Building a 5 Box CPU Question

[jstanthr]

as long as u set the cpu affinity correctly that would be smooth as silk, but something most people don't realize is that workstation boards handle data differently than most pc's data passes through the storage controller then to the northbridge then proccesed and sent out, thats 1 extra step but it's not a bottleneck by any means. imo if your going to use multiple drives and u want ultra reliability with most uptime, id do raid 0+1 with miiroring (5) that way if one array dies, the other will pick up without missing a beat, reguardless of which drive in the array dies. and u have a backup to restore from, no downtime. overall nice setup, jst don't overlook the maintanence, workstations require more care than regular pc's.. on a side note, make sure ur using a 64bit os, and keep PAE enabled (physical address extensions) it will allow wow to allocate memory blocks to each app, and imo would greatly imporbe thouroput.



The JsT's

Magtheridon US

[Twyman]

Here is what i plan on getting now:

I have the monitors already (6 of them): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824021019

The items i am thinking of ordering:


The Tower: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811192112

The Mother Board: http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec...&SKU=600000074

The CPU x2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117186

The Video Cards x3: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130492

The RAM 8x2g = 16gb: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820226066

The SSD x5: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820141419

The Power Supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817256054

The Heat Sink: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118046

Thank you all for your inputs. I think this is what i am going to go with. Anyone see any last min problems?

I do want to use 6 monitors on one computer. The one thing i am concerned with is the CPUs, they dont even show up on the 3Dbenchmark 2009 results chart.

[keyclone]

just understand that your wows will put the graphics objects for the game into the memory for one graphics boards... which will power one of two monitors. if you try to move that wow to a monitor that is supported by another board, i believe you would see a drop in performance. (this use to be the case, i haven't tried it recently)

SSDs have had some issue where they perform great for the first month or so, then slow down for some reason. i believe it's due to constant writing to the disk that causes some form of write failures. one suggestion would be to get a 32M cahce, 7200 rpm regular SATA-300 drive (like $40) and use that for your paging file. after your OS and games are installed, the paging file is the file written most to disk. moving it to a regular harddrive might stretch the performance and lifetime of the SSD (just a thought... totally unproven)

only other option is the OS. windows 7? or vista? (assumed 64 bit, of course)

[Sajuuk]

Replied in email, and cross-posted.

I still see power as an issue. The motherboard you want has two 8 pin CPU power cables in addition to the 24 pin, so you need a power supply with those pins as well. So while you may be able to find a power supply that can supply the power, it might not work due to the lack of connectors.

So, we need to find a way to reduce power, or find a compatible power supply. I thought of an alternative to having three 280's - two 295's. you get the equivalent of four 260s, with a small reduction in power (92A power draw vs 120A) Even then, that brings our power requirements to at least 1350W.

(How do you get six monitors from two cards, you ask? I'm not entirely sure it would work, but I think you could work something out with a couple of Matrox TripleHead2Gos. You plug one into each card, and then have three monitors connected to the triplehead2go. There is no guarantee this would work, I was just trying to think of an alternative.)

You might be pushing it with five SSD's (your motherboard only has six SATA connectors, this could be fixed with a RAID card)

But...in all honesty it might be better to build two computers. It'd be less of a hassle that way.

Here's something you could try - (Two computers, about the same as mine, only better graphics cards)
2x i7 920s http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115202
2x P6t Deluxe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131365
4x 260 (core 216) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130433
2x 250Gb HDD (System drive) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148261
2x Computer case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811103011
2x 6gb DDR3 RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231223 (Why only six per machine? You'll only be running 2/3 clients on each, you're not going to max out your ram playing wow on that many clients)
2x 750W SLi certified PSUs http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139006
2x CPU coolers http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118046
2x of your aforementioned SSDs http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820141419 (Just have one in each computer for your WoW installations. RAIDs might be fun, but I'm not certain on how your performance boost might be.
You also get four copies of Call of Duty World at War.

Cost pre-shipping for two i7 systems - 2945. I honestly think two systems would be better. But, I'm just giving you alternatives.

[pbrigido]

I have a similar setup to the Q9550s mentioned. I usually struggle in Dal with about 10 FPS. I noticed that some people have limited their slaves to 15 FPS...I was just wondering how that was done?

[Sajuuk]

I have a similar setup to the Q9550s mentioned. I usually struggle in Dal with about 10 FPS. I noticed that some people have limited their slaves to 15 FPS...I was just wondering how that was done?

Within wow - /console maxfpsbk 15

[Enndo]

This machince is gonna be sick, please post pics and benchmarks when its done!

[pbrigido]

I have a similar setup to the Q9550s mentioned. I usually struggle in Dal with about 10 FPS. I noticed that some people have limited their slaves to 15 FPS...I was just wondering how that was done?

Within wow - /console maxfpsbk 15

Great! Thanks much, can't wait to implement it now!