A Kick-Ass Dual 3.8GHz NetBurst Xeon Build

[Irinikus]

I've just committed to purchasing this brand new motherboard, including 2 x 3.8GHz Socket 604 Xeon's with copper coolers, 8GB ECC RAM, an Adaptec 2420SA SATA II Raid card and an Adaptec 2020ZCR SCSI RAID add-on card (Basically a one-stop-shop!!!)

The motherboard has the following specs:

I have an unused GTX 690 sitting doing nothing on my desk, so I'll fit it into this system and have SLI on a "P4 System" (I know that the GTX 690 will be completely bottlenecked by the PCIe gen 1.0 slot as well as the net burst CPU microarchitecture, but it will be a killer system in its own right none the less!!!)

My Supermicro P4DC6+ /Dual XEON /Socket 603 /RDRAM Build is going to have to take a backseat to this build and this one's going to be far more exiting!

 

[Irinikus]

It will be very interesting to see how the bottlenecking affects the performance of the GTX 690 in this system. (The SLI setup may render the system very jerky (Due to micro stutter), but I won't know until I try it!)

I may have to go through a number of cards to see where the sweet spot sits.

I still have my 8800 GTX fitted with a Thermalrite HR-03 Plus, which I purchased in 2006: (This may indeed end up being the best suited card for this system!)

The 8800 GTX also operates on a 16X PCIe 1.0 interface, meaning that it shouldn't suffer any bottlenecking by the PCIe interface on the board:

 

[Irinikus]

I've found this Supermicro board which is actually better than the TYAN in a way!

Supermicro X6Da8-G2 Motherboard:

It's better in that it features two PCIe slots (one 16x for a graphics card and one 4x in a 16x slot, which would allow you to fit a OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 PCI-Express 2.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive, allowing for extreme hard drive performance on a" P4 system"!)

In place of this feature the TYAN features a PCIe Broadcom BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet Controller. (A feature which I don't really care for, but it's a feature that the board has none the less!)

With these boards (and their limited number of available PCIe lanes), everything's a tradeoff! It all depends on which configuration's most useful to you!

I'm going to be sticking with the TYAN, as I don't want yet another dual P4 Xeon board! (Experimenting with a RevoDrive in such a system would have been fun though!)

 

[Irinikus]

I ordered this case today (A black one), so it will be the case that I use to house this system! (As I don't want another Corsair case, as I don't like duplication!)

There aren't many modern cases that can take motherboards with this form factor!

This gives you an idea as to how this motherboard will look in this case:

 

[Irinikus]

The case arrived today:

The Motherboard has arrived in the country, so I should have it in the next two weeks or so!

The power supply and fans will cost me a little bit more than the case did.

The aluminium Polaris fans aren't available locally, so I got quoted on the following items:

InWin P85 GOLD Modular Power Supply

5 x InWin FAN 120MM POLARIS TWIN PACK+DWIRE

1 x InWin FAN 120MM MARS BLACK/BLACK

 

[Irinikus]

This week I managed to fetch my 8800GTX, which I'll put up against the GTX 690 in this build, just to see how they compare. (The 8800 GTX will more than likely stay in the system, as it's "period correct")

Here are the two cards next to each other:

The Motherboard, CPU Coolers and Cards have arrived at my local Post Office, so I'll collect them tomorrow and fit them into the case.

I have some commitments this month, so I'll only purchase the Power Supply and Fans next month! (But at least the main hardware components will be fitted into the case!)

 

[Irinikus]

I received my motherboard and goodies and realise that I have a bit of a problem to solve! The CPU coolers need to be chassis mounted, as they weigh in at 920 grams each! (And they're designed to be chassis mounted of course!)

So I'm going to have to get a plate made up which is tapped in the right places in order to secure the CPU coolers!

I've plotted where these holes would need to be drilled and tapped, but am currently undecided as to whether I want to mount the plate to the motherboard side of the motherboard tray or not. If I do decide to mount it to the back side of the motherboard tray, I'll need to drill one hole through the motherboard tray, as depicted by the red circle in this picture. The blue circles depict holes already present in the motherboard tray which will be use to secure the plate in place.

If any of you have faced this dilemma before, any advice would be welcome!

Here's a better pic of the board:

And this is what it looks like with the CPU coolers in place:

I've just run an initial test just to see if the motherboard and CPU's work, and they do indeed!

Sorry for the messy setup, but I can't mount it in the case as yet, but I absolutely had to check to see if it indeed works!

I've set it up running Windows 7, as XP would not allow me to install a driver for the GTX 690.

I've also found out during the course of my troubles that my old 8800GTX is completely dead!!! (It won't even output in the BIOS)

I've literally been battling to get this thing to work all day! (As Windows 7 simply refused to install with the SCSI CD-ROM attached to the Adaptec AHA-2940UW PRO, so after hours of battling I pulled the card and installed an IDE DVD-ROM, which did the trick!)

Here's an ATTO test showing the SATA II RAID 0 performance: (That's pretty quick for a P4-type system)

Here's a 3DMark 2001 bench-test result: (Not quite as impressive as I'd hoped for, but still not too bad if you consider the vintage of the base hardware being used here! I suppose the GTX 690 would perform better with later versions which would take more advantage of it's hardware)

I've upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8 Professional and I've just installed Crysis, and I'm pretty darn impressed with what I'm witnessing!!!! (I'm running it @1920x1080@very high settings @30 to 40 FPS!!!)

These two CPU's generate an impressive amount of heat. (I'm running the CPU fan at 100% for now and you can feel the warm air blowing off them!)

Here's an example of the Crisis Performance I'm getting on this system: (I had to put it in a windowed mode in order to screenshot it)

I'm pretty happy with this, as this performance is only a couple of FPS off my Alienware Core2 Quad Extreme's performance. (The GTX 690 is much more powerful than the Quadro Plex 1000 model IV featured in that system though, but it's impressive performance none the less!)

 

[Irinikus]

The system's now neatly packed away, awaiting me to come up with a CPU cooler chassis mounting solution!

By the way, it's a mission to get to coolers off the CPU's, as the thermal paste causes the coolers to stick to them like glue! (I now know why intel opted for LGA Sockets after these!)

 

[Irinikus]

I've had the 4.5mm stainless steel plate cut to size, drilled and skimmed down to 4mm and I've now ordered the required tapping kit to tap the holes with the correct thread: (This will give the required space for the CEK Springs to sit between it and the motherboard.)

This is how the plate looks with the CPU Coolers positioned on it:

So I'm getting there slowly!

 

[Irinikus]

I've received my taping kit and have successfully tapped the holes for the CPU Coolers! The complete unit weighs in @ 2365g, so the plate will definitely have to be mounted to the chassis (Motherboard tray)

So my next step will be to mount the motherboard with this assembly into the case, with the case lying horizontally and then mark off the places where the holes marked off with the blue circles sit and then proceed to drill and tap the plate appropriately. (Another four holes!)

 

[Irinikus]

I've got the board in the case, and interestingly it doesn't seem like the plate will have to be secured to the chassis due the the pressure between the Motherboard, CEK Springs and the plate. There's no sign of bending on the Motherboard.

It will stay as is for now, until I purchase KAPTON Tape with a 10cm width to act as an insulator between the board and the plate. (There is a gap between the legs of the components and the plate, but I don't want to take any chances!)

 

[Irinikus]

The system's up and running!

Now all I need to do is purchase and fit the InWin fans and make final adjustments to the cabling!

 

[Irinikus]

As a future thought, I really think that this thing needs a TITAN Z!

 

[Irinikus]

Some more benchmarking:

The system rendered test.blend in 1 minute and 35 seconds making use of four threads:

Here's how it compares to some of my other systems:

And here's how the Task Manager sees the system:

 

[Irinikus]

I still need to install nine of these fans into the case:

I'll only run the system with the case closed once the fans are installed.

Once this is done and the wiring's neatened up, then the only thing left to do will be to purchase and install one of these into the system to give it the maximum possible SLI performance, given that it only has one 16x PCIe slot: (A GTX TITAN Z)

The purpose of this experiment will be to see how much of a performance increase I get, if any at all, over that of the GTX 690. Taking into account that when I was running Crysis on this system in its current configuration the GPU memory on the GTX 690 was basically maxed out! (So the available memory on the GTX 690 may have been a bottleneck!!!)

 

[Irinikus]

Here's the latest on this build. I've installed a Creative X-FI Extreme Gamer Fatality Pro, as I simply couldn't find a driver for the onboard sound on this motherboard for Windows 8 anywhere! (It's a SoundMax chip)

Here's what CPU Z sees: (It's running 10 MHz too slow!!!! )

Here's the GPU SLI setup:

Here are the latest Crysis performance shots using MSI Afterburner to supply additional GPU and CPU information: (Note that I've lost at least 5FPS with the Sound Card installed )

It's crazy how much sound impacts performance on these machines!

It's interesting to note how low both the CPU and GPU usage are!?

Here's the latest Blender teat result with a 4 second improvement!

I'm not going to post again until I have the fans installed!

 

[Irinikus]

I've just discovered these InWIn High Static Pressure fans: (Don't they look awesome!!!)

Much better than RGB Fans!!! (I hate RGB!!!)

I'm going to have to look at getting eight 140mm and one 120mm, but it will be a while before I can source them locally!!! (So this may take a while, but it will be worth it!)

 

[Irinikus]

The fans aren't currently available over here in SA, so I'll have to wait unfortunately!

I've downgraded to Windows 7 64-Bit, as I do agree that the interface in windows 7 is better than that of 8!

Here's the Windows 7 Experience Index for this machine: (The CPU's and RAM really let it down!)

And here's the 3DMark05 Score: (Reasonable for a P4-Type System!)

 

[Irinikus]

I tried disabling SLI and set the GPU's up in this way: (And this improved things a bit! )

Here's the new Windows Experience Index: (The Graphics improved by 2 points!)

Here's the new 3DMark05 Score:

 

[Irinikus]

Here's the machines 3DMark Vantage Score with the PPU (PhysX) enabled:

PhysX is a feature that the system has so I thought I'd test it out!