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Thread: 16 Core Workstation Build

  1. #1
    Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus Technochicken's Avatar
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    Default 16 Core Workstation Build

    Hey TBCS, it's been a while! School and non-computer related projects have been eating up all my time, so I haven't been on here at all lately.

    I didn't bring my desktop with me to college, so I've been using my laptop as my workstation. It's a very fast (much faster than my old desktop, actually) and I have a pretty nice setup for it, but I would prefer to use it as a laptop, rather than as a desktop replacement.

    That's where this comes in (sorry for the crummy picture, I'll get some better ones later):



    That's a Supermicro X7QCE with four Xeon 7340 2.4 Ghz quad core CPUs (roughly equivalent to q6600's) and 24 gigs of ECC DDR2 667. And I got it for free.

    I spend a lot of time at a completely student run machine shop/hackerspace kind of place at my school, and have found a few other hardware enthusiasts there. One of them got this board and accompanying hardware on ebay to play with, but wasn't using it much and decided he needed more space at the shop for his tesla coil stuff (shameless plug, he recently successfully kickstartered a tesla coil kit he helped develop.), and decided to find a new home for the board. Which is how I got it.

    I haven't done much with the board besides setting it up and installing/configuring Windows server on it. Unfortunately, normal versions of windows only support up to 1 or 2 physical processors, so I have to use the server version, which isn't very well suited for personal computer use. I still have lots of tweaking to do to get it useable.



    I don't have a dedicated graphics or sound card yet for it, but I'm hoping I can scavenge those from electronics recycling, or buy used ones cheap.

    I'm not planning anything too elaborate for a case - I'll CAD up something in the next few weeks, and then laser cut it out of acrylic (hooray for infinite free laser cutter access!).

  2. #2
    Over 75 Custom PC's in 20 years TheGreatSatan's Avatar
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    Default Re: 16 Core Workstation Build

    the fans look funny just laying there off angle. is the motherboard EATX?
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  3. #3
    Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus Technochicken's Avatar
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    Default Re: 16 Core Workstation Build

    The ram on this board generates a lot of heat, so I just stuck two fans over it to help cool it. I didn't have a second spare 120 mm, which is why the smaller one is there.

    No, it's some weird proprietry form factor. It's approximately 16" x 14.5", so it's even bigger than HPTX, like the SR-2.

  4. #4
    Yuk it up Monkey Boy! Airbozo's Avatar
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    Default Re: 16 Core Workstation Build

    If I remember right the chassis that that motherboard goes into utilizes a wind tunnel to keep the memory cool. Depending on the chassis size they are either the small turbo fans or the 80mm versions.
    "...Dumb all over, A little ugly on the side... "...Frank Zappa...

  5. #5
    100% Recycled Pixels. Twigsoffury's Avatar
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    Default Re: 16 Core Workstation Build

    we use these at the ranch to cool the cattle pens down during the summer.



    5,200 cfm buddy...

  6. #6
    Fresh Paint
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    Default Re: 16 Core Workstation Build

    It doesn't matter if it sounds like you're in the middle of a tornado while using your computer.

    As long as it stays cool.

  7. #7
    Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus Technochicken's Avatar
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    Default Re: 16 Core Workstation Build

    For anyone curious about performance, I did some benchmarking by raytracing models in Autodesk Inventor, which seems to scale well, even up to 16 cores. The 16 core platform rendered ~ 2-2.5 times as fast as my laptop with an ivy bridge Core i7 3720QM and 16 gigs of ram. So, it would be ~1.5 to 2x as fast as a desktop Core i7-3770K setup.

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