Building me a dedicated boinc box

[DAD]

In July or Aug, I'd like one of you to build me a dedicated BOINC box (I may also use it for gaming)

Monitor, KB, and mouse do not need to be included. You can use your own for testing

I'd like it to be an INTEL based system... CPU speed is not very relevant... an 8-12 logical core system would be nice that can be boost clocked to at least 4GHZ.. but I want the CPU UNLOCKED... and a nice mobo and bios that lets me tweak EVERY, damn, little, thing.....

1) I want 3 PCI slots - all 3.0 if possible - but 1 3.0 and 2 2.0s are ok
2) I want a mobo that does NOT CRAM the GPU cards next to each other... it must leave at least 1 slot worth of space in between the cards, preferably 2.. so this can be a HUGE tower if need be
3) OS: Windows 8.1, booted via UEFI off a SSD (C: drive). All that goes on C: on only Windows on C: all games and non metro apps
4) 16GB RAM
5) C: Drive is to be a 500GB SSD to boot Windows
6) D: Drive is to be a Raid 5 Array of 3 4TB drives, 128KB stripe (offset and properly aligned to the partition), and formatted with 64KB clusters
7) 3 TITAN GPUs (type TBA depending on what Nvidia has around this time) At this time T Blacks.. but I hear a new TITAN is coming soon

We will sign a legally binding contract.. that way someone can't steal my money and keep the machine.
I will pay you via PayPal so there's a record, and the paypal dispute system if needed

I will pay you in advance for ALL the parts. Upon completion, I will pay you $750for labor, professional packaging (have a ups or fed ex store pack it - that way they are responsible), insurance, and shipping costs

So you would net 750 bucks minus packaging, insurance, and shipping

Is this enough to pay someone for labor? or is it too much? I do NOT know everyone here as I haven't been on in a year or so.. but I think there's a few GOOD nature people that will answer this HONESTLY

[John P. Myers]

I can definitely do it, but for your money, i highly recommend NOT getting the new Titan Z and just sticking with the Blacks. In fact, you could buy all 3 of the Titan Blacks for about the same price of a single Titan Z.

Also you didn't mention the type of cooling you want. Liquid or air?

[DAD]

Liquid of course... 2 separate ones if possible.. one dedicated to the CPU and the other dedicated to the GPU... if it's not possible or there's a single pump solution that works... im game...

[YoDude9999]

Well, I can't say for sure, but I think you want more that can be had unless you're trying to get into the industrial market for Mother Boards. CPUs that are unlocked are generally sort of expensive as well. Finding one that'll run at 4g and be reliable may be a trick in itself, even if liquid cooled. 8 to 12 virtual cores is not impossible and if speed doesn't matter then it's a bit easier, but then at the same time, why ask for a system that will clock to 4g?

Having at least one slot between GPUs is difficult these days because most of them take up two right out of the box. As far as the general consumer market is concerned, good luck with that. If the system is liquid cooled, having that extra space between the GPUs shouldn't matter too much. I'm sure you must have meant PCIe slots as well, ya?

Why you'd want a 500g SSD to boot into Win is quite beyond me, but oh well. Yeah that can easily be done.

While I'm sorta sure the system could be build with exception of the motherboard. I wouldn't do it for $750 minus anything. You pay shipping , packaging and insurance. The $750 is for the labor of putting it all together and testing it to the point the operating system is good and functional, the "d" drive is satisfactory in functionality and the system runs BOINC with projects that support the GPUs you've selected. Disassembling the liquid cooling parts and all the other stuff in preparation for shipping comes on your tab, not mine.

Yo-

[zombie67]

My advice for a dedicated cruncher. All IMO, of course:

1) I just got done swapping out my SSDs for regular HDs on my dedicated win boxes. They were bought back when you could get only ~120gb for a reasonable price. That's fine, until you start building VMs. I like to have two or three, each with a nice roomy 100gb. Also, there are one or two projects out there that require 100gb free space, in order to get work. Anyway, with a dedicated cruncher, I don't care about boot speed. And I don't see any difference when it comes to crunching speed. Save your $$, and get a big spinning HD.

2) You should plan on 2gb per CPU thread at a minimum. More if you want to run a VM or two at the same time. With an i7 8 thread machine, 16gb is the absolute minimum. 32gb if you have an i7 12 thread CPU (4 channel, so either 4x8gb or 8x4gb, depending on the mobo).

Edit: About VMs... You may not plan to ever use VMs. Don't kid yourself. If you are building dedicated crunchers, then you have the bug. And sooner or later, you will want to crunch a project that has only linux apps, and your machine is windows. Or vice versa. And then you will thank yourself for planning ahead.

[Fire$torm]

I'll add my 2% here. For the dollars spent, SSDs should be used primarily for the OS and apps like Photoshop or your fav 2 or 3 games. Everything else (including BOINC) should go on a mechanical drive. This will cut down on the inordinate number of reads and writes on the SSD that programs like BOINC would throw at it.

If ya going full water cooling including GPUs, then PCIe slot spacing is not a concern at all.

Z is totally correct about RAM. Stuff as much of it into that box that you can afford.