New crunching box

[jibberegg]

Under the guise of a HTPC in the living room I've managed to sneak another folding box into the house...

Intel 3770K @ 4.2GHz
Intel HD4000 IGP
Cooler Master TPC 812 CPU Cooler
MSI Z77A-G45
8GB CAS9 Corsair Vengeance RAM (1.35V)
256GB Samsung 830 SSD
Antec Earthwatts EA650 PSU
Antec P280

It's absolutely silent at full load and has a laughably low total system draw (overkill with the PSU by about 550W currently ) I'm looking to get a new graphics card in there that's as powerful as possible for decent 1080p gaming but without ruining the masterfully quiet build. What would be your suggestions if (A) money is no object whatsoever and (B) I don't have enough money to buy Apple in cash, but earn a decent enough wedge? There's plenty of room for a triple slot cooler and I've no plans for SLI/Crossfire in there at all. Any help/advice always much appreciated!

 

[ZipSpeed]

The Sapphire 7970 Dual-X is supposedly a super quiet card.

 

[jibberegg]

Thanks ZipSpeed! I was looking at that one and also the GIGABYTE GV-R797OC; any thoughts on differences?

Do you think that might be overkill when it's only hooked up to a 1080p HDTV? Any idea if the Sapphire HD7870OC is as quiet?

 

[blckgrffn]

Very nice!

Heck, I'd consider a 7850 if I was you and put the $$$ difference into a high end air cooler. At any resolution you can crush a video card (16xSSAA,16xAF, UBER SHADERS, etc.) but you should get decent AA/16AF and high/ultra details in current titles @ 1080p with a 7850/7870.

For crunching, I'd also throw in a 570 with custom cooling for consideration... I was just looking at these last night...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125384

Something like that. CUDA is still a nice option to have for a PrimeGrid or SETI or Folding race

Also ridiculously capable @ 1080p.

FWIW, I am also seriously impressed with performance/watt on the Intel chips. When they basically didn't add much "performance" to the offerings with IVB, I was kinda meh on the whole deal, but I got in on the $200 2600k, and watching it use ~60% of the power of my 1090t rig while doing more work (project dependent) over the last week... and knowing that IVB will lower it further... for those of us who power these rigs 24/7... its made me a believer.

Waiting for the IVB 1155 Xeons so I can get a 4C/8T part for "cheapest". I am cool with lower clocks if the power usage is right, and it seems to be.

Again, awesome new box you have there! :thumbsup:

 

[Sunny129]

I'm looking to get a new graphics card in there that's as powerful as possible for decent 1080p gaming but without ruining the masterfully quiet build. What would be your suggestions if (A) money is no object whatsoever and (B) I don't have enough money to buy Apple in cash, but earn a decent enough wedge? There's plenty of room for a triple slot cooler and I've no plans for SLI/Crossfire in there at all. Any help/advice always much appreciated!

a triple slot cooler is a must if you don't want to ruin a quiet build. even the quietest of the non-reference OE coolers can't touch the silence of a top quality aftermarket cooler. the only exception i have personal experience with (well...sort of) is Gigabyte - my Gigabyte GTX 560 Ti's Windforce OE dual-fan cooler is probably the quietest of all the dual-fan coolers on dual slot cards. so i would trust any dual slot Gigabyte card so long as it has a Windforce cooler on it.

i have no personal experience w/ any of ASUS's triple-slot cards, so i have no idea how quiet they can be. but i do know (from crunching experience) that nothing beats the performance or the silence of certain Arctic Cooling products (such as the Accelero Twin Turbo II, or the Accelero Xtreme PLUS II). even if some dual slot and triple slot cards w/ OE coolers can manage silence at idle, its highly unlikely to stay that way once their crunching under load. invest in an Acrtic Cooling cooler, and you'll be set.

 

[jibberegg]

awesome new box you have there! :thumbsup:

Thank you, sir

I've never used aftermarket graphics cooling before; probably because it looked super expensive back when I was a student. Wow though, those Arctic coolers look immense! The Accelero Extreme II is out in a couple of weeks. Hooking that up to something like a shiny new GTX 670 should provide some extra crunching power while remaining quiet. There is of course the temptation to go for the Accelero Hybrid thanks to the added awesome of liquid cooling, but not sure the extra $60 is particularly justified.

 

[jibberegg]

Oh and slightly related question... if I'm running the F@H GPU client as well as SMP, should I run it with a "-smp 7" and leave the other one to fill the GPU, or just the usual -smp and just assume it knows best? Or with the GPU client at a higher priority?

Thanks TeAm!

 

[blckgrffn]

You may want to stay away from GK104. That thing is seriously gimped on compute.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/graphics_cards_buy_now.html

Note the N/A.

No doubt that it is great gaming card, and will run cool and quiet. Just not a compute solution, IMHO.

With just one video card, I'd go with -smp 8. I don't believe there are actually any WUs that break down unevenly, so you'd be running -smp 6 effectively and taking a pretty big point hit, I think. In my experience you are good with no dedicated CPUs for an nvidia card, but if you add a second one they definitely need help. That's just my anecdotal experience.

My vote stays with the 570 (or something like that...) obviously a 580 would be that much stronger - and eat that much more juice.

 

[jibberegg]

OK well it looks like the decision has been taken out of my hands now anyway... girlfriend just called to say she bought me a HD7970. Will have to make do

 

[somethingsketchy]

...my Gigabyte GTX 560 Ti's Windforce OE dual-fan cooler is probably the quietest of all the dual-fan coolers on dual slot cards. so i would trust any dual slot Gigabyte card so long as it has a Windforce cooler on it.

Agreed. When I had one of the 560Ti's, the dual fan heatsink was awesome. I remember playing BF3 on full settings and the fan noise was barely audible. With that in mind, I'm sure even F@H would be just as quiet while watching a movie.

 

[bryanW1995]

... nothing to see here

 

[VirtualLarry]

My two Gigabyte GTX460 1GB OC cards (715Mhz core), running flat-out (99% utilization) on PrimeGrid GPU CUDA tasks, I cannot even hear the cards.

Top card is at 86C, bottom card at 77C. Ambient is 70F, with A/C on right now.

Edit: Fan speeds are 94 and 75.

 

[blckgrffn]

OK well it looks like the decision has been taken out of my hands now anyway... girlfriend just called to say she bought me a HD7970. Will have to make do

Haha, poor you! Enjoy that

 

[jibberegg]

I'll do my best Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 7970 ordered too. Now let's hope I don't make a complete hash of installing it...

 

[Sunny129]

i've installed several of these things (Twin Turbo Pro, Twin Turbo II, Xtreme PLUS, Xtreme PLUS II, etc.). installing the aftermarket cooler is usually the easy part - not stripping the small screws as you're removing the OE cooler and shroud is probably the hardest part. the instructions for any and all of them were easy enough to follow, but if you have any questions or concerns during installation, just post your questions here (and pictures as well if you're able). also, if you don't already have some Arctic Silver or some other decent thermal compound, i suggest you get some of that too - it'll conduct heat much better than the generic thermal compound included in the Arctic Cooling kit.

 

[jibberegg]

Good tips :thumbsup: Much appreciated! I will be crying like a school girl onto the forums as soon as I'm stuck. Well, after my male ego give out anyhow. Now to tap my fingers for the next week until it arrives...

 

[jibberegg]

...and AMD 7k drivers don't play nice with Windows 8 CP. Back to Windows 7...

 

[Sunny129]

...and AMD 7k drivers don't play nice with Windows 8 CP. Back to Windows 7...

i just made the transition from WinXP x32 to Win7 x64 on my crunchers LOL...

 

[jibberegg]

Quick update - Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 7970 installation went smoothly and my box is quiet enough that in a dead silent apartment in the middle of the night you can hear a faint whir from the box... when it's running CPU/GPU at 100%... when you're standing less than a metre away...

Very pleased. Thanks for all the advice on the GPU solution!