Kasper's Current Build

[kasper3577]

The first thing everyone needs if you ever plan to or do build your own computers:

Cost: less than $20 and is invaluable to have.

Here in AZ, every 15 days or so my computer looks like this:

Nothing like living in the desert?

My computer specs:
CPU: i7 920 With a Corsair H50 watercooler on it
Case: Antec 900(not the 900.2)
PSU: Thermaltake 850 watt modular power supply
Graphics Cards:
slot one: GTX 460 768MB EVGA
slot two: EVGA 9800 GT(used solely as a cuda processor)
RAM: 6GB Patriot Competition Ram(2GB x 3 modules)
Motherboard: EVGA x58 LE motherboard
Hard Drives:
Drive one: OS drive - 74GB 10k RPM VelociRaptor Drive
Drive two: Data drive - 1TB western digital drive
OS: Windows 7 64 bit
Monitors:
Monitor one: 32" 1080i HDMI tv(the LG 32LD450 model)
Monitor two: my old 22" widescreen acer lcd monitor

Pics of parts while I was cleaning it today:

Inside before cleaning anything:


My wonderful wiring job due to lack of space...If you need to hide anything in your case, this is not the case to choose:




My Hard Drives:


One of my Ram Sticks:


My wonderfully ?clean? radiator to my cpu cooler:


I ran out of room on the 8gig sd card in the cam at this point, so couldn't take any more pics till I was done, and well, it is already back together so I don't want to take it back apart to take pics to put it back together again...so, no more pics of a clean pc.

[kasper3577]

Some Notes:

Total cost was less than $2,000 and I play single copies of wow on ultra settings at 1920x1080 resolution with my fps peaking just over 300 fps and dropping to just over 150fps in a 25 man with everything going on. With 5 copies of wow running, I get processor and graphics lag so I drop the resolution to 1600x1200 or so and drop shadows and the liquid detail to the lowest settings and still maintain 60+ fps on all 5 copies. But, while using Pwnboxer, I run my other copies of wow at 40 fps and my main window at 60-90fps.

This computer is still overkill for just wow, but it is what I built to play wow. Of course I could build a cheaper computer that can play 5 copies, but I believe in doing things like Tim does...why do things half-@ss'd when you can afford to do them with a little overkill. My computer would probably be the same if not a little better than his is if I did everything he does with the video editing and all, but I don't need all that(by all that, I mean the other 10TB of space in hard drives).

[Ualaa]

Nice system there.

I have the same case as yours, and dust does gradually accumulate on the front (Vancouver is a tad more humid than Arizona). I clean it off, at least weekly, but it would probably be more than a month to get as dusty as your case.

One-boxing on Ultra settings, my system displays the FPS as around 200. So my system is not as nice as yours or Tim's.

When I five box, I have five regions rendered at 1650x1080 (with four of those regions scaled down). The background regions are locked at 20 FPS, and the foreground averages 60-80 FPS.

I also run a pair of macros, on each switch between regions; this disables shadows, water, weather, etc, lowers almost everything but view distance to virtually nothing for each of the slave regions. The other macro raises settings to medium (except shadows, which are still disabled), view distance is maximum and sound is enabled for the active region. It works quite well.

[Janus]

Ualaa can you share those settings macros please ?

Kasper, what do you mean the other card is a cuda processor. I have 9800 accumulating dust in my basement and would like to put it in with my 470 GTX...

[Ualaa]

Master's Settings:
/console farclip 1250
/console groundEffectDensity 36
/console groundEffectDistance 260
/console environmentDetail 40
/console particleDensity 75
/console shadowMode 0
/console waterDetail 0
/console reflectionMode 0
/console sunShafts 0
/console basemip 1
/console terrainMipLevel 1
/console projectedTextures 0
/console weatherDensity 0
/console componentTextureLevel 1
/console textureFilteringMode 1
/console Sound_EnableAllSound 1


Slave's Settings:
/console farclip 300
/console groundEffectDensity 0
/console groundEffectDistance 0
/console environmentDetail 0
/console particleDensity 10
/console shadowMode 0
/console waterDetail 0
/console reflectionMode 0
/console sunShafts 0
/console basemip 1
/console terrainMipLevel 1
/console projectedTextures 0
/console weatherDensity 0
/console componentTextureLevel 0
/console textureFilteringMode 0
/console Sound_EnableAllSound 0

[kasper3577]

Oh, the cuda processor does not work with wow, only with other games that have the cuda technology...thus for wow, it has no real application.

If you do put it in, it is not in SLI or anything, but under the nvidia control panel, you can set it to be the cuda processor. I only use it because I already had it, a better card or another gtx 460 would work better.

[Tim]

So just what exactly uses CUDA technology anyways? Anything useful?

Love the post btw, that dust is awesome!

Also, how is the Corsair CPU cooling thingymabob doing?

[kasper3577]

What is CUDA?

Here is the link for the cuda info. Sorry it has been a few days, I was playing the Rift beta 4 all weekend, and my schoolwork is consuming a ton of my time.

In a trimmed down explanation, or even just an English one...Cuda is a hardware application that enables the graphics type applications that go to the processor to instead of going just6 to the cpu, to be shared with the cpu and gpu or second processor on the extra graphics card.

If that part seemed confusing, let me break it down more...

GPU = graphics processing unit
CPU = processor or central processing unit
e-GPU = the other graphics card in the computer or extra-gpu

WoW uses the CPU to process some of the graphics for the game. The graphics card does what is left or dedicated to it as what it should process according to the application utilizing it. The e-GPU is the other graphics card in non-SLI mode in your computer(it should be a lesser card than the main GPU, but can be an equal card - it can NOT be a better card than the main GPU or it will not work for CUDA).

For WoW, I was wrong, it will use the card(unless WoW specifically disables the use of CUDA in the program). Basically, what the WoW application states in it is to send most of the background physics done in the game to the CPU for processing, not the GPU where it would normally go. What the CUDA does is reroute half of that physics processing going to your CPU to the other graphics card for processing, then sends it back as if it went through the CPU. Essentially using the graphics card as a second processor on your computer. You can only have one CUDA processor on a computer as far as I know. CUDA has some limitations to it that I do know about...the biggest being that if you run multiple instances of the same application, ie running 5 wow's from one folder, only the first instance opened will be able to use the CUDA processor. In fact, I am not sure it will run with more than one application at all at this point; I haven't seen anything confirming or denying that as no one has asked that question on their forums that I am aware of.

I do not see any difference running a single copy of wow with the CUDA card on or off, but then again, I have never maxed out my cpu enough for the CUDA to show any difference.

One last thing is an ATI card will NOT work as a CUDA processor, there is firmware on every ATI card preventing that. There was a driver that came out when CUDA came out that did allow that, and within one week, ATI released a new firmware update to disable that possibility, and added a new version of firmware to their cards to prevent that from occurring in the future. You can get around the firmware, but the performance hit is just not worth it as it will run less than either card individually.

If it does work with wow, and I do not know if it does or does not, I would suggest a card that can at the very least run the minimum specs for a graphics card for wow. The general idea I got talking to the forum guys last year is if the card can't run the game by itself, it probably isn't fast enough to be used for the game as a CUDA processor.

[kasper3577]

Originally Posted by Tim

So just what exactly uses CUDA technology anyways? Anything useful?

Love the post btw, that dust is awesome!

Also, how is the Corsair CPU cooling thingymabob doing?

With prime 95 running, the cpu will reach about 90 degrees with the aftermarket heatsink and fan I have(similar to the one you have). With the H50 cooler, granted it isnt full of sand like in the pics, I can't get the temp over 50 degrees, even after 12 hours of stress testing. With no sand and on a normal day, considering a room temp of about 80 degrees F, my cpu temp is normally 30C at idle and 40C with the things I do on a day to day basis.

If I run my short cpu test and the temp gets over 55C, I know it is time to clean my sandbox out. I run that test once a week just to see the health of my cpu.

Although, thinking about it, you might want a larger volume water cooling system for your cpu. It will run hotter by comparison as you have a larger footprint of a cpu(more cores create more heat in the same size area).