So normally I stand amidst the hardware to introduce the topic of the video, but as you can tell today
There's legitimately no room for me because this is by far
The highest end machine that I have ever built and the hardware barely even fits on the table
But what is this build for? Linus, you've been teasing this thing on social media for weeks
Well inspired by our two gamers one CPU build back in whenever the heck we did that
This is taking it to the next level Michael Bay sequel style. We are doing seven
Gamers running off of one
Tower, but before we begin I should tell you something and that is that I legitimately don't know if this is gonna work at this
Time now, I mean we've done some pre-testing
We've got four VMs working with you know the performance you'd expect from an AMD Radeon R9 nano and a quad-core gaming
Processor, but we have no way of testing seven until we install all
The custom water cooling and get the whole thing assembled so without further ado a huge
Thanks to Kingston for sponsoring this video providing
256 gigs of their kick-ass DDR4 ECC memory providing eight one terabyte SSDs
So all those gaming VMs have nice high speed storage and for demoing this machine at their booth at CES 2016
So if you're there at the show definitely go check it out. You can see it in person
Let's get started
So it's
24 hours later, and if I look like I haven't slept much. It's probably because I didn't
But it's totally worth it. It's
Working so I'm gonna take you guys through the journey now that I know that it's successful of how we created
seven gamers one CPU
it starts I guess actually with the CPU or I should say CPUs because there isn't a
CPU on the market that could deliver a full-on high-end gaming experience to seven gamers
All at the same time so our system is equipped with two
Intel Xeon E5 2697 V3 processors
So these are fourteen core processors that are clocked at up to
3.6 gigahertz when they're turboing as high as they can and they actually have hyperthreading as well for a total of
56 threads meaning that each of our VMs has four cores and four hyperthreads
just like you would if you were running on something like a core i5
or a core i7 normal desktop processor for our motherboard obviously we needed something that
could hold both of these cpus and seven graphics cards so the ASUS z10ped8ws is one of the only
standard form factor boards that would fit in like a gaming case that is capable of carrying
seven gpus two sockets for some cpus and that can hold all of the RAM that we need and it's got some
other key features as well so it has a vga output for our unraid console it's got enough SATA ports
for us to throw in as many ssds and hard drives as we pretty much want it can handle a total of 12
out of the box and it's got an m.2 slot on it which could be useful in the future as like a
cache for the array on to RAM
some custom RAM development for relates to the etc RAM conversion because it has the encoding
unit and it's got yet another feature called RAM oh yeah etc RAM actually kingston hooked us
the crap up for this machine and sent us because we could only have eight sticks of memory
in this board they hooked us up with 32 gig sticks of ddr4 ecc RAM what that means is each
of our gamers can have 32 gigs of RAM for a zero compromises gaming experience
First and foremost, actually,
is that pretty much nothing else on the market
was gonna work for us,
so we needed something that supported
our extended ATX motherboard,
and this one has an optional tray available.
And in addition to that,
because there's lots of server cases out there
that would support this motherboard,
we needed support for water cooling.
So it's got lots of room for radiators,
pumps, reservoirs, all of that good stuff.
Not to mention it's got room
for all the hard drives we need,
and it's got a full aluminum construction,
so it's actually fairly lightweight
considering all the hardware we have in there.
And personally, I think it looks pretty badass
with the selection of windowed and mesh panels
that we chose for our particular rig.
Not only that, the Case Labs also hooked us up
on a sweet black and orange powder coat paint job
that I think looks fan-freaking-tastic.
For our power supply, again,
we didn't have a ton of choices
because doing quick napkin math,
I figured this rig was going to pull
anywhere from 1,500 watts or more from the wall
when it was under max load.
So EVGA hooked us up with their T2 1,600-watt power supply.
Yes, my friends, it is 80-plus titanium
and capable of a continuous load of 1,600 watts.
And then, to make it look even more badass,
Cable Mod hooked us up with a black and orange cable set
to just kind of trick this baby out,
and even some custom cable,
so we could run single eight-pin connectors
to each of our video cards,
making the whole thing come together just, mm.
Man, that's beautiful.
And I'll tell you how close I was
to that 1,500-watt number a little bit later on in the video.
Now, I've water-cooled a lot of systems before in the past.
I have never done one with this many blocks before.
Fortunately, as far as the CPU went,
it was really straightforward.
I really like EK's mounting mechanism here.
So we're using their Supremacy EVOs with nickel tops
to match some of the other nickel accents in our system.
And the GPU block's actually fairly straightforward as well.
Too straightforward.
It's kind of therapeutic for me,
water-cooling systems these days,
because it's like, you know, that's my old hobby.
Like, it's relaxing for me.
But after seven GPU blocks in a row,
I was definitely ready for a new challenge.
And fortunately, that's exactly what was waiting for me.
EK Custom.
EK Custom designed and manufactured
this seven-block connector slash splitter thing
that went on top of our GPUs,
effectively transforming them into a block
of seven graphics cards that could be installed
in one fell swoop into all seven of the PCIe slots
on the motherboard.
This was the only way that we were gonna be able to fit
not just a bunch of graphics cards into a system,
but a bunch of high-end gaming cards into a system.
Which leads us, I guess, to the radiators,
because you gotta cool a bunch of high-end gaming cards
in one system.
So we went with two of their high-end, super-thick
XE series triple 120 millimeter radiators.
And then we're using on my LTT edition Noctua fans
to cool them.
And then the original plan was to use one D5 pump
connected to one of their reservoirs
and mount that in the front.
That didn't end up working.
I actually had a number of challenges
and things were overheating
and I was trying to turn the system on
and I ended up actually having to add another pump
to the system in order to get this baby working.
Cause we're talking nine blocks, right?
Two CPU blocks, seven GPU blocks to make this thing happen.
So let's talk about those GPUs.
That was another careful decision for this system.
I originally planned to use,
I originally planned to use something else entirely,
realized it wasn't gonna work
because even though I could get single slot blocks on them,
I couldn't adjust the back plates
and they had display interfaces in two of the slots.
So I was gonna go with the Theory X
and then I realized, oh no,
it's gonna draw too much power.
There isn't a power supply on earth
that's gonna be able to handle seven of these.
So the AMD R9 Nano saved my bacon.
My bacon, the efficient gaming card
that thermal throttles unfortunately
with its stock cooler in a normal size case.
Yeah, we took care of that.
All GPUs, all the time, no throttling, high-end gaming card,
super efficient and something I didn't even foresee.
Because the card is short,
I'm actually able to get at the PCIe locks
so that I can remove the cards from the system
in the event that I need to do that.
Any other card and I probably wouldn't be able to pull,
the cards out.
So at the end of the build,
I actually realized Kingston's our sponsor for this.
And I didn't have mounting adapters for my SSDs.
So I went for the double-sided tape,
bippity boppity boop.
I made a stack of SSDs in the bottom
that I actually think ended up looking pretty bad-ass,
booted it up.
It kind of cycled a few times.
I experienced a moment of unparalleled despair.
When I thought that, okay, we went from,
cause we originally tested it with four GPUs.
We went from four GPUs kind of working to,
oh no, seven doesn't post.
And then it turned on.
We needed a few BIOS tweaks to make this happen.
Over 4G decoding,
setting the default video output to the onboard video,
making sure our boot device was the USB drive for Unraid.
And then it was off to the races.
In terms of software, truthfully,
we didn't have to do a whole lot differently
from two gamers, one CPU on the software side of things.
We are still using Unraid to manage our pooled storage.
So in this case,
it's eight of Kingston's shiny new one terabyte
KC 400 series drives,
running in a RAID 10 for hyper reliability
and enough speed to run seven freaking computers off of them
at the same time.
And then we had to do like this funny,
you know, guess and check thing
for assigning keyboards and mice to VMs,
because a lot of USB device manufacturers
don't correctly label them.
So we just had to kind of unplug and plug things in
and run around and move them around.
So we got this whole thing working and then, well, okay.
There were a bunch of other problems,
but I'm not gonna bore all of you guys with that.
But I will tell you about one cool trick that we used
to save some space on our SSDs
and make room for more games and applications
for each of our gamers.
And that's a snapshotting like feature of ButterF.
That allowed us to create one of our virtual hard disks
and then clone it kind of like a shortcut in Windows
for all of the other six.
So none of those files get replicated.
And what's cool about that is even if you delete,
you know, this file or that one,
the file system is smart enough to know
not to actually eliminate the data
so that everyone can access it.
Very, very cool.
So if one person uninstalls a program,
it doesn't uninstall it for everybody.
Which leads us finally,
to testing.
It works.
Thank goodness it works.
Not everything is possible for me to capture, unfortunately.
Some of our GPUs are not reading
their temperatures correctly.
There are some quirks,
but I can tell you guys this.
Our idle power consumption is 250 watts.
Yes, our idle power consumption is as much
as a mid-range gaming machine under load.
And our load power consumption from the wall,
is 1,500 watts when running seven instances
of Unigine Heaven,
which you guys can see going on behind me.
And I have another cool fact for you as well.
We actually got 3DMark Fire Strike scores
that were 800 points higher per VM
than we did running the cards air-cooled.
Yes, my friends, that is the power
of custom liquid cooling.
So I think that pretty much, you know,
pretty much wraps it up.
Other than to do a quick,
I'm actually surprising my camera operator with this,
but I'm gonna do a quick proof.
Proof that it is all real, my friends.
All right, so we sat through the incredibly boring
intro cinematic for Crysis 3, and this is it.
This is the real deal gaming experience
of the 7Gamers One CPU machine.
And you might ask yourselves,
well, Linus, why did you go to all the effort?
To put all these 34 inch Predator X34 monitors on here?
Because what I wanted to demo
was that you can't just have a gaming experience
seven times on this machine.
You can have the gaming experience
seven times on this machine, my friends.
We're talking 3440 by 1440 ultra wide IPS.
And yes, that frame rate counter
in the top right is accurate.
This game is running at anywhere from about 60
to upwards of 100 frames per second.
And all my instances, if you want to just look up,
all my instances of Unigine Heaven
are still running in the background.
Not a hitch, except for that I just ended up
in the same room that I started in.
It doesn't make you any better at games, unfortunately.
So thank you for watching 7Gamers One CPU,
a demonstration of what the technology is capable of,
however impractical something like this might be.
I mean, I don't expect you to be able to do that.
I don't expect any of you to run out
and build a system that costs literally
as much as a decent brand new car for something like this.
But if nothing else,
it is proof that we have the technology.
Thanks again for watching.
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Oh, I'm wearing some origin shirt today.
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because that is where the inspiration for this all came from.