A pointless dream

Arch Unit309 · December 16, 2014

Hi I'm looking for a little help with the planning process for a new build. Now this build is a kind of "form over function" machine and is in a way the sort of machine I've wanted to build since I started building computers. I want to build a small supercomputer inspired by the anime Serial Experiments Lain and comic page from Megatokyo http://megatokyo.com/strip/403. One thing I would like to try for the main computer is to use a server motherboard since I've always liked the idea of using one with two processor. I'm looking to run it as a Beowulf cluster but a lot of the information I find seems to be 4 years old is there a much better way? a lot of videos seem to be about using raspberry Pi any one here built a cluster with PCs?

I've never used linux before and now seems to be a good time since I have 2 windows machines already. My rough plan is to build the main computer get used to using linux then at the end of March next year add the first nodes, for mostly aesthetics reasons I was going to start with 5 liquid cooled Itx motherboards in a custom rack and then later when money allows add another 3-4 micro Atx boards in some kind of sub frame. For all the extra nodes I was planning on using 1150 socket processor since my 2 other machines use that and might handy for testing if I get a motherboard or CPU that doesn't work.

For nostalgia reasons I would like to start building this round my old case it's 390X550X180 I suspect I'll have to make it a little longer.

Anyone done anything like this before?

KemoKa · December 16, 2014

I'm afraid that you seem a little confused as to what a supercomputer is. a supercomputer is basically just a gigantic array of computers (a gigantic server) that works as one unit. What you would have here would just be a... cluster computer. It would be a roaring powerful computer that kicks the hell out of number-crunching applications (and your power bill) but for all intents and purposes, it would just be another computer. and if you're going for several less powerful computers, honestly you'd be better off with just one hella-powerful rig, because the law of diminishing returns is a bitch, especially with servers and data centers. The reason all your sources are 4 years old is because before CPUs like the FX, A-series and Core i-Series came out, having multiple computers clustered together got you better results, but nowadays our computers are so powerful that one high-end rig with a 5960X and a Quadro or a FirePro or a couple of 980s will be much more cost-effective than setting a microcluster just for number-crunching. I know, it only took 5 years. welcome to the Information Age.

Might I ask what you're actually planning to do with this thing? Because you've slightly lost me in this regard. Learning how to use Linux is certainly a good thing to learn, something that you can put on your resume, but Linux is so lightweight that all you really need to learn how to use it effectively is an Athlon X2 and a 250GB HDD. That's what I learned it on. You don't need a cluster computer at the moment. Learn how Linux actually works first, then you can start doing more interesting things that normal operating systems aren't supposed to do. It's annoying, I know, I know the feeling exactly from my programming class, you want to get right into doing all the cool stuff like microservers and clusters, but the fact of the matter is that to do that you need to trudge through all the boring stuff first. It's worth it though, trust me.

Arch Unit309 · December 16, 2014

It's more the the joy of building something new, I've loved the idea of huge modified computers since about 2004. I kinda want to get one built before family restaints make it too hard.