Cooler Master builds 20-core PC
CoolerMaster has taken one of its ATCS 840 tower cases and squeezed five mini-ITX systems in - for 20 cores of processing goodness.
Dubbed the “53GHz”, the system – spotted via Make – is built from five mini-ITX systems housed in one of the company's ATCS 840 cases. Each ITX system houses an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 processor alongside 2GB of RAM, for a total of 20 processing cores and 10GB of memory. Each motherboard within the micro-cluster has been given its own hard drive for storage – with the company choosing to use 2.5” small form factor drives to reduce power load and heat output.
While creating a small cluster from micro-sized motherboards is nothing new, what is impressive is that the company is using a single Cooler Master Real Power M1000W PSU to run all five motherboards, using all six +12V rails to ensure system stability.
With so much power housed in a fairly tight case, heat was always going to be a problem. Accordingly, the company has seen fit to add a trio of 200mm fans alongside a single 120mm unit, plus independent water pumps for each ITX unit which feed into a single case-mounted radiator. With this in place, Cooler Master is claiming a 66 degree Celsius temperature for the hottest core at a 30 degree case temperature.
It's a good showcase for the company's current range of power, cooling, and case products – but one with a limited practicality. As each system is independent, the single box requires five keyboards, five mice, and five monitors – along with five people to drive it. That said, any processing task which is suited to a clustered or distributed environment – such as encoding or rendering – would greatly benefit from something such as this demo unit. Sadly, the company has no plans to put the device into production – although there's nothing stopping you buying each item individually and building one yourself.
Impressed with the amount of power the M1000W can output, or is this nothing more than showing off on the company's part? Thinking of the uses to which you could put 20 processing cores? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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16 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyMaybe it'd consume even less power that this 5X core 2 quad setup, but I may be wrong... :o
It'd work out great except the heat output of the cards.
The system uses custom ATX power convert pcb's. a 12v power goes into the pcb and the pcb connects to the atx power connector of the motherboard.
They also used very long sata cables (1m) routed from top to bottom and then over to the other side to feed the dvdrom drives and HD's. its a U shape sort of routing.
The motherboards are cooled with air when the side lid is closed.
The hardrives are 2.5"
The watercooling is for the CPU's only a 1 >5 > 1 design
http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1235997386.jpeg
http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1235997385.jpeg
http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1235997384.jpeg
http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1235997383.jpeg
http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1235997381.jpeg
http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1235997382.jpeg
http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1235997379.jpeg
And a youtube video
Or
One Res is split to the CPUs and then back from the CPU goes into the other res?
Ahem... the watercooling. I think that the reservoirs act as manifold collectors. It would be a very inefficient loop indeed in which the reservoir is not the last item before return to the pump. I would suspect that there is a manifold after the radiator that splits the stream.
That system looks like it would be fun to put together. Maybe my next computer will be a cluster? hahaha
well there is four res so Im thinking that they act as the manifold so it would go Radiator to res, each output of the two res goes to each cpu then out of the cpu going back into the other two res and then to the pump and back to the rad, thats the only way I can think of doing it but remaing effective.
The most logical thing to do is to feed the water to the cpu's after the radiator via a manifold. If you look at the video (see above) they actually use a manifold to distribute to all the cpu's. From the cpu's it goes back to the reservoirs and from there back to the pump.
please put a time stamp of where you see this manifold, what Im seeing is 4 sets of res and two appear to be out to the cpus and two appear to be ins from the cpu and thats what I mean by manifold as the res splitting the sourcing going out and coming in. So if you could put a time stamp of where you see the manifold so that I can be corrected or understand what your talking about?