miniITX GOD Box....Blasphemy!

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Venturi

Active Member
Apr 22, 2016
145
174
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challenge accepted...




Asus c621e sage
2x Xeon 8180M
768
GB of ram LRDIMM
4x Titan V including Titan V CEO ed 32GB
960pro nvme (OS)
10x SSD Raid (Apps and Backup 8x 2x)
1600W PSU (digital) noiseless
MS 2019 Data Center, Ubuntu
P1 miniITX case

..and the customary pint of blood and pound of flesh

8857 on first cinebench test

cool running temps, and silent pc,
and put it ALL in a miniITX case!

please enjoy some augmented reality porn:

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It will be used for my schoolwork, and I use it for isotopes and imaging when I take work home with me. However, this is my personal workstation. It is also where I do email, come to this forum, and play the occasional game (with the nude-raider patch).
Its replacing my very similar prior build:

supermicro X10DRG-Q (bios 3.0a pre microcode update)
dual e5-2699 v4
1tb ram
dual 960pro raid (amfeltec)
4x Titan V
10x ssd raid
custom case
Ms datacenter 2016 (as a workstation)


anyhow, here is the new rig for size comparison to my desk and chair

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marcoi

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2013
1,532
288
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Gotha Florida
I benched the ram with and without rams8nks, turns out that it runs cooler without ;)
thats interesting. I wonder if the difference is airflow. IE server case has lots of air being pushed, while your case most likely doesnt come close to the same volume.
 

Venturi

Active Member
Apr 22, 2016
145
174
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thats interesting. I wonder if the difference is airflow. IE server case has lots of air being pushed, while your case most likely doesnt come close to the same volume.
Maybe, it’s basically silent. It does (obviously) not trap any heat
 

kujinke

Member
Jun 19, 2015
62
6
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Blasphemy, this is madness!!
Madness? This is SPARTA!!!!


Jk, nice build. This has some badass torque with this type of cpu I guess..
 

Venturi

Active Member
Apr 22, 2016
145
174
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Thank you. Believe it or not, this rig was my most painful build to date. Little details that had to all be addressed.
 

chrgrose

Active Member
Jul 18, 2018
106
53
28
8850 cinebench on 2x 8180? I haven't seen scores that high for that system. How did you achieve it? Does it matter that they are 8180M (I thought they were identical to 8180 except the larger memory capabilities).

Also, I saw in the other thread that you got the QS's for 2k each. I've been waiting for 3175x to become available but with the performance of your system I'd consider your configuration. Any chance you can point me in the right direction? :D

Lastly, what made this setup a paintful build (aside from fitting it in the mini ITX case)?
 

Venturi

Active Member
Apr 22, 2016
145
174
43
8850 cinebench on 2x 8180? I haven't seen scores that high for that system. How did you achieve it? Does it matter that they are 8180M (I thought they were identical to 8180 except the larger memory capabilities).

Also, I saw in the other thread that you got the QS's for 2k each. I've been waiting for 3175x to become available but with the performance of your system I'd consider your configuration. Any chance you can point me in the right direction? :D

Lastly, what made this setup a painful build (aside from fitting it in the mini ITX case)?
Pain was:
figuring out the undocumented bios -finally got everything right (csm, etc)
the miniITX case: cables, power, air management, aesthetics
hunting down 8180m (2x) at a price that was (insert crying emoticon) feasible
re-installing windows server 2019 (up from 2016) and figuring out how to get speed, privacy, choice on updates and when/if what i want to update, no telemetry, control over os, and control unwanted services - from scratch again.
Optimizing apps to new config

A lot of trial and error

the 8857 score in cinebench just required bios and OS to be setup correctly

on the 8180m: I bought 8 cpus including 2 sets of ES. credit card had $29k in just cpus on it, returned the ones that were poor choices. Kept pair of 8180m QS. Flawless performance. So I'm not the person to get it right on first try...

Products / cpu purchase and returned purchased :
Retail 8180m as control against es and qs
2x 8176m
2x 8180m ES
2x 8180m QS (kept these)

went through 1.1TB of ram (3x 384GB) of ram looking for best performance, returned the rest kept the better set.

to help finance the build I sold:

2x e5-2699 v4
2x e5-2699 v3
1.5TB of ram
2 out of 4 Titan Z
3 out of 7 Titan XP
3 supermicro boards X10DRG-Q

I ended up selling more than was needed but while I was able to fully fund the project and have extra left overr the performance gain over what I had before was not worth the effort.


...NOTHING WAS EASY.

So, that's why it was painful...
 

Dreece

Active Member
Jan 22, 2019
503
160
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Is it Prime stable? say 24 hours at CPU+RAM blend? o_O
If someone wanted to buy it and you were willing to sell it, how much? :D
 

Venturi

Active Member
Apr 22, 2016
145
174
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Is it Prime stable? say 24 hours at CPU+RAM blend? o_O
If someone wanted to buy it and you were willing to sell it, how much? :D
It is completely stable, ran several benches overnight and left it pretending to be atlas while I was at work for two days, temps stayed in line very nicely. No issues, no errors, nothing in event viewer, etc

I'm not sure on the last question:
1. getting the 4k for a pair of 8180m was not easy. I don't know if I would sell the unit unless I could get another reasonably priced pair of CPUs.

2. The rig has 4x Titan Vs in it with a 32Gb ceo ed as well. Selling would require the substitution of the one card with a regular titan V and the availability of 3x titan V to replace the ones I sold.

Hence, If I sell it I would have to immediately replace it....

not sure if I can duplicate the treasure hunt I went through.


Price? (insert standard Dr. Evil cruel chuckle....)

ask me again when I get ready for the next upgrade...
 
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chrgrose

Active Member
Jul 18, 2018
106
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Thanks for the explanation! Did you buy them on ebay, through the forum, or elsewhere?

How did the retail 8180M and 8176M perform in comparison? I assume the ES did not work on your board.

What affected RAM performance? More than just frequency?

It sounds like your build is around $4600+RAM(~$3200?)+SSD's(a lot)+GPU's(many a lots).
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
1,050
437
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Wow. Just wow. Jaw dropping horsepower in this very small form factor.

That said, looking at puny UPS under the desk, I can't help the feeling that isn't really ready to sustain any reasonable amount of time of this particular monster. :)
 

acquacow

Well-Known Member
Feb 15, 2017
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This is kind of an evolution of your 2016 build, eh?

Talk to me about mounting the back panel for the GPUs, and cutting slots for the bracket tabs into the case motherboard tray?

Also, how did you mount the PSU on the back?

The SSDs are just screwed into the grill, right?

Also assuming you drilled/tapped a few holes for additional motherboard stand-offs?
 
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Venturi

Active Member
Apr 22, 2016
145
174
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Wow. Just wow. Jaw dropping horsepower in this very small form factor.

That said, looking at puny UPS under the desk, I can't help the feeling that isn't really ready to sustain any reasonable amount of time of this particular monster. :)
Nah, that ups barely gives enough time for a graceful shutdown. Right now it’s a glorified fuse/lineleveler. A larger ups would have require re-wiring the electrical panel ;)