ULTIMATE Distributed Computing Build Log
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,195 words · ~10 min read
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welcome to the ultimate distributed computing build log we do tons of build
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logs and build guides that are mostly not entirely but mostly for people
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building gaming PCs and trust me this computer will rock games this build log
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however will have a bit of a different tune to it the idea of this build is for
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it to be a distributed computing Powerhouse for folding at home and boink
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but before we get into the build itself I'm sure some of you are wondering what
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folding at home and boink even are both of these programs are largely trying to
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answer questions or solve various problems that are negatively affecting
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many people in the world today folding at home is focusing on Alzheimer's
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disease Huntington and Parkinson's amongst many other different forms of
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cancer boink also looks to research cures for various diseases but has
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options for other projects as well like discovering pulsars working on
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mathematical proofs and many many more
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these programs are able to work on these various interesting projects by
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Distributing the workload amongst many users those users computers are
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essentially donating their performance and their houses power to accomplish
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great things this whole build will be about pushing the limits and the CPU was
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no exception the core i7 5960x 8 Core
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Extreme Edition processor from Intel is the best of the best of any Enthusiast
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grade chips available today so I went with that both these programs can run on
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basically any semi-modern desktop processor but this is an ultimate build
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so extreme Edition it is now we could have fairly easily chosen any x99
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motherboard but when ASUS heard what we were planning they wanted to step up and
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in a rock solid way they did the heart touching ASUS Republic of Gamers Rampage
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5 extreme x99 motherboard is one hell of a hookup and it fits this build in a
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multitude of ways first up it looks fantastic and a black and red aesthetic
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that will match the rest of the build it has a sexy Republic of Gamers LED in the
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middle of the board and a nice IO cover that will look great along with the
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black PCB that we've come to expect from Republic of Gamers boards second and I
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guess arguably more important is the board stability this board has quality
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components everywhere and wonderful copper based heat pipes under those
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attractive heat sinks it's one hell of a board is it Overkill uh yes definitely
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for our case we'll be using the newly released noctis 450 which appears to be
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a wicked mix between the h440 and the NZXT Phantom line of cases the outer
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aesthetic of this case uses a mixture of aggressive lines solid panels and
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meshing to create a performance look it also features underglow lighting which
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you would normally have to mod in yourself a great touch now is probably a
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good time to point out that there are two different versions of the noctis 450
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one in black and red that I chose and another in blue and white if you want a
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different color palette than I did venturing through the trapezium or
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trapezoid side panel we reveal what appears to be the inside of an h440 this
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is a noctus series case not a hush series case so rather than including
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noise dampening foam as they did with the h440 they added in a treat for the
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more raw performance-minded folks out there by upgrading the fan controller to
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an awesome pwm controlled module this is where things started to get really fun I
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couldn't exactly pass up ASUS on their awesome motherboard offer but as you can
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probably tell this is an ITX matx and ATX case and the board is definitely
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extended ATX back to the drawing board you say no we can make this work here at
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lus Media Group finding solutions to problems that most people would simply
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avoid entirely is a daily occurrence with barely a second thought I decided
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to just go for it the case does angle up on the right side before the board ends
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but not actually enough to make it actually Bend so Full Speed Ahead the
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board does touch the rubber gromet and ultimately cover them up which is a
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shame because they definitely would come in handy for cable management but not
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the end of the world cuz I could just rote my cables through the nicely spaced
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Drive cages for cooling I installed the 2x 140 mm NZXT Kraken x61 the n450 can
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fit up to 3x 120 mm coolers or a 2X 140
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mm cooler now I know the white fans that come with the x61 kind of hurt the
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overall aesthetic but never fear they will be hidden by the top panel once
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installed the tubing for the cooler conflicting with the Shroud on the
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motherboard's io did cause a bit of a tight fit but never fear again the
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install worked out just fine without the need for any modifications folding at
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home and boink don't really seem to care much about what RAM they have so we
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didn't go quite to the overkill level in this area if we were building this PC
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solely for the purpose of distributed computing even 8 GB of RAM would have
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been enough but we went with 16 GB of hyperx Fury ddr4 modules which should
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have have us covered for a wider range of tasks for the power supply enzen XT
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hooked us up again with a 1200 W hail 90 V2 which will ensure that we won't run
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out of power even under pretty heavy load the power supply slides into the
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back of the case after being attached to the thumb screw based support bracket
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similar to how you install a power supply on an h440 again the power supply
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is white which doesn't quite go with our theme aesthetic but it hides under the
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Fantastic included basement in the case so it's not really a big deal since
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folding and boink really don't need much in the way of storage capacity or speed
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it's common for these machines dedicated to these tasks to have fairly non-im
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Storage Solutions we went with a solution that would hold many a Gamers
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Library two of these 960 gigaby ssds from Kingston that lonus had on hand for
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an upcoming server project that he's working on if you're building a dedicated rig for folding or boink don't
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worry about your drive so much but if you do plan on doing other things with
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your computer like gaming or using it as a work station PC a fast system Drive is
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awesome now the graphics cards for this system are really fun auss hooked us up
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again with a beast Matrix 290x which features some sick looking black heat
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pipes and will just generally look great amongst all the other black and red
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components in this build while doing extremely well for distributed computing
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projects next up is the Titan X now I
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know I know obviously I can't link these two together but boink has different
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projects that work for either Cuda on the NVIDIA side or Cal on the AMD side
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and while the rest of the build is so insanely Overkill it felt like a shame
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to limit to one or the other so I said to myself why not both now the Titan X
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is sure to crush through projects as well but it has that crazy green on the
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side which just will not do while thinking of ways to fix this problem in
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a simple and slightly ridiculous way as is the lonus Media Group style I noticed
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some of Brandon's gaffer's tape was a similar color to the black on the tight
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neck after cutting a strip to size and trying to get the angles right it looked
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pretty cool but not quite 100% there I
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took some of the black spray paint that lonus had left over from a previous mod
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that Brandon had suggested to me and decided to use the gaffer's tape like
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reverse painters tape painting the gaffer's tape to be black instead of
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gray and then placed it back on the card I definitely wouldn't say that it's a
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perfect solution but honestly for an inexpensive and easy to implement
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solution it looks really good and isn't even necess necessarily recognizable if
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you aren't looking for it then all that was left was just to plug everything in
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that wasn't already plugged in and quickly touch up the cable management
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mostly by shoving everything I could into the basement compartment and then
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strapping down whatever I couldn't shove into there with some of the many zip tie
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loops on the back of the motherboard tray now we're up and running I
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installed Windows really quick on our raid zero the machine looks beautiful
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and it's time to get started contributing to some projects I'd like
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to note that I didn't overclock anything on the system this may change however
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and I don't recommend anything against overclocking especially when you're
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contributing to projects like folding at home and boink but it is also very
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important to note that you should be careful when setting up a system like
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this as I plan to run this setup full bore 24/7 sometimes when people verify
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overclocks they're fairly lazy about it and will often test things for 10 or 30
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minutes if you plan to have a setup like this I would be as thorough as possible
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verify that overclock for at least 24 hours first up we have folding at home
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which happens to be the biggest distributed computing team for lonus Tech tips currently sitting in 25th
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Place overall for points fourth place for current active users and has amassed
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over 3,500 users in just over 2 years
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Bravo guys Bravo we are one of the fastest growing folding teams in the
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world and it's damn impressive now to set up folding at home in a simple and
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quite easy way simply download your respective installer install it by
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spamming next and Away you go the problem with this however is that there
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may be some residual issues from not configuring it properly as you can see
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with my 290x and tight NE they're happily running away doing your thing
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but on cam on the left hand side you can see that our 29x for example it's
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running at about high 80% in terms of load and coming in at about 83° C that
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seems pretty good but it's not as fast as the card can go and I expect more out
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of it than that but the issues do not stop there our 5960x has failed its work
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order and is not producing any results currently which is a huge loss to
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optimize folding at home you require some configuration and yes you can just
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change the folding power slider that will likely be enough but you really
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need to optimize things I highly suggest you check out the lineus tech tips
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forums for tips and details on how to set up folding at home in an optimal
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Manner and the same is true with boink folding at home will just pick protein
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folding projects for you with boink you need to sign up for projects on your own
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and then get work orders from those specific projects due to the sheer
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amount of things you can do in boink there's a lot of different configurations tips so again check them
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out on the Forum after getting this machine fully optimized I'll let it run
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folding it home for a while before shifting over to boink and optimizing
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again because these projects are better seen over time I would suggest that you
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check out the progress links in the description to see just how my machine
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and the team as a whole are doing there are Parts in here that need to go into
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future projects so unfortunately this machine won't be running forever but
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I'll try to get some serious work done with it while I can thanks for watching
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the ultimate distributed computing build blog I hope you can enjoy some of the
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Glam of this awesome looking black and red disease and various world problem
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fighting machine as always thanks to everyone involved especially our title
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sponsor NZXT for making this build possible be sure to check out the
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pricing and discussion thread in the link in the video description if you're
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interested in where you can pick up the noctis 450 case as well as all the other
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parts we used in this build thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time