Hi all, so here's my latest crazy creation. I wanted something that bordered on insanely high powered, so I got an Asus Z9 PE-D8 WS motherboard, which is one of the latest dual E5 Xeon motherboards. I got a pair of E5-2687W Xeon processors, 3.1GHz base clock at TDP of 150W, 8 cores, 16 threads. Now it's a tricky motherboard, because it's extra long, 12" by 13", so it won't fit in a normal case. Luckily, it fit in my big brass case (http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=59803&hilit=brass), although I lost one feature. When I made the big brass case, I pulled the motherboard tray from an old coolermaster stacker case, so it was fairly big. I was surprised to find that there were mounting holes at the bottom that fit, and the ones at the top fit, but the middle row didn't fit. For those, I used some plastic motherboard mounts that seem to be about the right length to keep the board fairly flat. I did lose one feature, there was a big vent near the bottom of the tray, and I used that for routing some cables to the power supply and hard drives on the back of the motherboard. I have some space around the sides to route them, but it's a little messy at the moment. I've been able to do some overclocking by running the BCLK up to 103 MHz, but I'm still optimizing things, so I haven't put the case back on yet. In terms of cooling, I started with a pair of prolimatech megahalems, but then I did some measuring and decided that noctua nh-d14s would fit. It was a little tight, but it worked! And it got the cpu temps down from the 70s to the 60s! Anyway, time for pics!


View above the motherboard. The fans may seem a little extreme, but they all seem to be important, I've tried removing them, and temps go up.


One great thing about the motherboard is the large number of sata ports. I'm still using an add-in card because I've got a few more drives to add, but I used to have two cards.


One tricky part of the dual socket setup is the need for dual cpu power connectors. It's easy enough to get an adapter, but I've had some trouble with a few. The psu is an Antec signature 850, so it seems pretty stable, but the total system draw is 575W from the wall, according to a kill-a-watt.

And I'll try to add some system monitor info too.

OK, here's some internal performance info. First off, here's what it looks like when it's folding:



And here's the disk summary:



And some system temps:



I'm really happy with those, pretty much under 70C at full load, while overclocked.

Looks like an expensive way to start a fire
What do you need so much computing power for? Is it quiet anyway?

I use it for folding at home, it does a lot of math for the power it consumes. It is fairly quiet, although once I get the case put back together it should be much quieter. I'm currently hearing a little coil whine, but the case has heavy panels with insulation, and it usually cuts that pretty well.

+1 for the fans (cardboard ?) holder
+1 for cable management

what are you going to use for the sides ?

There are lots of E-ATX cases available that would suit this. Is it an active decision that you want to build a case yourself? An E-ATX case won't cost a huge amount more than a high quality ATX case. In terms of silence there is the Antec P193 which is like a bigger P180. Silverstone also make lots of E-ATX cases including the monstrous RV-01:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/silverstone-raven

Isn't it a better to go the multi-GPU route for things like this?

Not anymore. Points systems change once in a while and shift the balance from GPU to CPU or vice versa. With today's multicore CPUs at high frequencies, the processing power is large compared to what a GPU can do. If the drivers change and/or the folding engine change and/or GPU technology changes, the balance will shift and il will be worth more points to fold on a GPU.
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