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Topic: VirtualCL / 2x Quad HD 7990 - page 2. (Read 8232 times)

newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
June 24, 2013, 12:19:11 PM
#4
Hi,

To my understanding ASIC's are application specific and thus requires me to have an ASIC designed for my specific goals. As my code implicates highly non-standard calculations (no double sha) a far cheaper goal would be to go with GPU's. My goal is to build a 32 GPU cluster. Each node with 4x 7990 = 8 GPU's so with 4 machine's I'm all set.

Now only the cooling is an issue which I think would be solved by using water cooling (chillers) instead of open-air systems and heavy A/C units.
legendary
Activity: 1862
Merit: 1011
Reverse engineer from time to time
June 24, 2013, 11:26:04 AM
#3
Most people here use custom cooling solutions, however improvised they may be.

Also, while I understand your question is non-Bitcoin related, you may want to pursue ASIC development for your goals. ASIC means a much more efficient device, that does more work for far less power.
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
June 24, 2013, 11:24:07 AM
#2
Going for a Lian Li PC-D8000 case with a secondary PSU regarding the power concerns and the 4th XFX 7990. People here have experiance cooling such config?
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
June 23, 2013, 09:50:31 AM
#1
Hello all,

Really wanted to post this question in the hardware section to give it a bit more attention but here is my story.

I'm a programmer heavily using the OpenCL framework mainly using AMD/ATI GPU's. What started as a simple project is now getting bigger and bigger and thus needing more resources. I asked a computer shop to come up with a more heavy system with more GPU's to satisfy my GPU processing needs.

My first system was a single HD 7970 for testing purposes which simply works and no issues with cooling at all but was not having enough power.

Then I decided to step it up a bit and go for a quad 7970 setup but immediately ran into cooling issues. They have tried to go with extra fans, more spacing but still no luck (build up in a chasis). They took back the system and build up a 3 x 7990 (XFX type) machine with more spacing, bigger case, even more fans but after running for 2-3 minutes on all GPU's at 100% temps are up to 90C which is the temp where my own fail safe kicks in and shut down the calculations.

Now the reason I'm posting here is that lots of people here have experience with cooling their rigs and building heavy dutch machines ;-) I have been browsing and learning a lot the past few days but I need some advice here.

I really prefer a closed chassis just to keep things tidy and clean but using pure fan's just not seems to get these things cooled enough so here is the time to reconsider my entire setup and now do it properly... I'm open to all suggestions.

My end-goal is this: 2 worker machines, 4 dual GPU cards 7990 running in a VirtualCL cluster. Simply because I then can fire up from my build server and let those machines to the heavy duty work in parallel. Now the VirtualCL requires roughly 90 Mbit/sec per GPU. Thus building a machine network with in total 2 gpu's per card * 4 cards per machine * 2 machines = 16 GPU's totally consuming roughly 1500 Mbit/sec. Since most mobo's out there only doing 1000 Mbit I should take into consideration reserving a PCI slot for a 10000 Mbit network card or probably infiniband card.

Current base system looks like this: Asrock X79 Extreme 11 with a i7-3930K CPU and 16GB of RAM with 3x XFX 7990 and a LEPA G1600 as PSU.

My concerns by adding a 4th XFX card is that it consumes too much power to be handled by the G1600 under full load as to my understanding a single 7990 can eat up 375 watt. So with 4 cards this could already consume 1500 watt leaving not much power left for the mobo/cpu/ram/hdd.

I think the motherboard is a great pick and the i7-3930K is doing great with CPU intensive operations. RAM here is just fine with the 16 GB. I just need to figure out how to build and keep two of those systems cool and giving it enough power. I can draw 2x 16amps from my outlets so that should not be a problem here just the PSU's might need a dual setup but not sure since I was not yet able to get a real good measurement on the actual usage of a single 7990 as the 375 watt mentioned earlier is just from a spec sheet running factory default settings.

So please let me know your thoughts and considerations Smiley !
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