X79 Monster Rig, large budget

[Tampa]

Hi there,

First of all, please don't bash or hate on me, this is the third forum i post this in, so far no one could help me.

I have plans to spend most of the money i saved up the last couple years on a monster machine that will last for 5+ years to come. My Budget is roughly 11.000$.

Please don't ask me why, i simply want to put together an insane rig, that will take on anything one could imagine.

I'm planning a X79 build on an Asrock X79 Extreme 11 (If I'm not wrong it has 72 PCIe Lanes right?)

Intel I7 3970X of course

Three or even four Nvidia Cards single GPU either 680 or Titan, price limit is 900 per card

Some fast SSD storage for OS and games, so at least 500GB and two drives, but more is better. I plan to spend 2000 for the fast storage.

At least 32 GB Memory (not from Kingston tho, last 3 ram kits were faulty)

Watercool the thing with three loops(CPU,GPU,Chipset+everything else thats cool-able) Been looking at some sick Copper radiators and dual side mainboard cooling

6 Monitors suitable for 3D and with low edge profiles aka playing JC2 on all 6 in 3D mode. Not sure if 500 each is enough to get that.

One or two PSUs depending on how much i need. 500 bucks should cover that.

I plan to build a custom case from transparent plastic so i can light it up nicely and fit all the things with enough space, still need some specs for this. As to where screw holes need to be and what not else. I have access to a CNC machine and software so once i have the specs i can do the rest from there.

The italic parts are things i need most advice on. Especially on watercooling and Monitors.

Should probably mention I'm from Germany.

[Gdog96]

Well I can't help you with everything, but I would definately say go for as many titans as you can as they are the fastest single GPU cards out there at the moment, and seeing as you want to run 6 3D monitors I'd imagine you will need the horsepower. Also what resolution do you want to run the monitors. I don't know much about monitors so hopefully someone else can help you.

As for the RAM, if I'm correct, Corsair just released a kit with ridiculously high frequency, something like 3200 mhz. You could get 32 gigs of that.

This bit is just personal preference, but for me I think completely transparent cases look awful because you can see all the wires no matter where you hide them. Personally I would go for a Caselabs case, as they make insane cases with so much water cooling potential and they are massive, so you might want to look into that, but again, it's personal preference so if you want a clear case, go for it, although I don't know measurements and stuff, but I'd imagine it would need to be pretty huge for all the stuff you want.

About the PCI storage, I remember seeing that Asus has something like this coming out because I saw it as CES. I don't know if it's out yet though so you could abit of research there. I know for a fact that techoftommorow covered it at CES, not sure if Linus did though.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Good luck!

[Tampa]

As for the RAM' date=' if I'm correct, Corsair just released a kit with ridiculously high frequency, something like 3200 mhz. You could get 32 gigs of that. [/quote']

I checked the Memory Support List on the Asrock Page, says it will run 2400Mhz kits. You know if this is absolute max or just their highest recommend?

I wonder if i should really fill all 8 slots, if I'm not wrong it means only dual channel instead of quad.

[Guest]

The X79 chipset supports quad channel memory meaning a minimum of 4 DIMMS can be used however most boards offer 8 DIMMS for a total of 64GB of memory. As far as PCI lanes go, I know for a fact there are 40 PCI lanes as standard but I'm not too sure if that motherboard has a third party chip to offer more as I couldn't really find anything on google.

Now, I honestly don't know if I would be so ambitious with your aim of gaming in 3D on 6 monitors. Similar to the efficiency curve of a PSU, SLI and Crossfire can only perform so well before performance will actually start dropping because of a lack of driver support. Even with 3 Titans (which is the max that are officially supported though there are unofficial drivers that are buggy), I believe you'll struggle trying to play 6 monitors in 3D.

Storage wise I wouldn't bother with those PCIe SSD systems - their performance vs price ratio is horrible. Chuck 2 256GB Samung 840 Pro's, OCZ Vectors or Intel 520's in RAID 0 for bawlin performance as a boot disk and general C drive and then get 4-6 2TB mech drives in RAID 10 as mass storage. You could put more drives in your boot array however they would be running on SATA 2 which depending on overall performance may bottleneck high perfromance SSD arrays.

For the rest, we can't really help you yet for cooling as we don't know what sort of case you're going with.

One last thing - I take it you're going with a 3970X because it's an Intel Extreme CPU? You do know you can get a 3930K for half the price to perform the same?

[ERSCreeper]

So this is what your looking at excluding the watercooling? [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8[/url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]

Ignore the price. Just the parts that you want.

Edit: Monitors don't have Vesa mount FYI

[ERSCreeper]

So this is what your looking at excluding the watercooling? [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8[/url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]

Ignore the price. Just the parts that you want.

Edit: Monitors don't have Vesa mount FYI

Of course the link breaks... http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8

[Tampa]

So this is what your looking at excluding the watercooling? [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8[/url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8] Ignore the price. Just the parts that you want. Edit: Monitors don't have Vesa mount FYI

In this setup i would not be able to put the SSDs on there as the GPUs are two slots high. I was going to get one of these PCIe splitters, if i was going to get more than one, but with three GPUs.

For the rest' date=' we can't really help you yet for cooling as we don't know what sort of case you're going with.[/quote']

I mainly need to know what type of radiators, pumps and stuff to get.

As windspeed36 says i might look into using the Sata/Sas for storage and only 3-way SLI, that should do-

[ERSCreeper]

So this is what your looking at excluding the watercooling? [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8[/url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8] Ignore the price. Just the parts that you want. Edit: Monitors don't have Vesa mount FYI

In this setup i would not be able to put the SSDs on there as the GPUs are two slots high. I was going to get one of these PCIe splitters, if i was going to get more than one, but with three GPUs.

For the rest' date=' we can't really help you yet for cooling as we don't know what sort of case you're going with.[/quote']

I mainly need to know what type of radiators, pumps and stuff to get.

As windspeed36 says i might look into using the Sata/Sas for storage and only 3-way SLI, that should do-

Windspeed36 nailed it.

[Guest]

For cooling components you can't really go wrong with a Swiftech Apogee HD for your CPU. For GPU it gets a little more complicated but I think XSPC just released a full cover block for the Titan in a black metal finish. Of course you could go with EK blocks however given their issues with the blocks basically falling apart from the inside out I am hesitant to recomend them.

Radiators depend on the case due to clearence and stuff but Swiftech, XSPC, Black Ice and Koolance are all really good options. What you will have issues with though is availibility, especially if you're like me and only want to pay for shipping once or only drive to one place.

Tubing has a multitude of options and it really depends on the color scheme you want - personally I'm about to use PrimoChill UV Blue for my STH10 build.

Hopefully this has helped a little more.

[Tampa]

Ok I will look into that. What about pumps? Is there anything else I need for such a large build? You think three loops will do?

[bradscoolio]

So this is what your looking at excluding the watercooling? [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8[/url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]

Ignore the price. Just the parts that you want.

Edit: Monitors don't have Vesa mount FYI

the monitors don't have vesa mounts

[bradscoolio]

For cooling components you can't really go wrong with a Swiftech Apogee HD for your CPU. For GPU it gets a little more complicated but I think XSPC just released a full cover block for the Titan in a black metal finish. Of course you could go with EK blocks however given their issues with the blocks basically falling apart from the inside out I am hesitant to recomend them.

Radiators depend on the case due to clearence and stuff but Swiftech, XSPC, Black Ice and Koolance are all really good options. What you will have issues with though is availibility, especially if you're like me and only want to pay for shipping once or only drive to one place.

Tubing has a multitude of options and it really depends on the color scheme you want - personally I'm about to use PrimoChill UV Blue for my STH10 build.

Hopefully this has helped a little more.

I hope you're not using the pastel i recommended with the primochill

Do not use Mayhems Pastel with Primochill tubing or Tygon tubing as Mayhems Pastel seems to react with it changing the colour of the tubing to a greenish colour.

Took that from mayhem's site

[bradscoolio]

Ok I will look into that. What about pumps? Is there anything else I need for such a large build? You think three loops will do?

I'm thinking more like everything in the same loop as you'll have problems with more than 2 separate loops in your build :P Just have tones of thick low density rads with slow high static pressure fans and 2 d5 pumps. you should be good :)

[Tampa]

I want to get the hardware as cool as possible and since space won't be an issue I don't really see why 3 loops would cause me trouble, could you explain a but further where you see problems?

[ERSCreeper]

So this is what your looking at excluding the watercooling? [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8[/url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NJy8]

Ignore the price. Just the parts that you want.

Edit: Monitors don't have Vesa mount FYI

I know

[Blade of Grass]

To be honest, three lops is unnecessary, their should be no performance gain, and it will just take alot more work.

Think about it like this, with one loop, you can run:

Nothing is to scale, and this is drawn poorly, its over the top (way too many rads) but it gets my point across. No one needs three 360 rads, plus one 120, but that's besides the point.

Now, with one loop, you can see that's their is alot of tubing, but could you image having three loops? You would need three pumps, three reservoirs, and three different coolants (otherwise, its pointless since they'll all look the same.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

No point in three loops, one is more than enough.

Also, I'd go with a max of two titans, because every time you add more GPUs you introduce driver optimization issues, and added change of micro stuttering. I think Linus showed in one of his videos that a dual GPU system got beat by a single GPU because the drivers were horribly un-optimized for dual GPUs in that one game.

[Travianw135]

The X79 chipset supports quad channel memory meaning a minimum of 4 DIMMS can be used however most boards offer 8 DIMMS for a total of 64GB of memory. As far as PCI lanes go, I know for a fact there are 40 PCI lanes as standard but I'm not too sure if that motherboard has a third party chip to offer more as I couldn't really find anything on google.

Now, I honestly don't know if I would be so ambitious with your aim of gaming in 3D on 6 monitors. Similar to the efficiency curve of a PSU, SLI and Crossfire can only perform so well before performance will actually start dropping because of a lack of driver support. Even with 3 Titans (which is the max that are officially supported though there are unofficial drivers that are buggy), I believe you'll struggle trying to play 6 monitors in 3D.

Storage wise I wouldn't bother with those PCIe SSD systems - their performance vs price ratio is horrible. Chuck 2 256GB Samung 840 Pro's, OCZ Vectors or Intel 520's in RAID 0 for bawlin performance as a boot disk and general C drive and then get 4-6 2TB mech drives in RAID 10 as mass storage. You could put more drives in your boot array however they would be running on SATA 2 which depending on overall performance may bottleneck high perfromance SSD arrays.

For the rest, we can't really help you yet for cooling as we don't know what sort of case you're going with.

One last thing - I take it you're going with a 3970X because it's an Intel Extreme CPU? You do know you can get a 3930K for half the price to perform the same?

The Extreme11 has dual PLX chips plus the 40 stock PCI lanes.

[Guest]

The X79 chipset supports quad channel memory meaning a minimum of 4 DIMMS can be used however most boards offer 8 DIMMS for a total of 64GB of memory. As far as PCI lanes go, I know for a fact there are 40 PCI lanes as standard but I'm not too sure if that motherboard has a third party chip to offer more as I couldn't really find anything on google.

Now, I honestly don't know if I would be so ambitious with your aim of gaming in 3D on 6 monitors. Similar to the efficiency curve of a PSU, SLI and Crossfire can only perform so well before performance will actually start dropping because of a lack of driver support. Even with 3 Titans (which is the max that are officially supported though there are unofficial drivers that are buggy), I believe you'll struggle trying to play 6 monitors in 3D.

Storage wise I wouldn't bother with those PCIe SSD systems - their performance vs price ratio is horrible. Chuck 2 256GB Samung 840 Pro's, OCZ Vectors or Intel 520's in RAID 0 for bawlin performance as a boot disk and general C drive and then get 4-6 2TB mech drives in RAID 10 as mass storage. You could put more drives in your boot array however they would be running on SATA 2 which depending on overall performance may bottleneck high perfromance SSD arrays.

For the rest, we can't really help you yet for cooling as we don't know what sort of case you're going with.

One last thing - I take it you're going with a 3970X because it's an Intel Extreme CPU? You do know you can get a 3930K for half the price to perform the same?

Figured as much

[Travianw135]

I want to get the hardware as cool as possible and since space won't be an issue I don't really see why 3 loops would cause me trouble, could you explain a but further where you see problems?

You can easily get the hardware as cool as possible with one loop, but 3 loops is going to make it difficult not to cross tubing and it will be very complicated. Get 2 D5 pumps (Koolance PMP 450 and the Swiftech MCP655 are D5s) and get the dual pump top for the one loop. If space doesn't matter then get some Monsta rads from Alphacool and run push/pull with Noctuas or something ridiculous.

[Tampa]

Wouldn't that water going through the GPU heat up significantly before reaching the CPU?

I finished the rough doodle of what i was thinking about:

[Travianw135]

Wouldn't that water going through the GPU heat up significantly before reaching the CPU?

I finished the rough doodle of what i was thinking about:

No, the component order could only affect it about 1 degree but only under certain situations, or if the system has terrible flow. It goes so fast through the system that it only heats up a tiny bit at each component. You must have heard this plenty of times before.