to me. But it made me smile at the same time and I like how it was done.

I seem to recall some R4s making it out of the factory with the wrong sized standoffs included, but can't remember when/where I read that. Might try contacting Fractal about that or just trying some different standoffs.

 

[Unknown-One]

Yeah, I eventually switched to reds in my R3 as well.

Don't really think they need the additional isolation, but I already had the bungee in from suspending Caviar Black's... so i just rolled with it

Certainly doesn't hurt. And it's cool putting your hand on top of the case and feeling practically no vibration whatsoever. "Is it on?"

 

[burgerkong]

Yeah, I thought the drive suspension was neat, really more along the lines of why the hell not lol. I installed some felt pads in case they rub against the side of the drive cage so there is virtually no side to side movement, restricting it only to up and down.

Well, I managed to 'fudge' it back in place. This is what happened (irregardless of whether the standoffs were installed or not):

There is a gap between the blade of the square and the motherboard tray at the rightmost standoff (the shadow). Now look at the leftmost standoff and you can see that the shadow isn't as pronounced. I bent the back panel inwards a bit to 'fix' the issue, but I shouldn't have to do this.

Took the 4930K up to 4.4GHz at 1.280V VCORE with the ram on 1866MHz XMP profile 1. Reduced VCCSA to 1.100V and enabled PLL overvoltage. Multiplier is at 44 (all cores synced) with BCLK at 100MHz (stock). Didn't change load line, but will probably up it to Medium @ 25% LLC. Upped Current Capability to 140% and changed CPU Power Phase Control to Extreme. Ran Prime95 for a good 17 hours (would fail previously in 1.5 hours at 1.275V VCORE) with no failures and temps touching 80C - the Noctua fans were swapped for a pair of Swiftech Helix 120's off of a H320 (RPMs were at 1000-ish - their rated max), hence the zip ties.

Overall not too bad, isn't a stellar clocker, thought I could get away with 1.25/1.26V but it BSOD'd each time. Would probably need faster fans to go sub 70C - as it stands right now, it is fairly silent at 100% load still, which was what I was aiming for.

More pictures later, when I finally figure out how to get the Quadro and the GeForce to play nicely with each other, my hunch is that I need to hook up an output to each card (one monitor, two inputs) in order for the cards to recognize and activate themselves. Right now, the card which my monitor is attached to is the only one getting utilized (the other is at 0% utilization) - I can replicate this scenario with the Quadro or the GeForce.

 

[burgerkong]

Completed pictures (excuse the crappy pics, cell phone gives a grainy feel to them):

 

[mytechtv]

Read this about mixing cards:
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2280
http://forum.bunkspeed.com/showthread.php?936-Will-Kepler-Quadro-and-GeForce-GTX-play-nice-together

Hope this helps.

 

[burgerkong]

Read this about mixing cards:
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2280
http://forum.bunkspeed.com/showthread.php?936-Will-Kepler-Quadro-and-GeForce-GTX-play-nice-together

Hope this helps.

So it does work, this is with VRAY RT 2.4 (on CUDA), I have both cards connected to the monitor, but only the Quadro output enabled in NVIDIA's control panel. The only difficulty I foresee is switching the outputs if let's say you/he wants to game, since the K2000 is atrocious LOL. If that's the case, all he has to to is enable the GTX780's output and switch the monitor input using it's OSD. A small price to play, but it does work well for viewporting.

 

[demize]

very beautyiful! nice n clean. How does that quadro work for physics?>