A developers Workstation will be built

[gurusmi]

As basic information: In an old tradition the new rig will have the name "Endor". I thought it might look cool to have a relief print on the lower part of the Distro holding plate with Han Solo in Cryptonite. Afaik at the end of Part II of Star Wars Han solo was put into Cryptonite. At the beginnig of part III Luke Skywalker freed Han Solo from that cryptonite. Mostly Part III is playing on Endor. So that might suit a bit. Even if Han solo was freed on Alderaan. Isn't that a cool idea? If i done all that i will post some pictures of the holding plate with the relief on it. Right now my 3D Printer is working a lot to print that holding plate. Each print takes around 21 hrs.

 

[gurusmi]

I'm just now setting up the design at Thingiverse to be used by everybody. I need to add some more pictures and topunlish it. So if one is interested in the mounting bracket of the alphacool distroplate or other designes i used her and is capable to print 3D he ca. Just download the designs and print them. I also added the OpenSCAD source file.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Cryptonite

Off topic/What is this? I didn't found this word in SW. Only Carbonite. Google also is helpless. It shows to me something Kryptonite. Help me to understood, please!

 

[gurusmi]

I'm Sorry. Your right. I was mixing up Starwars and Superman. And at all i know where he got into and where he was freed. That was the reason for this. Because the new rig will have the name Endor. :rofl:

 

[gurusmi]

My actual PC ist delivering a hell of problems right now. I guess that my Mainboard has failures. Either BIOS or hardware. It is a Gigabyte Aoris Master X570 V1. I will have to kick it out and substitute it. I take deep look over to an Asus Crosshair VIII X570. To have Naboo (my actual PC) also have working as a development database server i think to expand the ram and CPU either. I want to have 64GB RAM and an AMD Ryzen 5950x. The last part to upgrade is the SSD. My Sabrent 1TB PCIe 4.0x4 will be upgraded towards a WD SN850X or alternately a Seagate Firecuda 530. Both as a PCIe 4.0x4 with 2 TB. Im thinking abouit that upgrade in between my major build of Endor. So i would have a stable machine till i got Endor finished. What do you think.

 

[wNotyarD]

My actual PC ist delivering a hell of problems right now. I guess that my Mainboard has failures. Either BIOS or hardware. It is a Gigabyte Aoris Master X570 V1. I will have to kick it out and substitute it. I take deep look over to an Asus Crosshair VIII X570. To have Naboo (my actual PC) also have working as a development database server i think to expand the ram and CPU either. I want to have 64GB RAM and an AMD Ryzen 5950x. The last part to upgrade is the SSD. My Sabrent 1TB PCIe 4.0x4 will be upgraded towards a WD SN850X or alternately a Seagate Firecuda 530. Both as a PCIe 4.0x4 with 2 TB. Im thinking abouit that upgrade in between my major build of Endor. So i would have a stable machine till i got Endor finished. What do you think.

Beware of equipping Naboo with 64GB, be it with 4x16 or 2x32. The memory controller on Ryzens have some stability issues when all ranks are populated, so the need for tinkering speeds, timings and voltages will ensue.

 

[gurusmi]

Naboo has 4* 8GB installed (32GB total). He is running with that Configuration since 4 years. All the time stable and fine on 3600CL18. I just switched on the XMP Profile. Around half a year ago he lost the Intel 660P/PCIe 3.0 data SSD. The BIOS didn't show it any longer. He began to have issues on the Sound side recognizing my DAC on his USB 3.0 Port. Since then also some USB Ports of the case and Back panel cannot be used any longer. The graphics card don't find my second DP connected Monitor any longer, etc. I estimate major Bios or board problems. That is the reason to exchange some parts from Naboo.

BTW. Most servers/workstations in German universities are named along the planets of the solar system. After sitting and learning 8 years in such organizations (System informatics, Communication technology with those diplomas on the end) i got rid of that naming. So i used to name mine according to the Star Wars System. I always have two systems. A primary and a backup one. The new will be set to backup when the build of a new rig has been finished. Naboo is in the first term the promary. When i have finished Endor as a new build then Endor gets a new system and naboo is switched to the backup. At the next term i will build naboo newly and after finished i will set Endor as my backop and so on.

 

[gurusmi]

I thought a bit about controlling the cooling loop. And i came to the result that i will integrate my Aquacomputer Quadro Device for this. As i also have a temperature sensor integrated the whole loop can be controlled by that Quadro. I had that also integrated in my actual build. I don't trust the cooling capabilities of the board that much, I need to place several normal sensors all around in the case- One between headspreader of the cpu and the cooler for controlling the pump. The water temperature will directly control the Fans on top of the radiator. And the case temperature will control all other fans. The most problematic sensor will be the CPU one. But i cannot get the needed value by any inner device. Therefor i would need the Windows service. But that is not available when using linux instead of M$ Windows. I need a kind of hysteresis curve to have the pump not changing the speed all the time.

 

[gurusmi]

A view pics from the rig after completing the tubes.





The old Velocity cooler



Ant the risercard is also added. Those fans are looking so cool...

 

[gurusmi]

Hi again,

i also took some pictures of my constructed plate to hold the AquaComputer Stuff. The Farbwerk360 and the quadro. At that plate i integrated the usage of the different ports.

 

[gurusmi]

Because of the combination of Case and board i will be in need to get a second USB 20Pin header at the Mainboard. The Mainboard has the ability to connect an USB-Port at the front-Panel. But it only suppoerts 2 USB 3 Type A ports. In difference my case has 4 USB 3 Type a ports but no USB 3 Type C port. I love that hundreds of norms. So i will have to get a second USB 3 Type a connection ports as the cables and plugs for both are different. There is one company that offers an adapter cable. They write that that adapter willl suite to Asus Strix boards etc. But it is undefined to have that adapter working with a ProArt X670e board. I decided not to go that risky way. I will buy a PCIe card to provide that special port.The Pro's on that card is that it doesn't need any power connector. But it works on PCIe 2.0x1. Lets see if that card works fine.

It's strange. I cannot insert a link in any other way. So here's the Link: https://www.amazon.de/Inateck-Expresskarte-Controller-Stromanbindung-erforderlich/dp/B00JEVLEFQ

 

[gurusmi]

Sometimes i get to the opinion that the sellers at Amazons Marketplace drive nuts. For a simple extension with a male/female Dupont plug they dream to charge me 8.xx€ that are round about 10 USD. A longer time ago i bought a set of dupont plugs for usage at my 3D Pinter i remoddeled. I never thought i would need it anywhere else. But i did. I also own a crimping tool. So i made a extension cord on my own and saved a lot of money.

In the picture below all the material is shown to make such a cable on my own.


I also added two pictures of the electronics compartment of the case showing an actual standing of the work.




Just for your pleasure.

 

[gurusmi]

Sometimes i really love to build a new rig. I tried to mount the PSU and connect it with the mainboard. I had to realize that the PSU cables are not long enough. I'm in need to buy extensions. The cables miss 10cm (4 inch) of length. My list for the next order gets fuller and fuller again...

 

[gurusmi]

Today i bought the extension set for the PSU. I guess that CableMods are adequate for this Rig. With that i had a bunch of small items in my basket. A PCIe Card to provide the second needed USB Gen3.1 Type A header. Two enclosures for SSD and a HDD. And so on and so on.

On Friday i will be able to continue building the rig as the extensions should be here. Also i think about designing a seperation plate between the drives cage and that one for the Mainboard. A flying StarWars X-Wing will be included. That must be looking cool. Aving that separation and in the middle or so a X-Wing flying a corner and "breaking" through the plate.

 

[gurusmi]

That extension for the Watertemperature-sensor is not as easy as thought. I got the nw cable crimped with a 2 Pin female dupont plug. So i got two female contacts. I also have the pin rows. I separated two and tried them. In Result those are not long enough. I will give them one more try. Otherwise i will use JST-SM connects. Male and female. They are stable and reliable. I used them already when modifiying the electronics on my FDM 3D Printer. Also i have them in mass at home.

 

[gurusmi]

Within the next timeframe for ordering i will get the ram (G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO schwarz DIMM Kit 64GB, DDR5-6000, CL30-40-40-96, on-die ECC). Including the RGB it is enlisted on the Asus QVL for my board. I took the same RAM but without dRGB. I do not see any reason to have the ram bars enlightened and pay more on that thing. The dRGB doesn't make the RAM more stable or faster.

Additionally i think about getting the small Ryzen 7600X as a "building help". That should give me the mostly riskless possibility to check my build. I can fill the loop, check all the fans and dRGB and so on. The risk with that initial processor is around 230€ instead of 580€ for the 7950x. After finishing the build i could sell this small 6Core at eBay. Or throw it away if i made some mistakes. Also the deliver that processor with a standard Starfield version i can also sell on ebay. That would make the processor much cheaper. The AMD giveaway game has a selling privetag of 50€ at ebay.

One more question i have to answer about my build is, if it is better to have 2 PCIe 4.0 Raid 1 drives in a 2*2TB + 2*4TB configuration or the datadrive as Raid 0 with 2 PCIe 4.0 with 4TB. 2 of my 4 M.2 SSD slots can drive PCIe 5.0 drives. The two others are connected to the Chipset and can drive only PCIe 4.0 drives. If i take a Raid Level 0 on my system drive i can drive the data drive "only" with PCIe 4.0. In general Raid 0 is slower than a single drive. But it delivers a much higher safety.

At least the question of the graphics card is also still not answered. Taking a Intel Arc 770 with 16GB or choosing a AMD RX6950XT with also 16gb. The card has to display the desktopn and rarely convert mp4 Videos from over 20hrs to a 3min clip for Youtube. Both cards can handle that task. To be honest. I don't care if it runs faster or slowlier on this. I want to have the card highly reliable. Mostly the selected will work on Linux. There i selected ZorinOS as the featured OS. I selected Zorin because of my company and possible employees. The handling of that OS is similar to Windows. So the employees that have to be taken have lower time for coaching and training. But i still don't know how that intel behaves on a system upgrade. Do i have to recompile everything or is it taken over to the new version.

Still a bunch of questions i have to thick over and answer.

 

[gurusmi]

I might have answered my question about the graphics card. My plan is to buy a AMD RX 6950T card and add a water cooling block on it. When i take one from EKWB it has a height of one slot. That is great. But for that i estimate that my integrated 420mm Radiator is not enough. So i planned to get a second one. That should be placed directly below the card. But there i have only space for a thin 30mm radiator. But it will a 360mm x 120mm one. So my buyers list i thought i'm quite at the end did grow again a bit. I also added a leak tester. Let's see if that one is useful. I will have to wait one more month to source the rest and keep in the monthly budget. But i really like that idea. It integrates into my build scheme. It uses available space in the case and dont heat um any M.2. The parts list at the end is growing and growing.

 

[gurusmi]

Since my last post i answered for me some questions. That is the reason for a deeper planing of the water cooling system as it's getting more complex.

I decided to cool the CPU, The Graphics card and at the start one SSD with water. Because of that I also added a second radiator. And all that needs to be connected. The first picture shows the components all together. They aren't connected yet



The second picture shows how i plan to connect all the pieces.



It looks a bit irritating. But let me explain. My Distroplate has several inports and also outports. I didn't paint in the fillport and the drain. Just concentrating on the loop. The Radiator output is bridged. I don't need it directly i do it differently. The Distroplates CPU Outport gets connected to the topradiators inport (420mm x-Föow). On the other side at the radiators exit the tube gets back to the CPU Inport of the distroplate routed. From the Distroplates GFX Out the tube get's to the M.2 SSD Cooler. The M.2 SSD Outport is connected to the GFX Inport. There the outport is roouted to the radiators inport. The radiators outport is again connected to the Distroplates GFX Inport.

With that tubing i can guarantee to have all the time cold coolant inside of the distroplate. Because after the water got warmer it is cooled down at one of the radiators. Each inport of the radiators has a temperature sensor. With that i can control the fans of each radiator.

 

[mechtech]

A developers Workstation will be built​

All series｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global

In ASUS 「All series」 - Motherboards / Components , you could find most appropriate Motherboards / Components based on product features, specification or price. And you also could get product's detail information and comparsion, even add it into the wish list in buy page.

www.asus.com

Work it

 

[A Computer Guy]

Within the next timeframe for ordering i will get the ram (G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO schwarz DIMM Kit 64GB, DDR5-6000, CL30-40-40-96, on-die ECC). Including the RGB it is enlisted on the Asus QVL for my board. I took the same RAM but without dRGB. I do not see any reason to have the ram bars enlightened and pay more on that thing. The dRGB doesn't make the RAM more stable or faster.

Additionally i think about getting the small Ryzen 7600X as a "building help". That should give me the mostly riskless possibility to check my build.

Get a leak tester. This way if it leaks air it's easy to clean up and won't harm your components as well as saves you the purchase and hassle of a CPU you don't need as well as overall time.

I can fill the loop, check all the fans and dRGB and so on. The risk with that initial processor is around 230€ instead of 580€ for the 7950x. After finishing the build i could sell this small 6Core at eBay. Or throw it away if i made some mistakes.

*cough, cough* recycle

One more question i have to answer about my build is, if it is better to have 2 PCIe 4.0 Raid 1 drives in a 2*2TB + 2*4TB configuration or the datadrive as Raid 0 with 2 PCIe 4.0 with 4TB. 2 of my 4 M.2 SSD slots can drive PCIe 5.0 drives. The two others are connected to the Chipset and can drive only PCIe 4.0 drives. If i take a Raid Level 0 on my system drive i can drive the data drive "only" with PCIe 4.0.

An issue with RAID is you will probably lose your ability to TRIM unless your using windows disk manager or storage spaces also it's possible using the AMD firmware RAID might also be limiting the overall performance of the drives individually. (not sure of the quality of AMD firmware raid) If I remember correctly from a review I saw using the OS software raid was somewhat better of course at the cost of more CPU utilization but 7950x can handle that no problem. (edit) Browsing the thread I'm a bit confused if your using windows or linux with this build but I think https://www.pugetsystems.com/ had the study on the NVMe raid performance options. I don't have the link on hand and the site is down for maintenance at the moment.

In general Raid 0 is slower than a single drive. But it delivers a much higher safety.

You mean Raid 0 (stripe) incurs the most risk for top performance while Raid 1 (mirror) has higher safety at the sacrifice of total capacity. Mirroring will only save you from 1 drive failure. If you don't need uninterrupted availability (should one NVMe fail) I would instead use the PCIe 5.0 NVMe for a fast boot drive and use imaging for backup and recovery. Then use windows disk-manager/storage-spaces for spanning or software raid for the NVMe storage (non-boot) on the 2x PCIe 4.0 slots. With the remaining PCIe 5.0 NVMe slot leave it open for a future 4TB NVMe upgrade. This way in all scenarios you don't lose your ability to TRIM drives and keep them working at peek operational efficiency.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Today i ordered a bit more. Especially the Fans i did want to have and the drain for my custom loop.

As Fans i'd choosen the Zalman SF120*3 + Z-SYNC and also the bigger 140mm version. They look so unusual. But if their parameters are correct they are in the middle of the BeQuiet! Lightwings in normal and the high speed version. So they should be fine for the case and also for the radiator. I'm really excited about the fans and the question if they work as they should do.

Those are some interesting fans but with the open design will they struggle with the static pressure from the rads?

 

[gurusmi]

All series｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global

In ASUS 「All series」 - Motherboards / Components , you could find most appropriate Motherboards / Components based on product features, specification or price. And you also could get product's detail information and comparsion, even add it into the wish list in buy page.

www.asus.com

Work it

Waht do you want to tell me?

If i haven't said it yet. I bought an Asus ProArt X670E mainboard for this build.

ToAll:
I decided to get a single Crucial T700 2TB as the System SSD. I will cooling it by water. Also i will get a AMD RX6950XT in reference Design and coll this card with water either. I don'tt think that i need to cool the 64GB DDR5 CL30 Ram by water. The Processor AMD 7950X is cooled by water. I don't see an benefit by using the X3D version with my workload. Developing incl. compiling, Spreadsheets in Excel/LibreOffice, Working with 3D Programs (CAD, Scanning, Printing). The only single core charging software i use is Excel.

I already finished the work of tubing. But by the new coolers and ideas i have to work on that again. I started with a complete ripoff. To have a clean tubing after the work and integration.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Waht do you want to tell me?

If i haven't said it yet. I bought an Asus ProArt X670E mainboard for this build.

Make sure you update the UEFI/BIOS on that ASAP before you apply EXPO so your CPU doesn't explode!

 

[A Computer Guy]

Since my last post i answered for me some questions. That is the reason for a deeper planing of the water cooling system as it's getting more complex.

I decided to cool the CPU, The Graphics card and at the start one SSD with water. Because of that I also added a second radiator. And all that needs to be connected. The first picture shows the components all together. They aren't connected yet

View attachment 310080

The second picture shows how i plan to connect all the pieces.

View attachment 310081

It looks a bit irritating. But let me explain. My Distroplate has several inports and also outports. I didn't paint in the fillport and the drain. Just concentrating on the loop. The Radiator output is bridged. I don't need it directly i do it differently. The Distroplates CPU Outport gets connected to the topradiators inport (420mm x-Föow). On the other side at the radiators exit the tube gets back to the CPU Inport of the distroplate routed. From the Distroplates GFX Out the tube get's to the M.2 SSD Cooler. The M.2 SSD Outport is connected to the GFX Inport. There the outport is roouted to the radiators inport. The radiators outport is again connected to the Distroplates GFX Inport.

With that tubing i can guarantee to have all the time cold coolant inside of the distroplate. Because after the water got warmer it is cooled down at one of the radiators. Each inport of the radiators has a temperature sensor. With that i can control the fans of each radiator.

You build looks interesting btw. I missed the model of distroplate somewhere in the thread is this it?

While the order of components in the loop shouldn't matter much with good flow rate I would connect your RAD's in serial to give them more total time to dissipate the heat of the combined wattage of all the components before dumping back into the res. In my loop setup I have temp sensors setup for the hot side (before entering rads after components) and cold side (after re-entering pump from distroplate) and at worst I might have a 2c difference if I run my D5 at reasonably low RPM. The reason I did it that way was because I had a hard time believing it when people were telling me component order doesn't matter so I wanted to see what was happening with temps. Additionally I have two more sensors 1 for RAD air input and 1 for RAD air exhaust so I can observe the heat output from (in-case) ambient.

These are just my thoughts, not saying you need to do anything.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Waht do you want to tell me?

If i haven't said it yet. I bought an Asus ProArt X670E mainboard for this build.

ToAll:
I decided to get a single Crucial T700 2TB as the System SSD. I will cooling it by water. Also i will get a AMD RX6950XT in reference Design and coll this card with water either. I don'tt think that i need to cool the 64GB DDR5 CL30 Ram by water. The Processor AMD 7950X is cooled by water. I don't see an benefit by using the X3D version with my workload. Developing incl. compiling, Spreadsheets in Excel/LibreOffice, Working with 3D Programs (CAD, Scanning, Printing). The only single core charging software i use is Excel.

I already finished the work of tubing. But by the new coolers and ideas i have to work on that again. I started with a complete ripoff. To have a clean tubing after the work and integration.

The advantage of the X3D version is less max wattage being put into the loop with the minor sacrifice in raw performance from the X3D part of the chip where cache isn't useful for your workload but as you said there doesn't seem to be a real benefit in your case unless your CAD software can take advantage of the cache.