Building the 7680x1440 dream machine!

Creeky123 · August 14, 2015, 2:44pm

Hey Guys, been watching since the 8th or 9th tek and lurking since. I'm feeling the irresistible itch to go balls to the wall and create a sim driving dream machine and thought you guys might be interested in hearing about it.

This build was largely inspired by Wendell's excitement for "buttery smooth 4k goodness" and his review on the H440 where he suggested adapting it for an eatx board.

So the objective is to build a machine that'll drive 3 2560x1440 G-sync 144Mhz monitors at over 60 FPS in sim racing games (I've become an addict to them recently!).

So this is what I'm starting from:

i7 3820 @ 4 Ghz
P9X79 Deluxe Mobo
16 GB DDR 3 1866Mhz Ram
Corsair h60
Fractal R4
2x Evga 980 SC
Corsair 1000 Watt PSU

And this is what I'm building:
Evga X99 Classified
i7 5820k @ 4.5Ghz
32 GB DDR4 3000Mhz Ram
Corsair H100i
Nzxt h440 (It's going to be cosy with an E-ATX board but apparently it works).
2x Zotac 980 Ti Amp! Extreme edition cards (3 slot beasts)
3x Acer Predator XB270HU
Keeping my 1000 Watt PSU

The mobo and the case arrive later on today... I'll update soon!

Update:

Initially I tried to build the machine on the Asus X99 Sabertooth TUF board in a coolermaster XB EVO, needless to say it wasn't going to work:

Monitor/Battlestation Setup:

So further update:

Got the motherboard in and the box it came in was completely destroyed, see the pics below... the motherboard seemed ok so I built the system anyway unfortunately it isn't but more on that later.

Pics of the box:

Anyway, I started building the pc anyway; here it is stripped down:

I set about adapting it to fit an EATX board by removing the rubber grommets, hard drive cages and with some male intuition bending the backplate a little straighter:

Then I fit the h100i in the front of the case in a push pull config. This is to try and bring as much airflow into the case as possible while capitalising on the cool air from the intake for the CPU, but there will be no room for cages:

The motherboard itself, before performance issues has a pretty terrible layout... you can see here that the majority of the connectors come out the board at a 90 degree angle... which means I will not be using the USB3 header, for a premium board I'm not impressed:

Finally I got the whole system together, I kept the NZXT exhaust fan, the top exhaust fan is a noctua high flow 140mm fan and the rest are all noctua nf12s with the exception of the corsair pull fans. I have all fans running on quiet mode or with quiet connectors, but the corsair fan will ramp up with CPU temps.

The graphics cards are so heavy that they really sag in the pcie slots. In order to compensate I lodged the pcie connectors for the top one in such a way that it would take some load off the pcie slot. For the bottom card I cut a bit of rubber off one of the case grommets and lodged it between the card chassis and the ssd (you can almost see it) to support it.

It's a tight fit but it all comes together nicely. I only have one mechanical harddrive, bolted to the bottom of the case by the PSU but will probably fit a 3rd SSD in there for 1 TB of SSD storage and 240GB SSD storage for the OS.

Unfortunately the problems with the motherboard started from the get go. The board fails to post with the XMP profile on the ram (it runs at 3000 Mhz so forces a 125 BCLK) without any overclock on the core. Similarly, I can't up the volts to the CPU beyond 1.3v otherwise it won't boot.

After a lot of fiddling I came to the conclusion that the board simply cannot handle 125 BLCK, I can get it to boot windows but it'll BSOD within 5-10 mins of any stress situation.

This is with a CPU and Memory combination that has been running fine at 4.5Ghz and 3000Mhz respectively in 2 Asus boards. I imagine the issue is with the lack of OC socket.

Either way, due in part to the water damage and instability of the board, I'm sending this one back and getting an Asus Rampage V extreme instead (like I probably should ahve in the first place).

Current 3dmark:

anon37239676 · August 14, 2015, 2:48pm

If you want to go really balls to the wall EK's making an AIO...

Those GPUs will certainly drive (hueheuhe punpunpun) 4k, but triple 1440p might be a stretch in some games, not sure how graphically demanding racing games tend to be. Just note triple 1440p is like 112.5% of 4K.

Idk if 32GB of RAM'd be necessary, then again, not sure about what racing simulators tend to like.

About the CPU, if you're just gaming, it might be worth going with a skylake i7 for the single core performance. Again, depends how well the games you're playing can utilise extra threads.

Creeky123 · August 14, 2015, 3:01pm

Good point.

This upgrade actually came in stages... so I had purchased the 5820k prior to release of skylake. Though it doesnt seem to matter what you do, Jay2Centz claims he experiences a cpu bottleneck on his tri-titan x setup. 4k is roughly 8 Megapixels where as my screens are roughly 11.5 in surround (I think). It's a real test, which is why I chose the Amp! Extremes as they appear to be the best single card solution on the market right now.

Prelim tests with one card show a 45-65 FPS range on Dirt Rally and the same in Project cars; If i can pull that up into the 70-90 region I'll be happy.

anon37239676 · August 14, 2015, 3:13pm

That motherboard isn't EVGA's X99 classified? It's Asus' X99 sabertooth thingy board, no? If so, why the change? Curious.

Creeky123 · August 14, 2015, 3:42pm

Pretty simple really, it only has the two white PCI-E lanes for sli cards and they're wayyyyyyy too close together for these cards. I got the machine up and running with them and the top card was hitting 85c the moment I hit up a benchmark as it was eating the lower one's hot air.

The classified has a few more pcie slots and the two you can use for 2 way sli are exactly 4 lanes apart. I'm keeping the fingers crossed that it'll fit in an h440 case.

2pack2u2 · August 14, 2015, 4:53pm

Props for using SteelSeries Qck, I gave it too and it is awesome, btw is it the "heavy" version?

Streetguru · August 14, 2015, 8:52pm

You seem to be missing a cockpit however

Creeky123 · August 16, 2015, 3:24am

I'm afraid the fiance will not allow me to get the obutto... trust me, I want it!

tonythorbjornsen · August 16, 2015, 3:45am

Setup looks incredible, what are you using for the monitor stands?

Streetguru · August 16, 2015, 4:10am

Well then I don't think you should be seeing her anymore man.

Creeky123 · August 16, 2015, 5:26am

Probably the best value $36 I have spent on my setup!

Creeky123 · August 16, 2015, 5:39am

I believe so. It's great, but I once had what I think was called a "monster mat". It was MASSIVE and covered the majority of the desk. I loved it and had one imported from the UK, but it didnt survive the last move.

Creeky123 · August 16, 2015, 5:41am

I genuinely pitched that to her yesterday, with that very video. She said that I'd be living on my own if I bought it.

tonythorbjornsen · August 16, 2015, 5:54am

Thank you! I love how they mount onto the desk, gives you much more space as opposed to a VESA stand. Just bought the Crossover 1440p Korean monitor and the stand is pretty crappy I would love some height adjustment and to level it out with my 24" ASUS monitor. If I have two different monitors I may want to go with 2 singles rather than a duel to allow for height adjustment on both?

Creeky123 · August 16, 2015, 3:58pm

I'd strongly suggest 2 singles if you want them to be at different heights due to bezel differences, but bear in mind; I have them at their maximum height on my desk. The speakers should give you a point of reference. It would be nicer if they went a little further up.

Also, make sure you have a sturdy desk!

MisteryAngel · August 16, 2015, 4:02pm

Awesome machine!
I have moved this topic to the Build Logs section.
Can´t wait to see more of this, maybe adding some benchmark numbers to this thread, could be cool.

Those zotacs look badass.

2pack2u2 · August 16, 2015, 6:36pm

Can you send me a link/picture of it? I find myself constantly running out of mouse pad space.

GnomishViking · August 16, 2015, 7:34pm

I feel like even two 980ti's would have trouble with a lot of modern games on three 1440p monitors. Although it would be epic...

Creeky123 · August 16, 2015, 9:17pm

Thanks MisteryAngel,

For all who might be interested, here's my current 3d mark score, the CPU is on 4.5 @ 100 Blck and 2667Mhz on the ram at crappy timings. The one time I managed to get the machine through the test with a Blck of 125 and 3000Mhz I hit 22800. I'll update with my score when the Rampage Extreme V comes with that juicy oc socket. Note, the GPUs haven't been pushed past stock.

In Dirt Rally benchmark I get an Avg of 100 FPS at triple mons, in GTA V i'm getting 65-70 FPS with everything on ultra excl. MSAA and on 3 laps of project cars nurburgring with 31 opponents I'm getting in the region of 80-105fps. So far very happy.

Oh and witcher 3 is incredibly buggy (left screen flickers and right screen lags) but I'm getting 55FPS with everything turned up with the exception of the Nvidia hairworks and MSAA. We might see a driver for that but I'm doubtful.

Creeky123 · September 3, 2015, 1:44am

Quite a bit has changed since my last post.

Here are a list of revisions and their impact, all benchmarks were run with chrome chugging away in the background.

Bought 2 samsung 850 Evo 500gb drives, hooked them up with my 750 evo so I now have 3 500gb SSDs in raid 0 with the following benchmark results:

I also upgraded my motherboard to the Asus Rampage V and I upgraded the ram to 32gb HyperX Ram (1 kit) @ 3000Mhz. Cpu is clocked at 4.25Ghz 24/7.

Here is the new 3dMark:

It's alarming that just upgrading a motherboard can get you an extra 1000 points!

Also had to replace the PSU with a Corsair HX1000i as the old OCZ was causing my circuitbreaker to break under full load.