Project of the Day : New Computer

[shilala]

I started building a new computer for myself a couple days ago. We've been super busy with the holiday and appointments and my "building shelves in the garage" project and stuff, so I've only gotten to beat on this thing for an hour here, an hour there.

At this point, I've jammed most of the components in her. Some of the brothers here were a big help picking out components, my shopping list is right here.
Basically, it's a six core AMD, 9.8TB, 16GB RAM, dual PSU monster in the sweetest full tower aluminum chassis I've ever seen. If I can't take over the world with this rig, it can't be taken over. Period.

Right now I'm daisy-chaining the two Corsair 650 watt PSU's together. The tower is too high to use a splice kit that's offered around the net, so I'm doing it by hand, soldering and heat shrinking all my wires. As soon as that's done, I can plug stuff together and see if she'll post.
If she does, then I'll spend hours managing the wires and making them look like something.

I had to take one of the 290mm fans out so the case would accept the second psu, which I'm not happy about, but it was overkill anyways. I may look at modding the case to get it back in there.

Anyways, here's a lousy pic of where I'm at right now. I'll post some decent ones when I get done-ish.

[shilala]

My wiring job worked, and admittedly, I was shocked. I just guessed at how to tie the two psu's together based on a picture of a jumper cable I saw online.
I'm trying to load an operating system on what might be a flaky hard drive right now. I guessed it wasn't really flaky because I found it's sata cable was broke.
Enough blah, I was just checking in and taking a break before I went nuts.

[elderboy02]

Ha ha. This is gonna be awesome!

[BTcigars]

Now thats a puter! What are you going to use it for? Engineering? Model simulations?

[shilala]

Originally Posted by BTcigars

What are you going to use it for?

The same thing I do every day, Pinky.

[BTcigars]

Originally Posted by shilala

The same thing I do every day, Pinky.

That post is a total win!

[J0eybb]

Thats a lot of wires

[J0eybb]

Post on CA

[shilala]

Originally Posted by J0eybb

Post on CA

Exactly.

[J0eybb]

I'm not sure why a man needs 6 hdds, but I'll never question him about it.

[shilala]

Originally Posted by J0eybb

I'm not sure why a man needs 6 hdds, but I'll never question him about it.

If you're serving media to the whole house, storing video, music, pics, etc, it takes no time at all to load up 10TB. This bluray thing makes it even worse.
What is probably the biggest space waster is having the movies, then the divx files (so you can get lots of movies on a single dvd), then the same movie in mp4 format for ipods and the like.
So there's a real simple, everyday reason why a guy would use 6 hdd's. There's lots of others, such as editing large raw hdr files, any kind of video production at all, blah, blah, blah.
I can probably tell you I was a lot happier with a newpaper, cup of coffee, and a cigarette. Times change, though.

[Smokin Gator]

Originally Posted by shilala

I can probably tell you I was a lot happier with a newpaper, cup of coffee, and a cigarette. Times change, though.

Now that is funny... I feel your pain brother!!

[JE3146]

Originally Posted by shilala

If you're serving media to the whole house, storing video, music, pics, etc, it takes no time at all to load up 10TB. This bluray thing makes it even worse.
What is probably the biggest space waster is having the movies, then the divx files (so you can get lots of movies on a single dvd), then the same movie in mp4 format for ipods and the like.
So there's a real simple, everyday reason why a guy would use 6 hdd's. There's lots of others, such as editing large raw hdr files, any kind of video production at all, blah, blah, blah.
I can probably tell you I was a lot happier with a newpaper, cup of coffee, and a cigarette. Times change, though.

I have 14TB on my HTPC... a friend of mine has 26TB on his central media server.

To add to what you said.... You run out of space real quick with blu-rays backups for XBMC, tv shows on RSS feed and FLAC audio.

As it stands I literally have less than half a TB left of space.


Interesting choice with the dual PSU setup

[shilala]

Originally Posted by JE3146

Interesting choice with the dual PSU setup

With the mobo and the six core on the one psu and all the peripherals on the other, neither psu will ever even get warm.
It makes a lot more sense than a single 1000w or 1500w psu, and the price is right. It may not be a straight out of the box solution, but everything lasts longer. It's worth a little messing around and soldering.
Another thing it's good for is that there's tons of connectors. It makes wire management easier and makes a much cleaner job when it's done.
If I decide to go to xfire later, it's not a problem, either. It just leaves tons of expandability.
The only reason I haven't done it in the past is because of the lack of dual psu compatible cases on the market. The stuff that's out there now is simply awesome and never-ending. I could sure waste tons of money.

[mfarre03]

Originally Posted by shilala

With the mobo and the six core on the one psu and all the peripherals on the other, neither psu will ever even get warm.
It makes a lot more sense than a single 1000w or 1500w psu, and the price is right. It may not be a straight out of the box solution, but everything lasts longer. It's worth a little messing around and soldering.
Another thing it's good for is that there's tons of connectors. It makes wire management easier and makes a much cleaner job when it's done.
If I decide to go to xfire later, it's not a problem, either. It just leaves tons of expandability.
The only reason I haven't done it in the past is because of the lack of dual psu compatible cases on the market. The stuff that's out there now is simply awesome and never-ending. I could sure waste tons of money.

Really awesome rig Never thought to run dual PSU's, now you have me thinking, LOL. I havn't upgraded my system in a couple years and I'm getting all itchy to do it again. Love how clean your install looks, nice and well thought out. The last PSU I purchased was one that had modular connections that you could unplug from the PSU if you weren't using them. This was a great idea that only lasted until the first time I turned it on, lol. Took out the vid card and optical drives, wth. I agree with windows 7, just an awesome OS, havn't had any problems in the last few months. I'm always afraid of a new OS ending up like Millennium or Vista, lol.

Originally Posted by JE3146

I have 14TB on my HTPC... a friend of mine has 26TB on his central media server.

To add to what you said.... You run out of space real quick with blu-rays backups for XBMC, tv shows on RSS feed and FLAC audio.

As it stands I literally have less than half a TB left of space.

XBMC + sickbeard FTW!

I work for a computer company that builds media server ( crazy expensive stuff). I biggest server is a 16bay 3u 32TB

[backwoods357]

If I ever go completely storage nuts I think I will build a rig taking a page from BackBlaze's book.
http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20...-more-secrets/ 135TB in a 4u server chassis.

I wouldn't go for the full 135, I would be more than happy with 24 or 32TB. A few weeks ago I actually came across one of these in a data center.
BTW that pic is one I just grabbed from their blog for illustration.

[mithrilG60]

Originally Posted by shilala

If you're serving media to the whole house, storing video, music, pics, etc, it takes no time at all to load up 10TB. This bluray thing makes it even worse.

This. I have a pair of 10TB media servers at home and both will soon need extra drives to expand out to 12 or 14.

[CoreyD]

Don't forget room for the huge a.. coolent driven graphics card for gaming.
Looks great though. Does it glow?

[shilala]

Originally Posted by CoreyD

Don't forget room for the huge a.. coolent driven graphics card for gaming.
Looks great though. Does it glow?

Nope. I'm too old for blue lights and OC'ing anymore. I certainly don't have time for COD anymore, either. That's good though, I'd rather build stuff in the shop and get hurt and things like that. It's way more fun.