Pretty much starting this because I’ve seen other peeps do it here and I like to ramble about my hardware, may as well start a smol blog to keep track of my extremly chaotic hardware situation. This’ll mostly be me spending too much money on hardware from 2009-2014 and generally mucking around with it.
That said, I’m trying to solidify a rig idea for a pair of GPUs I have arriving thursday. A pair of EVGA GTX 780 Classifieds, which I was going to very wisely cram inside a Meshify C Mini along with an EVGA X58 Micro and X5670 or i7 950 (depending on what I felt like slapping in the socket at the time).
Turns out those GPUs want 42A on the 12V rail, each, at a minimum. They’re 250W+ cards as well, limiting my possible PSUs to three out of my collection: My 1000W EVGA G3, 1600W EVGA T2 (scored this sucker for $180 brand new with the full 10 year warranty and everything ) , and Corsair RM1000i. The G3 and RMi are only rated to 83.3A on the 12V rail though, and I need 84A at a minimum for just the GPUs. My T2 is the only one that can actually feed them properly according to spec, it does 133A or so on the 12V rail (according to Tom’s Hardware’s review it can actually do a fair bit higher though), so I’m stuck with using that.
T2 can’t really fit in the Meshify C Mini unless I chop out the lower fan mount though, and it’s a brand new case so I’d rather not. It kinda bulges a bit if I do try and force the PSU in there:
Can see the effects better from the front but I forgot to take a pic of that. T2 is slightly larger than the G3 it’s supposed to be able to fit:
So basically the Mini C is out of the picture if I wanna avoid destructive mods. Leaving me with my Define S or Air 540. If I’m using a larger case I may as well use a larger mobo though, meaning I’ll likely use my EVGA X58 Classy SLI 3-way. Define S apparently requires slight mods to fit it though, so currently I’m thinking of this (replace the 990X with an X5670/75 or if I’m lazy an i7 950):
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dTbzNq
CPU: Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition 3.467 GHz 6-Core Processor (Purchased)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H5 Universal 65 CFM CPU Cooler (Purchased)
Motherboard: EVGA 141-BL-E760-A1 EATX LGA1366 Motherboard (Purchased)
Memory: Kingston Savage 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased)
Memory: Kingston Savage 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased)
Memory: Kingston Savage 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3 GB Dual Classified ACX Video Card (2-Way SLI) (Purchased)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3 GB Dual Classified ACX Video Card (2-Way SLI) (Purchased)
Case: Corsair Air 540 ATX Full Tower Case (Purchased)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA T2 1600 W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased)
Total: $0.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-11 14:40 EST-0500
I also have noice Carbon ModMesh cables from CableMod for my T2/G3. Also need to contemplate going even stupider, if I pull out the 3.5" HDD bays in the bottom of the Air 540 I can technically fit my stupidly overkill EVGA X58 Classified SLI 4-Way (the XL-ATX lad), but I’d need to find a way to support and secure the bottom edge of that mobo.
Main advantages of the 4-Way are that it’s dumb thicc and I’ve already done the Westmere-EP mod to it (both Classies are V1.0s and don’t support Westmere-EP without a hardware mod), and I know it’ll push my X5670 to 4.5-4.7 easily with proper cooling. Here it is in a makeshift test bench I ran for a while with a 1080 Ti, perfectly balanced GPU for that CPU:
Also it does indeed run 4 GPUs, sadly I couldn’t get the drivers for all these to behave (I wanted to fold on them, ended up just using the 1660 Ti and 1050 Ti, and eventually just the 1660 Ti):
Still proooobably going to go with the EATX board, assuming I can be arsed to track down the EVGA forums thread and pull the heatsinks again, then dig up my soldering iron and fix it up for Westmere-EP chips.