My new Photoshop Machine (mwuahahah...)

[manaheim]

I've been giving my Dad crap for years because he always is some bigwig at some cool company, and never gets me any cool toys from where he works... not even a fricken t-shirt.

He's been one of the Veeps over at Intel for about 5-6 years now, and I've been giving him a ton of crap about that... can't even get me a processor for god's sake. (though I recently discovered I can actually get processors for about 1/2 price, ok fair enough I guess.)

Anyway, my Dad gives me a call a couple months ago and says "Ok, I have something for you..."

See, Dad has recently taken control of the desktop and gaming division at Intel, and Intel has recently developed a series of gaming motherboards called "Skulltrail". Turns out they had 12 prototype desktops. Turns out they decided to send me one so I can be a field tester. I'm using it now to type this message... which is kinda overkill.

The critical specs:

- Skulltrail prototype motherboard (special modified server board with on-board hw raid accelerator and whatnot)
- Dual Quad-Core Xeon Server Class Processors 3GHz (very rare "unlocked" processors, overclockable to 5GHz under normal cooling, 6 GHz with nitrogen cooling)
- 4 gigs overclocked server RAM
- Dual Nvidia 8800 GTX 768 Video Cards (admittedly not the top of the line now, but was when the box was originally built)
- Ridiculously obnoxious liquid-cooled case setup

Here's a couple pictures...

==1==
The pallet that showed up and was sitting in my garage when I got home. My wife called to say "Your retardedly huge stupid computer thing showed up." I left work immediately.

==2==
The computer out of the box next to my McDonald's diet coke to give you a sense of size.

Overall this thing is loud as hell, weighs 90ish pounds and probably is costing me $4 a minute to run due to the power consumption, but good LORD does it run Photoshop fast.

Now I probably should actually go install a game on it. :lmao:

Anyway, figured you guys would get a kick out of it. Thanks for listening.

 

[maverickphoto]

-
The computer out of the box next to my McDonald's diet coke to give you a sense of size.

Is that cup SUPERSIZED? :lmao:

 

[goodoneian]

photoshop loves 4 gigs of ram

 

[icassell]

does he have another

 

[Hawaii Five-O]

I'll take one I could be a field tester

are those spinner wheels on the bottom?


It would be funny if all you did with it was check you email and surf the internet hah.

 

[RubyRed]

I just scratched off #4 of my life goals and changed it to..

"Buy a PC that arrives on a pallet"

 

[JerryPH]

It is also just AWESOME when you can get a little high-end "backdoor" stuff, but it is uber-cool to get it for free!

"Your retardedly huge stupid computer thing showed up."

ROFL! She doesn't sound to sympathetic to your cause!

When I lived in Texas, I had contacts at intel. Not so much for hardware, but first hand info. I was told of all what they were working on and back then in 2002, they were working on what will come to be known as the P7. This is when the P4s pretty much ruled. I had a chance to play with it, but I can tell you... as impressive as a freon cooled P7 processor in a quad processor motherboard sounds, in real life running at an underclocked 32Ghz each confused, it was not as fast as you would expect. Of course by now they may be working on things like something stupid like a P15 or something rediculous, but we will never see it until they have squeezed the marking juice out of each and every minor product until then.

As for me, I have the parts downstairs to build my own little new toy dediated strictly to my video and photo hobby (as if I did not have enough already with a 12 computer, 4 server, fiber optic gigabit and 802.11n wireless network with an 18TB SAN), but I will make due with a simple quad core 2.66 with 32gb of RAM 1gb of ram on the video card, dual 23" LCD monitors, running on 64-bit versions of XP Pro (I loathe Vista!), Lightroom 2.0 and so on.

New toys are fun!

Edit: Oh, about using that machine to type in messages on a forum using IE... be very careful, you don't want to strain those multiple CPUs too hard and blow. (LMAO!)

 

[JerryPH]

photoshop loves 4 gigs of ram

Too bad that the 32-bit versions of XP and Vista only see and can access a maximm of 3.25gb. :meh: This is a stupid limitation that drives me nuts at times.

 

[Bifurcator]

.

Eats Macs For Lunch!​

That's just about the same spec machine I have... You are going to be VERY happy with it!

You should take more photos of it and post them. I bet is looks awesome in a darkened room!

Congratz on your new 64-bit 8-core 3g monster dude! :thumbup:



PS: I bet there's a hardware or software speed dial for the fans somewhere if you want to reduce the noise. If it has watercooling on the procs and you're not trying to run 3 heavy games at once the fans don't need to be turned up. You want to keep the xeon procs at about 50C or below and the drives at 30c to 35c if you can. 40c on the drives isn't too bad but keeping them low means longer life.

 

[Garbz]

Too bad that the 32-bit versions of XP and Vista only see and can access a maximm of 3.25gb. :meh: This is a stupid limitation that drives me nuts at times.

The people who saw me run Windows 2003 Server laughed. Well who's laughing now. It can address high-mem and it stays lean with service pack upgrades. Not like all the horridness (slowness) introduced with the XP service packs. I max out my 4gb regularly .

Seriously man you're 3 choices are XP-x64, Windows 2003 x-64, or Windows 2003. Everything else would just be a shame on that computer. Either that or wait till they get photoshop CS3 running on linux. CS2 runs just the new one is all manner of hassles.

 

[Bifurcator]

Hmmm Mac and Linux don't have a problem addressing 64 GB of ram. I heard even Amiga can do that now. :lmao:

 

[manaheim]

Is that cup SUPERSIZED? :lmao:

hahah... yes... yes it is.

does he have another

No! All the other 11 are spoken for.

I'll take one I could be a field tester

are those spinner wheels on the bottom?

It would be funny if all you did with it was check you email and surf the internet hah.

Heh, that was most of what I did last night. I have to instal Crysis on it tonight and see what that will do. I also really need to get a better monitor on it. Running games on an aging 1280x1024 LCD with a vid card setup that is optimized for far higher resolutions is... shall we say... kinda stupid.

I just scratched off #4 of my life goals and changed it to..

"Buy a PC that arrives on a pallet"

It is also just AWESOME when you can get a little high-end "backdoor" stuff, but it is uber-cool to get it for free!

"Your retardedly huge stupid computer thing showed up."

ROFL! She doesn't sound to sympathetic to your cause!

I would describe my wife as "tolerant", which is really pretty good since a lot of women would probably murder their husbands for what I have done to the dining room with this thing. I should put up a picture of that. It's funny.

When I lived in Texas, I had contacts at intel. Not so much for hardware, but first hand info. I was told of all what they were working on and back then in 2002, they were working on what will come to be known as the P7. This is when the P4s pretty much ruled. I had a chance to play with it, but I can tell you... as impressive as a freon cooled P7 processor in a quad processor motherboard sounds, in real life running at an underclocked 32Ghz each confused, it was not as fast as you would expect. Of course by now they may be working on things like something stupid like a P15 or something rediculous, but we will never see it until they have squeezed the marking juice out of each and every minor product until then.

I'm pretty sure Intel has shifted most of their efforts to the multi-core thing. More cores on a single chip has more easy-to-aquire headroom than cranking the GHz and reducing the size of the core electronics (from what I understand...)

As for me, I have the parts downstairs to build my own little new toy dediated strictly to my video and photo hobby (as if I did not have enough already with a 12 computer, 4 server, fiber optic gigabit and 802.11n wireless network with an 18TB SAN), but I will make due with a simple quad core 2.66 with 32gb of RAM 1gb of ram on the video card, dual 23" LCD monitors, running on 64-bit versions of XP Pro (I loathe Vista!), Lightroom 2.0 and so on.

Nice! Yeah. Vista is... interesting.

.

Eats Macs For Lunch!​

That's just about the same spec machine I have... You are going to be VERY happy with it!

You should take more photos of it and post them. I bet is looks awesome in a darkened room!

Congratz on your new 64-bit 8-core 3g monster dude! :thumbup:

PS: I bet there's a hardware or software speed dial for the fans somewhere if you want to reduce the noise. If it has watercooling on the procs and you're not trying to run 3 heavy games at once the fans don't need to be turned up. You want to keep the xeon procs at about 50C or below and the drives at 30c to 35c if you can. 40c on the drives isn't too bad but keeping them low means longer life.

hehe, thanks. It actually appears to have some temperature sensors wired into it for the fans, but the fans seem to be running at the same speed all the time. TBH, my guess is that right now they are running at low speed... it's just that there are TWELVE of them on the box. That panel of 4 is repeated on both sides, and then there are four on the inside.

Part of the problem is I didn't actually build this setup... it's basically a "home tuner rig" built by the guys at intel, then packed up and shipped to me. That's a little tweaky, esp. when you've never even had a liquid cooled machine before.

TBH there is a very VERY good chance that I'll move this thing out of this monstrosity of a case and put it into my normal desktop setup. I won't be able to overclock it much because my other case probably wouldn't be able to handle the heat output, but then I will be able to hear myself think, so it may be a reasonable trade-off.

The people who saw me run Windows 2003 Server laughed. Well who's laughing now. It can address high-mem and it stays lean with service pack upgrades. Not like all the horridness (slowness) introduced with the XP service packs. I max out my 4gb regularly .

Seriously man you're 3 choices are XP-x64, Windows 2003 x-64, or Windows 2003. Everything else would just be a shame on that computer. Either that or wait till they get photoshop CS3 running on linux. CS2 runs just the new one is all manner of hassles.

Hm, you know, that's an interesting idea. Question is how does Server 2003 handle games? If at all? This is a gaming rig, after all.

Hmmm Mac and Linux don't have a problem addressing 64 GB of ram. I heard even Amiga can do that now. :lmao:

Don't you start with me!

 

[roadkill]

That's a heck of a porn machine there

 

[Bifurcator]

hehe, thanks. It actually appears to have some temperature sensors wired into it for the fans, but the fans seem to be running at the same speed all the time. TBH, my guess is that right now they are running at low speed... it's just that there are TWELVE of them on the box. That panel of 4 is repeated on both sides, and then there are four on the inside.

Part of the problem is I didn't actually build this setup... it's basically a "home tuner rig" built by the guys at intel, then packed up and shipped to me. That's a little tweaky, esp. when you've never even had a liquid cooled machine before.

There's probably a thump screw somewhere that adjusts fan-speed and if not there's a utility hiding (or downloadable) somewhere that will allow you to set min/max speeds for certain temperatures.

TBH there is a very VERY good chance that I'll move this thing out of this monstrosity of a case and put it into my normal desktop setup. I won't be able to overclock it much because my other case probably wouldn't be able to handle the heat output, but then I will be able to hear myself think, so it may be a reasonable trade-off.

Yeah, xeon processors do NOT need water cooling! It's one of the main design principals behind xeon. You can run them in an open case with no airflow and nothing but a passive heat-sync. The problem with doing something like that in a closed case is that the drives, RAM, and display adaptors overheat. Your 8800's and drives could actually benefit from water cooling...

Another thing you can do is get a realtime temperature monitoring utility and start unplugging the fans one at a time. Run a game for 10min. Check to see if everything is still good and repeat till you only have the actually affective ones plugged in.

Here's my system with passive cooling (no CPU fans), two slow exhaust fans out the back at 1321 RPM, one out the front at 1301 RPM, and the PSU fan running at 1709 RPM (So 4 total all at VERY slow speeds. These fans do 480 RPM ~ 10,000 RMP):

28.0℃/82.4℉ ----- Ambient Air
33.0℃/91.4℉ ----- CPU A Heatsink
34.0℃/93.2℉ ----- CPU B Heatsink
34.0℃/93.2℉ ----- Expansion Slots
32.0℃/89.6℉ ----- Hard Drive Bay 1
31.0℃/87.8℉ ----- Hard Drive Bay 2
32.0℃/89.6℉ ----- Hard Drive Bay 3
32.0℃/89.6℉ ----- Hard Drive Bay 4
32.0℃/89.6℉ ----- SMART Disk 1
31.0℃/87.8℉ ----- SMART Disk 2
35.0℃/95.0℉ ----- SMART Disk 3
34.0℃/93.2℉ ----- SMART Disk 4
42.0℃/107.6℉ ---- Memory Module A1
48.0℃/118.4℉ ---- Memory Module A2
46.0℃/114.8℉ ---- Memory Module B1
48.0℃/118.4℉ ---- Memory Module B2
33.0℃/91.4℉ ----- Memory Riser Card A Position 1
35.0℃/95.0℉ ----- Memory Riser Card A Position 2
33.0℃/91.4℉ ----- Memory Riser Card A Position 3
33.0℃/91.4℉ ----- Memory Riser Card B Position 1
35.0℃/95.0℉ ----- Memory Riser Card B Position 2
35.0℃/95.0℉ ----- Memory Riser Card B Position 3
46.0℃/114.8℉ ---- Power Supply Location 1
43.0℃/109.4℉ ---- Power Supply Location 2
46.0℃/114.8℉ ---- Northbridge Heat Sink
31.0℃/87.7℉ ----- CPU Core 1
30.0℃/86.0℉ ----- CPU Core 2
31.0℃/87.8℉ ----- CPU Core 3
28.0℃/82.4℉ ----- CPU Core 4
28.0℃/82.4℉ ----- CPU Core 5
24.0℃/75.2℉ ----- CPU Core 6
20.0℃/68.0℉ ----- CPU Core 7
29.0℃/84.2℉ ----- CPU Core 8
63 % -------------- Processor Load (average)
131 ---------------- Number of Processes

I can't hear it running unless I get my ear a few inches from the case.

 

[Overread]

That machine is -- 12 fans!!!!!
darn you might be able to run crisis as full spec -- without lag!
should last you at least 2 years without upgrade


have fun!