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Kid Supercomputer -- Getting it right, the first time

starshade
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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 !

 

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@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.

 

 

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@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. 

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2 minutes ago, starshade said:

@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, 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. 

 

3 minutes ago, Vespertine said:

Alright, nevermind what I said then, but considering 7 kids aren't all going to have their own bedrooms, a PC in each bedroom should be enough, right?

 

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@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. 

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There's a lot of factors to consider too, which might save energy, and that is age, some of the older boys might want a more powerful machine, you could try replicating 2G/1CPU with that, but the younger probably don't need anything as powerful, and that could save energy costs if you had low-end machines for that, or machines which don't consume much power, (I'm thinking the GT 1030 would be good for this, due to its performance per watt), 2 low-end machines would work there. Though I'm not quite sure about the girls as they might not play the same intense games that boys do, not trying to be sexist or anything.

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@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.

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