starshade

@Vespertine No worries at all buddy; your advice is greatly appreciated, and I would find someone hard pressed to think any of those comments are sexist. That said, they're all minecraft gurus; and the older boys (and the older girl) are getting into UE4, some video editing. I could definitely dedicate more power to the older ones, which is another great idea. They're not playing anything at 4k (or 16k.. Linus), and at best, I'd be super happy if they could all render 1440 content at medium~ settings. For any high powered processing on video editing, I could always let them use some of my 5960X. You are 100% correct about a lot of factors; which is why I'm a bit concerned and wanting to touch base with this forum, as you guys are fantastic.

@Vespertine Yes, we have loft style bedrooms for the boys/girls. Spitting the requirement into 2 machines certainly is a potentially great compromise.. However, I do have 3 girls and 5 boys. So the boys' machine would need to support five, or I'd need to end up doing three, two for the boys, one for the gals. So that may be a very good compromise. Two would be preferable, but at best, I need 4 terminals powered for my older boys, and the other one is almost there... (so in very short order, 5 terminals / workstations) So I'm just not sure. This is really helpful to the thought process though. Any additional thoughts/notes would be super welcome, and thanks once more for the help thus far.

@Vespertine along the same lines that @nerdslayer1 was referencing? You guys may be right, but once again, my major problem is spending a lot on the shell of the machines versus the meat, in addition, once again, power consumption and heat will be a factor. I'd rather not rekt'd my electrical consumption, if possible. That said, there very well may be builds that come in with less consumption then a larger, single machine would -- I am just not entirely sure. For example, in relation to the "shell vs meat" statement, what I am referring to is; I could spend a lot more on their gaming cards, instead of having to scale that back for cases, powersupplies, mobos, cpus. I think RAM will end up being about the same no matter what; I'll just shove a stupid amount in there, or atleast 16gb if a pc per kid is the end result.

@nerdslayer1 Yeah, that was the first route I considered; but building so many computers does push on the pricey side, not to mention, i'd assume it would be less power efficient, a lot hotter, etc. I have already started composing some pcpartpicker builds; and I found I was spending a lot of money on a lot of the same stuff, where this solution would solve a lot, and allow me to spend more in other items, giving them overall, a more polished, powerful machine. While I am immensely comfortable with virtualization, I hadn't given much thought to the machine being unstable. (I run docker/vagrant on a regular basis, but always for linux; not for windows.) So I'm not quite sure what kind of stability issues would follow. It's been a while since I watched the Linus build, I'm sure i'll revisit and see some of the problems they faced. On the software side, I was hoping to setup Jenkins and script the deploys for the virtual environments; but none of that matters if they crash due to weird conflicts due to, what I'm sure is, pushing the software, and to a slightly lesser extent, hardware in a direction it may not be familiar with I really appreciate the note & thoughtful advice.

Hello! I am back with another high end PC build and this time, I have an odd requirement. This requirement is along the lines of the 7 gamers 1 cpu, but I don't have 30,000 to shell out. I'm hoping with the reveal of threadripper, this is more plausible then ever before. So, the reason/purpose. I have a lot of kids. I need to power atleast 5 gaming / workstation terminals; preferably running an OS with maximum game support (I assume any windows over 7, I would love if linux could do it, and if the WINE game is strong, then i'm all for it. But this hasn't been my experience as of a few years back, despite a lot of steam games supporting.). If affordable, and in budget, i'd like to power 8 gaming / workstation terminals. I believe the resolution i'm going for will be 1440~, and if not possible with reasonable hardware, 1200~ would suffice. So with all of that said, I'd love your guys thoughts on this, as I am not entirely sure what I can get away with, where I should save money, where I should splurge. I am thinking to spend 5,000-10,000, and if possible, as low on that spectrum as feasible while not skimping/cutting too many corners. Background: I have 7 kids, 1 on the way; atleast 5 of them need to be able to use this system, and it should be assumed atleast 5 will be using it at any given time. The reason I mentioned 8, is because, well, I'd like to keep this thing in repair and just casually update it every couple of years, and try to get maybe 6-8 years out of this machine. Which means my younger children will be using it sooner then later. I think using virtualization is how Linus & Team did theirs, and that is appealing to me as well. Kids computers get infected all the time, and being able to throw away the container and have some vagrant style install script for windows & common apps to keep those things in good shape would be very convenient. I started with tablets for them, then laptops; and while I've tried my best, their tablets didn't last long and keeping their laptops in repair has been a challenge. DC ports, batteries, chargers, etc. In addition to that they're getting to the age when I got my first real desktop powerhouse, and I think they'd appreciate the juice. (My wife and oldest son/daughter have been playing with UE4. My wife's computer can keep up, their laptops can't even launch it) Anywho, please let me know if any additional information is required; this is very preliminary at the moment, but that's just because I'm not sure if it's realistic or reasonable on a budget. Thank you so much for your time, consideration and thoughts !

@TheGamingBarrel Both gpus in, crashed about 4 minutes in.. temperatures on the gpu at the time of crashing were 65~. 49~ on the CPU. Machine showed a funky zoomed in frozen windows 10 loader, (like the gfx card driver crashed..), and then a few seconds later it rebooted. Thoughts on how I should proceed diagnosing from here..?

@TheGamingBarrel Ah! Great idea. Will do, just waiting for this other test to wrap up. I will post screencaptures with the results ! Maybe it is important, shamefully I didn't think of it before hand, but I am using a three channel SLI connector rather then a two channel (I wanted the boards to be separated further, and I didn't have anything else handy, ) -- I did read that it was OK and not harmful/an issue; but thought I should mention it.

@TheGamingBarrel Ah I see, thanks for the clarification ! If anyone else has any thoughts/advice, please share ! Thanks!!

@Narnash haha! Is my PSU underpowered for this?? I will begin a memory test once this stability test wraps up for card a. Just adding this as a sidenote: Here is a link to the motherboard dr debug code list, if it helps anyone! http://www.manualslib.com/manual/867577/Asrock-X99-Extreme11.html?page=32 Regarding the memory testing, quick question/thought.. I've read a few different methods of memory and it's placement, particularly, one that said you should use the slots furthest from the CPU, and move inward (which seemed to ignore channels, and sounded silly.. but I read it two places?)... I'm use to just placing them in their designated channel, starting at i/o... (a1, b1, c1, d1) -- This is currently how it is, and to my understanding according to intel specification, how it must be.. (might be wrong.). That said. The bios detects all memory, totaling 64gb, with no issue it seems. I will post the memtest results ASAP.

Hey everyone! A short while ago, I posted here for feedback on the machine I was putting together, and I ended up putting together the unit, with the following: Thermaltake Core X9 Black E-ATX Stackable Tt LCS Certified Cube Chassis CA-1D8-00F1WN-00 ASRock X99 Extreme11 LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard 2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 06G-P4-4998-KR 6GB CLASSIFIED 1 x Intel Core i7-5960X Haswell-E 8-Core 3.0 GHz LGA 2011-v3 140W 1 x G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 64GB (4 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14Q-64GVK 1 x Antec HCP Platinum HCP-1000 1000W ATX12V V2.32 / EPS12V V2.92 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified ... 2 x SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V5P512BW 1 x Noctua NF-A15 PWM 140mm Premium Quiet Quality Fan with Round Frame, AAO Technology 1 x Noctua NH-D15S 140mm SSO2 D-Type Premium CPU Cooler, NF-A15 PWM Fans So while I am overjoyed to begin to tinker, I do have a few issues. Of course. Hehe. For starters, to be clear, I intend on overclocking; but no overclocking at all has been done yet, everything is stock from the vendor. Ah.. And, I haven't setup RAID for the m.2 drives yet.. So.. with that: Things were going great, well.. never. We started off with some ddr4 compat issues, but a quick trip to a local computer store resolved that; moving on, once I got the bios updated, I was able to pretty quickly get around to getting up and operational, then begin stability testing / benchmarking with furmark, aida64 and the cpubenchmark benchmark tool. My machine performed at 5600~ for the score at stock, without raid on the drives ultra m.2 drives. I had a few weird crashes once I got the machine up in SLI.. Three or so, during a furmark, and aida64 test (separately). During each crash I was monitoring the temperatures for CPU, MOBO, GPUs, and the cpu/mobo stayed super cool, at around ~40ish, the GPU's never went above 75ish on furmark, or above 65 on AIDA64. On each crash, I rebooted the machine, and ASROCKs Dr Debug popped up with b4 issue (which isn't a code in my book, but on x77 boards, it pertained to legacy rom or pcie or something?), I rebooted once more (in all instances of this), and got a 94 code. This is for a PCIE card. Darn. So I am in the middle of trying to debug this as we speak, and here's what i've tried so far: When taking the second video card out, it doesn't seem to have any issues at all, it is a bit laggy during the test (like intermittent frame skips), enough to use a different PC while it's stability testing right now, but.. I don't know if that is normal. Nevertheless, at the very least it isn't crashing. I also tried the reverse (with the other gfx card), in a lesser capacity, and it didn't crash either. (I was hoping to discover this card crashing, so I could atleast RMA, and get it going.) In addition to the above, I ran the AIDA64 test with everything but the GPUs selected, and it ran great. No issues, I was able to watch youtube videos, no frame stuttering, etc. I'm still digging around, but if you guys have any thoughts, I'd greatly appreciate feedback! edit: phrasing, edit2: attached a few screencaptures of stability testing with a single gfx card a,.. I'm not sure what would help, so I grabbed everything from the aida64 stability test. please let me know if I can provide more details/better information. This test was with everything selected (minus hdd) for ~25 minutes, I'll get gfx card b and memtest posted shortly.

Thanks for all the help!

Thanks a ton for the heads up @NumLock21 - I will go re-review those 3 items, it seems like 64GB is going to be the limit though, thanks for the catch. Is the server-chip xeon brand comparable at all? I would think it wouldn't be, but I see you listed the "equivalent" (I think a server chip would handle differently, then say, the consumer chip. Sorry if that's ignorant )

@DaltonM It's killing me, because I put this rig back together in November, and just sat on it (sorta waiting around for pascal, and some funds to drop from clients), and while I know your advice is prudent, being a week away from this behemoth is so enrapturing... I think i'm prepared to step away from the 980ti's once pascal is available (and maybe needed.. I'm pretty sure 2x980ti is going to smoke anything anyone builds for atleast a minute), at which point, once we move passed there (end of 2017/2018?), i'll make the difficult choice of self-sacrifice, giving my wife the 980tis... [ahem, and purchasing a pair of pascal gpus)

@Lethal Seraph I own two of these cases, and you're right, i'm not a huge fan of their appearance.. I'd love more sleek & elegant.. BUT, they're all steel and huge. Plus their rating vs price is phenomenal. Do you have any other super / full towers in mind that you would recommend?

@DaltonM and @xwboy Understood and noted, i really appreciate the feedback, thoughts, and time. This will help my consideration so much more! Ah, note: xwboy, it seems silly -- but, yeah. The older I get, the less I want to close applications :P. In sincerity though, I don't seem to get similar results, i'm sitting at 40% ram usage (of 32gb), with a few (2, less then usual) virtual boxes, slack, firefox, a few ides (phpstorm/webstorm), unreal engine, and a few terminals. Computer is clean as well, although at this level, i'm sure that is a given, incase it's not. So one of the issues I've been facing, previously, before shoving another 16gb into the machine (I originally thought 16gb would be enough, back in 2013...), let's say I went to open photoshop, .. at this point, it would crash due to memory consumption. (tried to add extra info.) @Lethal Seraph The more compatible S version looks like a winner. I'll buy an extra a15 fan just incase ! Thanks! If any other thoughts are floating around, please don't hesitate!! Thanks once more.