Silent Scientific Computing

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Eelco1985
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Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:07 am

Silent Scientific Computing

Post by Eelco1985 » Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:45 am

Hi all,

I am tasked with building a desktop PC for scientific computing. Ill be doing everything on the monster for the coming 4 years, from GPGPU programming to the proverbial checking of my email.

The challenge: I am eyeing a sexy 980X and two high end Fermi's. And, I hate noise.

Here are the thermally relevant parts I am already more or less sure of:

ATX mobo (ASUS sabretooth, no nforces)
850w corsair
i7 980X, ~130w
low end fermi for development, rendering and graphics output, ~50w
two future high end GPU's, ~2x250w

Keeping the i7 cool & quiet seems no biggie, but keeping all that GPU cool without putting up with jetengine noise levels seems tough.

If im going to stick with air, id go for the Silverstone Fortress 2, and buy well ventilated GPU's, or put aftermarket (passive?) coolers on them. I am not sure if id be able to hit a reasonable heat/noise point this way however; I cannot find any examples of anyone doing something comparable, which ill take as a negative signal.

If that doesnt work, id need to water cool the GPU's, and while im at it ill probably do the processor too. The way I see it, that opens up far more possibility in chassis. Airflow would be much less important, but space somewhat more, I suppose.; the Fortress 2 would still work, the Antec P183 would be good but maybe somewhat cramped with all the plumbing, and I guess the Corsair 700D would serve well too. Aside from the chassis, I am still quite unsure as to what to aim for, water cooling wise.

To break down the questions:
Can I get by on air with the Fortress? (complete silence not required, but what could I get out of it?)

If not:
What is a good value damped chassis suitable for water cooling?

And, what quiet, good value water cooling system would you recommend for my situation?

While I consider myself a reasonable handyman, this would be my first water system, working with other people's money, so simplicity is valued. I love the aesthetics and simplicity of the Reserator 1, but we are talking around 700w here.

That said, I come to the watercooling from a noise perspective, not from an overclocking perspective. The norm seems to be to consider a watercooling system a complete failure if your chips go more than 10c over ambient; im perfectly happy to go 60c over ambient, and will probably be downclocking my components slightly for stability.

Its hard to find precise numbers on temperature differential versus wattage for water systems. Ive heard people say the Reserator 1 goes 10c over ambient when loaded at its rated 150w; since the temperature differential / wattage relation is more or less linear, does that mean I could keep all my silicon (or just the high end GPU's) comfortably below 80c with just a single Reserator 1? That seems a little bit too good to be true.

All feedback is welcome, but substantiated feedback is preferred.

shleepy
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Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by shleepy » Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:33 pm

IMO, air is still preferred for going as quiet as possible, and going with water adds a lot of hassle. People in the WC section of the forum might argue otherwise. :)

That said, modern Nvidia chips are hard to cool and the mounting patterns are not supported by a lot of aftermarket heatsinks. Depending on your noise tolerance, one of the better models with non-reference heatsinks could do the trick.

If you don't mind its quirks and fugliness, the Fortress should be a good case. And don't forget a giant heatsink for the CPU.

If you want to pursue the water cooling option more, try making a post in that section of the forums, or checking out some of the more recent posts. As you can probably see, most SPCR members stick with air, but most aren't going for dual 250W GPU's, either.

Eelco1985
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Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:07 am

Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by Eelco1985 » Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:52 pm

Ok, some evolutions of my thought over another few hours of furious googling:

I just found out about the CoolIt OMNI, and how well it matches with the Corsair 700D and its three 120mm blowholes. Thats definitely a killer solution; simple, scalable, effective, and not even outrageously expensive; though a little bit... The only thing I am not quite sure of is the overall noise level; the OMNI's should run silent and cool enough at low RPM, but system fans and resonating panels included, im not so sure... I should mention that all other components are noise-optimized already; PSU, SSD, silent magnetic disk, CPU cooler, etc. Would I even need the damping still while sporting only components that claim to be close to inaudible anyway?

I am still trying to find out more about the performance of the FT02 with two screaming GPU's thrown in it. No hard data on how well that would work yet. Could I slap some of those insanely huge aftermarket passive radiators on the GPU's and let the chassis fans do the rest? Ive seen that suggested somewhere, but it seems far-fetched to me.

It really is a shame the FT02 doesnt mesh well with the CoolIt OMNI; its aesthetics, acoustic damping and positive pressure are uniquely awesome, but unfortunately I havnt been able to convince myself ill be able to push 700 watts out of it without breaking the sound barrier.

The Lian Li Armorsuit PC-P50 seems like a reasonable option too. Same say even better airflow than the FT02, bearable aesthetics, and room for two OMNI's.

No opinions so far? Certainly I am not the first person to try and design a dual high end GPU system with bearable noise?

Eelco1985
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:07 am

Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by Eelco1985 » Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:58 pm

shleepy wrote:IMO, air is still preferred for going as quiet as possible, and going with water adds a lot of hassle. People in the WC section of the forum might argue otherwise. :)

That said, modern Nvidia chips are hard to cool and the mounting patterns are not supported by a lot of aftermarket heatsinks. Depending on your noise tolerance, one of the better models with non-reference heatsinks could do the trick.

If you don't mind its quirks and fugliness, the Fortress should be a good case. And don't forget a giant heatsink for the CPU.

If you want to pursue the water cooling option more, try making a post in that section of the forums, or checking out some of the more recent posts. As you can probably see, most SPCR members stick with air, but most aren't going for dual 250W GPU's, either.
Sorry, just missed your post.

The OMNI seems to take the hassle out of WC with its closed system design, fits all current GPU's, and using its replacable plate system, it can be transferred to any future GPU as fast as it takes to machine a new plate. If you havnt heard about it yet, look it up, its pretty awesome. Well worth the 150e or so in my opinion; though I cant find it in any stores in my country yet :(.

LM741C
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Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by LM741C » Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:57 pm

Eelco1985 wrote:Hi all,
two future high end GPU's, ~2x250w
Are these Fermi GPUs or Tesla cards?. One thing you may want to take into consideration on the GPU Fermis, NVidia throttles the double precision to 1/4 the flops of the Tesla cards, I don't know if ATI does the same thing but I believe they let double fp run at fullspeed. On the GPU's, while I read that NV did a good job on silencing the GTX5xx series cards, it is still clearly audible in a quiet home environment, maybe in a noisier office environment when stuck under the desk it would not be an issue. Another thing you should be aware of with the 5xx GPU's (or most other high end GPU's that slow down on idle) is that the moment you stick a second monitor, the card bumps up the clock to fullspeed, along with corresponding noise/fan RPM increase.
buy well ventilated GPU's
My experiments with the 580's is that when it is under heavy load, high airflow, i.e., side open with a desk fan blowing it air only helps it a bit (~5-8C temp reduction) and the GPU fan speed doesn't really slow down enough to make a difference. So it seems to me that it is limited by the heat exchange surface area of the GPU cooler rather than the amount of fresh air it is getting.
and I guess the Corsair 700D would serve well too
I had this case for a few days to replace the previous one I had. It would be an excellent case for watercooling. It is humongous and has room for an internal 3x120 radiator on top with no modding required and plenty of space left for the pump and other WC equipment BUT it had two issues that caused me to send it back to my retailer. First, the side panels resonate and amplify internal vibrations. Badly. The nearly 2x2 piece of sheet metal is attached by a quick release mechanism to the case without any padding on the sides, metal to metal. Same with the PSU, it is sitting metal to metal unlike silence oriented cases that put some rubber or silicone for damping vibrations. The second issue was that it appears they used an HB LED for the drive light indicator. With the lights closed in the house, it shines light all the way from across another room when it is on. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to keep the case (for potential WC'ing) but it will need some work to dampen it so it's acceptable (to me). The vibration/resonance problems with the case remind me of the TJ07 review done here. In the end, it was simpler to send it back and pick a different case. You did not mention where you're from, if you still want to go 700D, microcenter has them on sale for $200 right now.
Can I get by on air with the Fortress?
With 2x580's my guess is probably not, but it depends on whether it will be idling or under load most of the time. Again, in an office environment, it may do just fine. YMMV.
this would be my first water system, working with other people's money, so simplicity is valued
WC systems are never simple, there are more points for failure compared to air.
Its hard to find precise numbers on temperature differential versus wattage for water systems.
Try http://www.skinneelabs.com and http://martin.skinneelabs.com. HTH.

cordis
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Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by cordis » Mon Dec 20, 2010 9:08 pm

I think LM741C did a great summary. It does depend a lot on what specific high end gpu you're looking at. I don't have any experience with 580s, but I do have a dual 460 system with an i7 980x in it. It's resonably quiet, but not super quiet. In terms of aftermarket coolers, I'm not sure you're going to find any that will allow you to fit two on a board along with a 3rd fermi card. It does depend a lot on how much you're using it, my system is constantly folding, so it's maxed out 24/7. The Fortress 2 would be a great case to try, although it doesn't have an actual 8th slot opening, it does have a little extra room at the end of the motherboard that you might be able to use for aftermarket coolers. The airflow is pretty effective at keeping things cool, but it helps to have the vents fairly clear, and it might not be the best case under a desk. You'd ideally want to keep the air path above the case as clear as possible. Most of the noise seems to come out of the top as well, so oddly the case might be quieter on top of a desk. I'm not sure what you'd want to go with for a watercooled system, a Cosmos might be a good way to go, it has some space on the top that could work for a radiator. But yeah, the watercooling forum would be a good place for extra info.

Eelco1985
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Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:07 am

Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by Eelco1985 » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:52 am

Cordis: do you have your dual GPU's in a FT02, or some other case? Ill probably be sharing a room with another PhD student, so ill be at the mercy of his hardware and annoying habits anyway. Im not aiming for inaudible; a smooth background whitenoise is fine with me. And I could schedule most serious computing in the evening hours.

LM741C: ouch, you are dealing some serious blows to the acoustic credibility of the Corsair there, thanks for the feedback. That said, what components were you using? Did you outfit it with components picked for silence, or were you not specifically maxing for silence at the time? If id go with the Corsair, I will go closed system WC all the way (CoolIt ECO + dual CoolIt OMNI).

I am leaning towards the FT02 at the moment. Its really my dream chassis in all regards, except for the poor WC compatibility. But I guess it will be ok with two conservatively clocked GPU's of decent thermal design. The cards dont need to run 24/7, im getting myself some nice circumaural headphones, and if my GPU's start getting at me anyway, its not impossible to put two OMNI units in there with some creativity. Im not using this thing as a server, so I was thinking of simply taking out the whole 2.5" drivebay for an OMNI radiator if I cant fit them elsewhere. One on the back 180mm, and one on the front. Middle probably wont fit one due to the GPU's themselves.

As a bonus, the FT02 will save me about 400 euros in case it turns out I dont really need the WC hardware.

cordis
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Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by cordis » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:43 pm

I don't have dual gpus in the ft02 currently, although I did have dual gtx 260s in there at one point. That was fairly reasonable. I did also have a gtx295 and a gtx 275 in there at the same time, and that was a little noisy. Although I'm pretty sure the 295 was to blame for that. My current dual 460 system is in a cosmos, and that's somewhat reasonable. I've switched out most of the fans in that and it's fairly quiet, but it's a little hotter than I'd like. I'm sure the ft02 would be fine, when I had the dual 260s in it I had the 18cm fans on low, so the system was pretty quiet. Although I'm vaguely worried about that 3rd gpu on your list, the ft02 should be able to handle it, but make sure you get a motherboard that can handle it. You'd be surprised how few motherboards have pcie slots spaced so you can mount 3 dual slot cards. For instance, that Sabertooth won't work unless your 3rd gpu is a single slot. If you like Asus, I just picked up a Rampage III Formula, that can hold 3 dual gpus, and it definitely works with an i7 980x.

LM741C
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Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by LM741C » Tue Dec 21, 2010 6:49 pm

Eelco1985 wrote:Im not aiming for inaudible; a smooth background whitenoise is fine with me. And I could schedule most serious computing in the evening hours.
Your parameters are different than mine so an FT02 may work just fine for you. Cordis suggested the FT02 to me but I was worried about the noise leaking from the case top.
That said, what components were you using?
The noisiest right now is the GTX580, after that, the harddrives. Just to give you an idea of how spacious the C700D is. Plenty of room for watercooling.
Image
To it's credit too, the case was a dream to work with, had excellent cable management and managed to silence the drives. The photo above had all four drives connected already.
Did you outfit it with components picked for silence, or were you not specifically maxing for silence at the time?
The system evolved over time. Before I got the new GPU, I was already considering a new case to silence the noise coming from the hard drives.
My current dual 460 system is in a cosmos
They had a demo cosmos case in my local store with dual 295's, it was surprisingly quiet so it may be something you may also want to checkout.
I am leaning towards the FT02 at the moment. Its really my dream chassis in all regards, except for the poor WC compatibility.
You know they're coming out with the TJ11 which is a combo of TJ07 and FT02, all for the measly rumored price of a little over the price of a GTX580 and as mahoosive as the C700D, LOL.

Eelco1985
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Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:07 am

Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by Eelco1985 » Tue Dec 21, 2010 6:54 pm

Thanks man, thats some quality and relevant empirical data youve got there; just what I was looking for. FT02 WTF!.

Good point about the slots. To explain my plan in more detail: I want to get the cheapest Fermi for development and testing, then buy two top of the line cards in a year or so when I hope to have some production code ready, and demote the 430 to feeding my monitor and perhaps some data visualization algorithms.

From the looks of it I assumed the 430 was single slot, but I just looked it up and its double :S. That sucks. The reason why I prefer the Sabretooth over the Rampage is that the former does 16/16/4 PCIe, whereas the latter seems to do only 16/8/8, like all other nforce-less boards ive considered. I know it doesnt matter for gaming, but it matters everything for the far from perfectly data-parralel algorithms ill be running on these cards. Id pay a hefty premium for two PCIe 3.0 slots if theyd be on the market already.

A few considerations: I wouldnt feel bad about simply scrapping the 430 eventually altogether, and bother one of my GPGPU cards a little with my monitor. Then again, maybe next gen Teslas w.o. video out will actually be affordable when ATI puts up a competitive toolchain. Then again, in that case I could simple buy another dirt cheap single slot monitor feeder (keeping in mind I probably want a second monitor someday as well).

On the other hand, I couldnt care less about any kind of optical drive. Its a waste of money and aesthetics in my opinion; USB and LAN take care of all my needs. The 430 does not have external exhaust to worry about, and putting one in the 7th slot wouldnt cross the Sabretooth's perimeter; its barely a double slot card anyway. Or am I missing something here?

I just did an exhaustive comparison of all ASUS mobos, and there are two alternatives:

An nforce board (P6T6/P6T7). That would work in terms of lanes and layout, but before spending 200e extra for a hot and laggy nforce, id like to be sure if there really are no alternatives.

P6X58D-E and P6X58D premium. Both: 16/16/1 lanes, 2+3/4+5/6 layout. It has no seventh slot but seems like 430 should fit despite some components in the 7th slot. I dont expect to miss the 3 PCIe lanes, and both seem like solid boards. ('premium' seems to manifast itself as a 75e price premium, and an extra LAN port; am I missing something?)

I have no particular preference for ASUS, but the spread in features in small in my experience. EVGA seems to offer no solution, f.i.

Thanks for the excellent feedback so far; hopefully you can help me crack this last nut!

Eelco1985
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Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by Eelco1985 » Tue Dec 21, 2010 7:05 pm

LM741C: thanks for the chassis advice.

Do you know of any argument to believe the Cosmos is quieter than the FT02?

I checked some previews of the TJ11, and yeah, it looks awesome, but I dont think I can justify that expense :)

There is much about the 700D that I love; except for the price, accounting for the fact that Im pretty sure im going to want to put a lot of water in there to get the noiselevels down. If money were not an issue id go for the guaranteed silence of a WCed 700D; but it is.

cordis
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Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by cordis » Tue Dec 21, 2010 10:36 pm

Ah, I see what you mean about the pcie lanes. So if you're going with a 430, you can get that into a single slot with a little extra, and that should work in slot 7 in an ft02, especially if you're not going to have an optical drive in there. So the sabertooth board should work for that configuration, and it is a little cheaper. For the rampage I'm actually only going to be putting dual 460s in it, but I wanted to have the option for dual tuners in the system, and I wanted the gpus spaced out, so it was a good way to go for me.

In terms of cosmos vs. ft02, it depends. Most of the noise for the cosmos goes out the back, with a little out the top, and for the ft02 it's all out of the top. But the ft02 generally keeps things a lot cooler than the cosmos. I'd say, if you're going to have it under a desk with the back facing a wall, go with the cosmos, if it's next to or on top of a desk, go with the ft02. Although, if you're really going for 3 gpus at once, the ft02 is probably the best way to go. The Cosmos doesn't have any spare space past the 7th slot. I've only seen the corsair case, it does seem huge, good option for water cooling.

Eelco1985
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Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:07 am

Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by Eelco1985 » Wed Dec 22, 2010 5:26 am

Another good point about the empty slot between the cards; I think thats something to weight in if I want to keep these things cool with minimal RPM.

I see no reason why 16/16/x with 1+2/4+5/7+8 layout would not be possible, but it appears I am missing something, because Ive checked all boards of all big manufacturers now, and no luck.

Thats too bad; seems the Sabretooth is still the best choice. It has one 16x with an extra slot, and if the lack of airflow proves to be a problem in the other 16x slot I can decide to throw out the 430, or if I really want to keep it, start with an OMNI only on that card.


For the record, here is my complete list of components; its getting to the point where it hasnt changed a whole lot in 24 hours, so I start feeling ready to order. Anything I overlooked?

Chassis SilverStone Fortress 2 Black no window
Mobo ASUS Sabretooth X58
PSU Corsair 850w

Processor i7 980X
Memory OCZ 3x2GB DDR3 PC12800 Platinum
GPU Geforce GTX 430
SSD Intel X25-M 80GB
HDD WD Caviar green 1.5TB

Monitor Dell UltraSharp U2311
Mouse Logitech laser M500
Keyboard Logitech illuminated
Headphones Sony DR-BT50

That should cost about 2000 euros, excluding VAT, plus an expected future expense of about 1000e for two high end GPU's. Good value if you ask me. I wouldnt have spent it any different if it was my own money on the line.

cordis
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Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by cordis » Wed Dec 22, 2010 12:59 pm

Try to find a 430 with a decent sized fan on it, there are a lot of low height 430s with small fans, a bigger one would be better, like this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product
or maybe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product
Just something to keep in mind.

stingy
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Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by stingy » Tue Jan 25, 2011 12:24 am

Hi LM741C, so all in all, do you recommend the C700D? I Want to replace my P180 with something bigger.

thanks!

LM741C
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Location: C-c-c-california

Re: Silent Scientific Computing

Post by LM741C » Tue Jan 25, 2011 10:34 pm

stingy wrote:Hi LM741C, so all in all, do you recommend the C700D? I Want to replace my P180 with something bigger.

thanks!
No, I just don't think the case is oriented towards the quiet pc crowd. Almost everything about it was nice (size, cable management, expansion room) except for the vibrating panels. If you go with it, depending on your tolerance for noise, you may need to do some work damping the panels. I was thinking mass loaded vinyl or sheets of lead but in the end, it turned out easier and cheaper just to return it and pick another case.

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