[Worklog] Return Of The Wall-Mounted Monstrosity: LiL PWNY

[PoNyePiC]

A few years ago, I built a dedicated Folding wall-mounted rig.  It was my favorite computer build.  I have long since decommissioned that build and have missed it dearly.  So, I decided to build a new one just like it, albeit a teeny tiny bit more powerful.  I have been inspired by Hig's upcoming Beast Slayer, which will surely overshadow this one, although this will still be a sexy piece of eye candy    

The old rig, codenamed ClusterFuck , was a 1millionPPD monster that put out some 1500 watts of pure heat.  This time around, I'm looking to use just one motherboard with six GPUs, and hopefully not exceeding a kilowatt.  Total expected throughput is just south of 4million PPD    This first image below is my old build that some may remember, with two R9 290s and four 280x's (a few more were added later):




I decided to move the project to another part of the house to aid in heating the living room and upstairs.  No use having it directly over the baseboard heaters this time    I settled on installing it beside the wall mounted wireless modem, then I don't need a wireless adapter.  My Inuyasha art covers the adjacent wall, and the giant Tails plushie behind the railing upstairs  And yes, that is one narrow-ass staircase.  





The PSU shelf made of K'Nex is the only part of this build that is stolen from the old build.  In fact, its been mounted to the wall for like two years since I the old rig down 





The big motherboard looks the same, but this one is the ga-99fxa-ud5, instead of the ud3.  It wouldn't have made any difference either way, since all GPU's will be on risers.  The motherboard sits about an inch off the wall which gives me a good bit of room for cable management.  Also, you can see the USB pcie adapters already installed and hot glued to the mobo.  I acquired my friends AMD FX 6300 hexacore CPU, which is fairly low powered, but will suffice quite well for a dedicated headless folding rig.  I put the 8350 in his rig since he does actual gaming (I just look like I game with my stack of GPUs).  





Now to install the GPU hanger.  I dug out the white shelf brackets that were also salvaged from the old build (yeah, I lied earlier).  I no longer had the strip of wood, so I ripped a piece of the wall elsewhere in the house.  Pinkie has grown quite a bit since that last build 





I was originally going to use the stock CPU cooler, but the Corsair H100i looks more badass hanging there   After that, I mounted my license plate which seemed quite fitting.  I just wanted to keep drilling holes in the wall.  







I hooked up all the PSU cables, minus the GPU cables and hid what I could behind the mobo.  I put on RAM fans for no good reason other than looks I suppose, and the fact that I had them lying around.  It wouldn't hurt to put a little air on the motherboard anyway.  In lieu of tidiness, I decided to mount the SSD directly to a mobo heatsink with copious amounts of hot glue.  I know, it sounds like a brilliant idea that will never come back to bite me in the ass   





I'm looking to get three Zotac 1070 Mini cards and three PNY long cards.  The three long cards will go on the right, above the PSU, and the mini cards will go above the motherboard.  I liked the tapered\tiered look of the GPUs on the old system, so I'd like to replicate that as well.  I should have another 1070 in the mail this week, along with the one I currently have.  There is a possibility of a seventh gpu if I get the PCI to PCIe adapter for $30.  It will allow me to hookup another 1x riser to the primitive PCI slot 


I will upload more images once I drill the holes for the GPU brackets and start installing them.

Toodles ~

[Talifan9]

It must be nice to have money.
*flails around dark room*

[PoNyePiC]

It must be nice to have money.
*flails around dark room*

Nah, I'm broke as all hell. I just blow 90% of my income on computer parts instead of making my house payment like a responsible person although I will say, pizza delivery is quite lucrative.

[Talifan9]

It must be nice to have money.
*flails around dark room*

Nah, I'm broke as all hell.  I just blow 90% of my income on computer parts instead of making my house payment like a responsible person although I will say, pizza delivery is quite lucrative.

Send some my way :P

[hiigaran]

We need more wall-mounted rigs in the world!

I'm a little concerned about the hot glue SSD though. Not a particularly good idea, unless the glued surfaces are sanded to hell. Otherwise, that thing will fall off very quickly.

[pinormous]

Send some my way :P

Money, computer parts, impending homelessness, or pizza?

[BestPony]

Oh wow, Kinex takes me back to my childhood, completely forgot about that stuff. Very creative!

[PoNyePiC]

Oh wow, Kinex takes me back to my childhood, completely forgot about that stuff. Very creative!

I regretted selling my childhood K'nex.  So when I moved out on my own, I bought a couple hundred dollars worth. You can make them into anything you want.   I usually use them to build useful things, like a projector stand or random shelves, etc...  

[PoNyePiC]

I spent awhile trying to decide which GTX 1070's to buy and settled on the PoNY PNY ones I originally wanted.  The first one should come hopefully Monday, unless I get lucky and it shows up tomorrow (not counting on that).  I have a Zotac Mini 1070 already.  So I just need to get two more of each one.  The best part is that I can run the entire system from the single EVGA SuperNova 1300.  I'll be running at almost exactly a kilowatt.  I pay around $0.10 USD for power, so it should cost about $2.50 per day on the power bill.  So like $75 a month, or roughly one average day of pizza delivery tips    

[Talifan9]

Send some my way :P

Money, computer parts, impending homelessness, or pizza?  

I've already got the impending homelessness, so I'll take either money or pizza thx

[PoNyePiC]

Money, computer parts, impending homelessness, or pizza?  

I've already got the impending homelessness, so I'll take either money or pizza thx

Well you could always move three hours away and live at my ponified man cave of a house    it comes with unlimited Papa John's pizza 

[PoNyePiC]

My new PNY GTX 1070 has arrived.  I should have it installed here in a few hours.  By nightfall, I will finally break the 2millionPPD milestone for the first time

I also thought about trying a PCIe splitter switch which would give me 8 total GPUs on this one system.  They are around $30usd and split any PCIe slot into three x1 slots.  They all share bandwidth, but I don't expect too much of a hit in folding performance.  But since it's cheap, I'm willing to waste $30 to test it.  People say they work fine so long as you don't exceed the 8 gpu maximum that most motherboards seem to have.  If your system supports over 8 GPUs, then you start to run into driver issues next.  Supposedly, nVidia and AMD drivers each support up to 8 GPUs in one system (some say 4 for AMD, but I've already exceeded that).  So I'm thinking.......what if I have 8 of each for a total of 16 GPUs     So I'm going to keep adding GPUs to this build until I can't.  At which point I will start a new build.

[hiigaran]

Ahh yes, the hardware layout that I originally envisioned. Let me know how that works out. I'm particularly interested in seeing how many GPUs you can stuff into one system.

[BestPony]

Thanks for investing more money for the team PoNyePiC! I reckon you're going to see noticeable performance degradation with that PCI-E splitter though. I see up to 42% BUS utilisation on a x16 PCI-E 3.0 lane with just one GTX 1070.

[PoNyePiC]

Thanks for investing more money for the team PoNyePiC! I reckon you're going to see noticeable performance degradation with that PCI-E splitter though. I see up to 42% BUS utilisation on a x16 PCI-E 3.0 lane with just one GTX 1070.

Is that during folding?  I didn't see any extreme folding degradation the last time I used them.  I will certainly try to find out soon.