Advice on building an i7/Titan X machine for CUDA developmen

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tftio
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Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2015 7:06 am

Advice on building an i7/Titan X machine for CUDA developmen

Post by tftio » Sun Jun 07, 2015 7:25 am

My new gig has me doing a lot of (single-precision, memory-bound) CUDA programming, and I need to -- for the first time in maybe 15 years -- put together a custom PC for day to day usage. The two components I cannot compromise on are a beefy i7 and one, possibly to become two, 12GB Titan X video cards. My current daily driver is a garbage can Mac Pro, and I'd love to be able to build a box as quiet, at least for day to day usage (big computations or gaming sessions -- I'm not made of stone! -- will of course cause more noise). All my storage will be solid state and I have no need for optical drives. I'm thinking x99 and a 5930K, for the 40 PCIe lanes (2xGPU @ 16 plus leftover for fast SSD); my primary concerns are stability, noise, and performance, in that order, so I'm not planning on overclocking at all.

Given the Gaming SLI guide here, I'm considering:

- i7 5930K on an Asus X99 Deluxe
- bog-standard EVGA Titan X
- Scythe Kotetsu CPU cooler
- Fortress FT05 case
- a be quiet! power supply with sufficient juice for the above with headroom for another Titan

What I don't fully understand (having not built a box in ages) are the physical size limitations of the various parts, and the amount of noise I can expect from something like the above. GPU cooling is also a totally black art to me -- am I going to have to go to aftermarket for this thing, or will the stock cooling for the GPU be sufficiently quiet? Any guidance would be gratefully received.

Pappnaas
Posts: 726
Joined: Mon May 16, 2011 11:23 am
Location: Germany

Re: Advice on building an i7/Titan X machine for CUDA develo

Post by Pappnaas » Mon Jun 08, 2015 4:37 am

i am not overly familiar with the demands for CUDA, but did you check if a XEON cpu would suit you far better than your i7?

Abula
Posts: 3662
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:22 pm
Location: Guatemala

Re: Advice on building an i7/Titan X machine for CUDA develo

Post by Abula » Mon Jun 08, 2015 7:14 am

Test the TitanX reference cooler, its not as bad as they used to be, but to me not good enough, but i havent test them on a FT05 to see if there is much difference.

If you don't find the stock cooler to your liking, there are aftermarket solutions, like Prolimatech MK-26 Multi-VGA Cooler or Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus GPU Cooler, both can cool higher TDP than the TitanX, and in the case of the genesis you chose the fans you want to use it. The genesis fits fine the TJ08-E, so im asuming it will fit the FT05 (never tested on it), some say the windowed version has the acrylic on inside taking some mm, so i would recommend taking the none windowed to have the options open.

tftio
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2015 7:06 am

Re: Advice on building an i7/Titan X machine for CUDA develo

Post by tftio » Mon Jun 08, 2015 7:16 am

Pappnaas wrote:i am not overly familiar with the demands for CUDA, but did you check if a XEON cpu would suit you far better than your i7?
CUDA is nVidia GPU only, so the big processor is really there for feeding the Titans and running the various non-GPU bits of the project.

Pappnaas
Posts: 726
Joined: Mon May 16, 2011 11:23 am
Location: Germany

Re: Advice on building an i7/Titan X machine for CUDA develo

Post by Pappnaas » Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:41 am

So i guess ECC RAM isn't necessary then, i see.

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