[Worklog] The Beast Slayer

[BestPony]

Aw man, I'm on the edge of my seat with this, I can't imagine how you must be feeling lol! 5% is very reasonable though, I hope they're quick about it...

[Talifan9]

That sucks...sorry to hear it :/

[hiigaran]

Picked up the X99s from el capitano. Put five standoffs on each board, double-checked that the CPU and RAM were positioned correctly, then mounted the heatsink. I think they need a little more tightening, but I'm not going to do it until the boards are mounted in the acrylic base.

Hooked up the PSU and fired those babies up. No explosions, so that's always a good sign. The boards have no display ports, so there's not much I can do except look at the error code readout on the board, and watch the fans spin. Both boards show a code of A9, which is not explained in the manual. Both boards show the same thing, so either both boards are broken in exactly the same way, or they are both working. I'm going to lean towards the latter on this one and for once be optimistic!

All we need now are the drives and cards, and the rigs are good to go! I have so many video cards that even if one or two get broken (hopefully not), I can still run the systems. Same with the drives. I have four. If my personal rig doesn't work...well, whatever. That's another problem. The Beast Slayer takes priority!

I literally ate nothing today, and it's past 10 in the evening, so I'm going to rectify that. If I still have the energy, I'll begin marking the mounting holes on the acrylic to drill and tap the holes that the standoffs will thread in to.

I'm still undecided on board layout. Should I go with the original plan and have one board rotated 180 degrees, to have the cables in the middle and routed back, or should I have the boards side by side, with the I/O facing the rear? I'm starting to lean more towards the latter, now that I have the boards to provide a good visual.

[Ruthalas]

Seems like having the IO in the same area would be convenient, assuming there is clearance for all the heatsinks and such.

[BestPony]

I believe Q code A9 means there's no display, which is correct given the circumstances. Bring on the GPUs I say!

[hiigaran]

Decided to go with a side-by-side arrangement, with the I/Os both facing rearwards, rather than inwards. It looks more organised, and I figured that when I do swap over to chillbox cooling, the piping would also be simpler if things are all in line. It will make wiring for the chillbox a little more complicated down the track, but nothing unmanageable.

Enjoy this collection of photos in the meantime!

[PoNyePiC]

Enjoy this collection of photos in the meantime!

Asrock makes some sexy MoBo's.  Looks just like my mini itx x99 board.  They are just so dashingly blue 

[hiigaran]

Small start on the PSU mounting plate today:



Using more of my scrap acrylic, I got a suitably sized piece, placed the PSUs on it, and traced their edges. The power supplies will be mounted on their sides, next to each other, so that the AC side faces rearwards, the DC side faces forwards, and the fans face outwards.

Once traced, I used a protractor to measure 2cm at a 45 degree from each corner, and marked the locations to drill holes. These holes will be used for ~20cm lengths of M12 threaded rods, so that when installed, the plate will hang underneath the motherboard plate, and the PSUs will simply remain in place from the friction of being pressed between the two plates by tightening the nuts at the ends of the rods.

Because the threaded rods might look unsightly, lengths of stainless steel tubing will be cut out (also known as a whole bunch of shower curtain rods I have laying around for some reason), and the threaded rods will be hidden inside them.

Now by doing this, it means I will have to drill through the motherboard mounting plate, which compromises the ability to maintain an airtight environment later on, so I will need to seal this afterwards. Shouldn't be too difficult. The other issue is that I will need to use thinner nuts, since I've got very little space underneath the motherboards. I can place something non-conductive over the top of the nut to eliminate any chance of short-circuiting the board, so no worries there.

I doubt I will be able to cut this plate out tomorrow, but I'll see what I can do. Otherwise I'll do it in three or four days.

EDIT: Also, updated the first post with all the photos of the build thus far.

[hiigaran]

Bleh, some good news, and some bad news. Bad news is that the parts still haven't cleared, because it was never sent out, due to a public holiday. Good news is they haven't had a chance to break anything yet!

The wait continues. Earliest I'd have them would then be in another 5 days.

[Ruthalas]

I feel your pain man. I hope it all goes smoothly.

[hiigaran]

Well for those of you who are curious, I decided to run some numbers to compare Dubai prices to US prices, because why the hell not?

At present, the total expenditure is at $9173.77 USD. This is hopefully the final figure, but it is significantly higher than what I had intended due to the following reasons:

1: I ordered the wrong CPUs for the mobos. An embarrassing mistake that typically only newbies make, which made this all the worse for me. So cash was lost on restock fees, return shipping, and the correct CPUs, which were no longer on sale, and required heatsinks. This mistake alone cost me $482.82. Lesson learned: Don't fucking rush a purchase, even if the sale ends in a few minutes!

2: One PSU went boom. I took a gamble on an open box PSU, and I guess I lost. The PSU actually came with no cables, which I would have forgiven, but now Newegg apparently won't take the dead PSU back. $8.95 was wasted on buying a power cable for the PSU when it was still alive. The replacement PSU cost $337.39.

3: Not so much a complication, as an inevitability, but I need to pay 5% import duty on some of the parts. If my estimates are correct, I should pay about $310, but I'll put a big buffer on that and say $400.

So from the $9173.77, $829.16 were from complications. Subtracting that from the total, I get $8744.61 for the original hardware cost, with duty (it might have been slightly larger, so my maths might be a bit off, but it won't be by a significant amount).

Now to compare with Dubai's prices, I had to make a new build list, as many parts aren't available online here, compared to the variety in the US. I had to pick the cheapest similar item. The only thing I found that matched exact models was the i5-6500. I couldn't even find a matching Xeon. I found the v3 version, but not the v4 version. Everything else that I picked for this build list was the cheapest part that matched required specs (mobo with minimum 5 PCI-e slots, highest PSU was only 1500 watts, etc).

The total came out to 41181 AED, which when converted, equals $11211.36 USD at the time of this post. That's a difference of $2466.75. Dubai would have been 28.2% more expensive. This would likely be more expensive, if I also factored in the quality of many of the US-bought parts, as several of the cheapest Dubai options weren't the same parts.

(Let me know if my maths is off here)

What does this mean? Well for one, if I purchased things in Dubai, I'd probably have 6 or 7 GTX 1080s to work with, instead of 10 (still assuming no cards have been broken by customs). It also means that I'm not going to be overly upset over additional expenditures, so long as I remain under the $11K value (since everything up to that cost means it was still worth the hassle of buying from the US).

[BestPony]

Seems good to me, hopefully you won't run into any more unforeseen costs. How quickly do you reckon you'll be able to get the GPUs up and folding once you get them? We're going to be overtaken again in a matter of hours 

[hiigaran]

A few hours, I guess.

But that won't happen for yet another few days, because AGAIN, it is a public holiday and no one is able to process my items. So the earliest I can try again would be the 13th.

I'm slowly losing it here.

[PoNyePiC]

A few hours, I guess.

But that won't happen for yet another few days, because AGAIN, it is a public holiday and no one is able to process my items. So the earliest I can try again would be the 13th.

I'm slowly losing it here.

I think we're all losing it even more.  i always whine about shipping here.  Fedex, UPS, and USPS won't ship to my house.  So I will be thankful that I can pickup my items by driving 45 minutes.  I'm not familiar with the whole customs ordeal, but it sounds like a pain in the flank 

[hiigaran]

Well, I decided to busy myself with something else in the meantime.



Due to the location of the rods that will attach the PSU mounting plate to the motherboard plate, two of the rods will be positioned underneath the motherboards. While the other two rods are well clear of any components and may be secured with M12 nuts that are suitable for the M12 rods, I needed another solution for the pair under the boards.

The two options I had were to either find some low profile nuts that would fit in the gap under the motherboards which are made by their standoffs, or find some way to use smaller fasteners. So I took a length of M12 rod and drilled a 5mm hole. I then used an M6 tap to create threads in the hole, which are barely visible in the photo. Not a pleasant experience, mind you. Tapping steel by hand is an arduous task. Also, as I had no other suitable substance, I resorted to using cooking oil for lubrication.

You might also notice that the hole is slightly off-center. Let's just say that I'm quite surprised I was able to drill the hole that close to the center as it is, as well as drill more or less straight enough that I didn't break through the side of the rod. I wish I had the space for a drill press.



Quick test with an M6 screw shows that both holes drilled and tapped were sufficiently deep to hold a significant weight. The screw will need to be cut to an appropriate length to ensure there's no gap between the bottom of the motherboard plate, and the top of the M12 rod.