A good cheap desktop to make a gpu test bench.

[TKro14]

I have been circling the net, can find many diy test bench out of plywood, old cases and the prebuilt systems but not much on what components to use in your test bench. I’ll level with everyone. I am starting to tinker with electronics. Gotta start somewhere, so I did the unspeakable and bought a couple of Quadro k6000s off eBay cheap and I’d like to see what I can do with them. I’m trying to find a cheap or refurbed desktop that I can cannablize and not worry about it. I keep gravitating to more expensive but know there’s a better cheaper option but can’t seem to make up my mind. Any opinion? Thanks to anyone offering an opinion. 

[TKro14]

1 hour ago, campy said:

In order to accurately test what a GPU or GPU(s) are capable of, you need a CPU that horrendously outclasses the card/s so you dont have any CPU bottleneck whatsoever.

Your best bet would be something like a used LGA 1151 i7 system of some kind. 6700k/7700k on a decent motherboard with a bit of ram

 

If it was just older cards, get a super compatible LGA 775 board. I have one that has PCIe, agp, takes DDR1 and DDR2 and has IDE/Sata and supports pretty much every single 775 processor including the xeons

its fantastic for benching G80 and earlier cards

 

If you want to go super budget, for those quadros i would suggest a supermicro x8sil and 8gb of ecc ddr3 with a xeon x3440, that'll run you 60-70$ tops all together on ebay

Hey thanks! I appreciate the reply. While the budget option sounds apprealing I am thinking option a is probably the most flexible. I’m still looking at the Xeon.