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Non-standard Motherboard with Eight PCIe x16 Slots
Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 10:09 am
by Kamicrit
https://www.techpowerup.com/236961/colo ... -x16-slots
Eight cards, two power supplies, and a custom case later. The most powerful single board folding setup yet.
Eight of any GPU would net you crazy PPD, would be a great rig to do a bulk buy of a GPU with the best $/PPD.
If you had eight 1080 TI's at full tilt, you'd be pulling 2000W from the wall. Electric stove element glowing red hot pulls 1500W.
Re: Non-standard Motherboard with Eight PCIe x16 Slots
Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 10:49 am
by rwh202
Cool - A lot neater than faffing with risers, but 7 slots are only 1x speed, which isn't ideal. 1 DIMM too - 16 GB would be cutting it fine for 8 GPU slots, so that's a rather pricy 32 GB SODIMM to go with it.
Also, I don't understand all of the PCI power connectors - are some outputs for the GPUs, or are they just to supply the slots with power which seems overkill? 32 8 pin connectors would be a monster PSU or four!
Re: Non-standard Motherboard with Eight PCIe x16 Slots
Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 12:17 pm
by foldy
Board has no 24-pin power connector so the pcie power connectors are used, 8x 6pin to deliver 75 watts for each slot. (The other 8 pcie power connectors are optional.) Because of x1 pcie speed this board needs Linux because Windows would bottleneck too much.
Re: Non-standard Motherboard with Eight PCIe x16 Slots
Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 8:56 pm
by Nathan_P
Anything will bottleneck on x1, that board isn't worth it for folding IMHO.
Re: Non-standard Motherboard with Eight PCIe x16 Slots
Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 9:16 pm
by Kamicrit
Very good points raised. Completely forgot about losing all those PCIe lanes per slot. Seems like the tried true standard mobo is still the best folding setup.
But cool in concept nonetheless!
Re: Non-standard Motherboard with Eight PCIe x16 Slots
Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 12:28 pm
by v00d00
I'd love that board, but not for a 8x 1080ti sort of dream. But for a 8x passive 1050ti folding system or 8x 1060 watercooled silent system. Build a custom tower to house it and the cards.
I have tested my current cards on x1 and the PPD gain between x1 and x16 seems negligible on them. Just like the 1-2 % drift between pci-e 2.0 and 3.0. Yes on a 1080 it makes a difference, but when you are running something that makes 250k/day, 1% is not something I would lose sleep over.
If I could source one I would. Probably wont be able to get them over here anytime soon. But to build a 700w silent system purely for folding that I could stash somewhere out of the way and would produce ~1mil PPD, while not turning that room into a raging inferno. Very sweet.
Re: Non-standard Motherboard with Eight PCIe x16 Slots
Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 1:22 pm
by lastole
Interesting, but an 8x1080Ti system would need at least a 25-amp electric circuit (probably 30amps to be safe). Not a lot of those in residential buildings -- at least I don't have one except for my central AC unit which I use half of the year. I could run power cords to two outlets on different breakers, I suppose. Is this what guys with racks of GPUs on risers do?