I just bought a replacement for Deepblue, the Cowboy server. I mention it, because the replacement should be a screamer. Deepblue is getting a bit long in the tooth and needs a new PSU and fans – I’ll keep it in my herd, but have decided to shift it to my wife’s office to replace her even slower computer. Gobbles, her old machine, will begin CAD duty in my art studio and will continue to crunch on OGR.
The new box is going to be an overclocked, water-cooled Intel Quad-Core 2 with 2 GB of RAM, 4 SATA RAID 0+1 drives and an overclocked gamer video card. The video card is supposedly compatible with the next generation of OGR/RC5 crunchers that should outrun even the Quad processor CPU! Watch for new DNET clients that can run on the processor in your video card. Video cards have the capability of crunching much faster than a motherboard CPU. Hopefully, I’ll be able to crunch OGR work on the Quad CPU and the video card simultaneously. In the short term, it will be CPU crunching only.
It will take a while to build it (the parts are currently on order from Newegg.com) and to configure it. Newegg says the parts should arrive sometime next week. Look for a machine named Samovar (named after the water cooling system) in my herd in the next couple weeks. I’ll post pictures soon.
Here is the list of hardware components in: Samovar
Kevin
Samovar is up and running! Without overclocking, it runs at a cool 31C, unlike its brother system that runs a constant 65C with very similar hardware and loading. The only difference is air versus water cooling cooling on the hotter CPU.
I am very impressed with the Gigabyte Mercury case with integrated water cooling. Even without the plumbing, the case is impressive. Its construction is first rate and the water cooling is a big plus!
Samovar is burning in right now, to insure that all the hardware is OK I will start testing its overclocking capability over the next few weeks and then let it run at its faster speed, whatever that turns out to be.
Stay tuned!
Kevin