Project Ravens' Nest

[J7SC_Orion]

Welcome !

 

 

 

'Project Ravens' Nest' covers five motherboards in two 'TT Core x' cases and grew out of the need to update both the computer-related work machines and entertainment systems...with the Covid-19 pandemic, I added a lot more work capacity to my home office, and soon, it all got a bit messy re. multiple systems sprawling over many rooms in our home. Time to update and at the same time consolidate the spaces used...

 

The project adds two older motherboard + CPU combos (Asus Maximus V ii Formula w/4790K and Gigabyte Z170 SOC Force w/6700K) for Linux and home entertainment, but this 'Project Ravens' Nest' build log focuses on the three primary AMD 'heavy lift' 16C/32T CPUs

 

Nest 1
 

> 5950X - Asus CH8 Dark Hero - 4x8 Sam-B DDR4 4000 - Asus Srix 3090 OC (CPU and GPU with custom loops) - WD M.2s & Sata SSDs - Antec HPC Platinum 1300W continous power PSU

 

> 3950X -  Asus CH8 Hero wifi  - 4x8 Sam-B DDR4 3866 - Gigabyte OC 3x8 pin AMD Radeon 6900 XT (CPU and GPU with custom loops) - WD M.2s & Sata SSDs - BeQuiet DarkPro 1200W PSU

 

 

Nest  2 

 

> 2950X - MSI X399 Creation  - 8x8 Sam-B DDR4 3866 - 2x Gigabyte Aorus Extreme Waterforce WB 2080 Ti (CPU and GPUs with custom loops) - WD M.2s & Sata SSDs - Antec HPC Platinum 1300W continous power PSU

 

  

 Water cooling components & fans

 

- 3x TT CL 480x64 triple-row copper/bronze rads, 6x XSPC RX 360x60 bronze rads, 2x Hardwarelabs Black Ice GTX Gen two extreme 160x60 bronze rads

- 9x D5 pumps

- 40x Antec P12 pwm pst fans and 8x Antec P8 (rev2) pwm fans, TT Commander 10 fan pwm / Sata powered hubs

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Edited July 4, 2021 by J7SC_Orion

[J7SC_Orion]

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Edited July 4, 2021 by J7SC_Orion

[J7SC_Orion]

...it's still early days and more fine-tuning is needed, but here are some initial 'colorful' performance figures for 'Project Raven'

 

 

 

  

 

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by J7SC_Orion

[J7SC_Orion]

...more to come...sooner or later  

[Avacado]

+Subbed. Looks great, i'm Jelly. 

[Bastiaan_NL]

A lot of cool hardware, would be a shame if it wouldn't be used for F@H

It's looking good, subbed!

 

[iamjanco]

Looking good, J7 

 

 

Edited July 3, 2021 by iamjanco

[J7SC_Orion]

Thanks guys !   

 

The aforementioned 3950X sits in a regular Asus Crosshair VIII Hero 'wi-fi', and it is a great, fast combo as you will see later on.  But Project Raven's 5960X and the 'Dark' version of that very same board have a few important differences...90 amp power stages among them, but the real kicker is being able to optimize and max multi-core and single-core performance simultaneously...having your cake and eating it too . DerBauer's timestamped vid below explains this special mobo feature...  

 

It's just going to be very messy integrating these three into the existing home-office combo (which these days carries a lot of extra working-and-serving from home functionality). I probably end up retiring a few of my fav but older Intel-E WS workstation setups.  

  

 

[J7SC_Orion]

All three AMD 16c/32t systems ended up being powered by the same model of PSU. Being in the software / SaaS related field and running our own hardware, my PSU preference for power systems trends in the direction of 'quality and plenty of headroom'...apart from a handful of premium 850 Corsairs, everything else in terms of workstations and fun machines has 1200W or more...some of the machines I describe here pull more than 1150 W (ie. with dual RTX graphics cards, which can be 'pigs on gas watts').

  

  

  

...for Project Raven, I ended up settling on another Antec HPC Platinum 1300 W PSU...highly rated, very low ripple and if one really wants to go nuts (like I used to at HWBot), two of them can be linked together via their proprietary OC Link for a max of 2600 W. Innards are by Delta Electronics, another plus...

 

Speaking of quality, the heavy-gauge PCIe connectors of this PSU are another advantage (if hard to route and get into place). The Strix 3090 OC - on stock V_Bios no less - can easily slurp down beyond 500 W...there's also a custom 1000 W vBios I haven't tried yet 

  

  

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by J7SC_Orion

[Bastiaan_NL]

And I thought the 475W on my cards was a lot.. I do know that it's not a good idea to try an unlocked bios without water, might make the board a bit crispy

At least you have enough PSU's to choose the right one for the build.

[J7SC_Orion]

2 hours ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

And I thought the 475W on my cards was a lot.. I do know that it's not a good idea to try an unlocked bios without water, might make the board a bit crispy

At least you have enough PSU's to choose the right one for the build.

 

GPUs are all full-block w-cooled - still, 700W+ (the most you seem to get from the 1KW Bios) is a lot of heat concentrated on one PCB with a center of 8nm  

[Supercrumpet]

Subbed!

[J7SC_Orion]

...I am running into the typical-for-times new-build issue with the Project Raven, and that is the 'included' RGB on mobo, RAM and GPU block. While I can turn most of it off and/or disconnect it, the TridentZ RGB is not a team player with that. There is if course RGB control software included, but I'm old-school and like to have as few low-level apps running as possible (apart from security concerns with those) though some Bios settings can help...I actually don't mind some RGB, as long as it is all static 'electric blue' or purple, but don't want my systems to look like the Vegas strip at night... 

   

 

 

  

...also ran into that with one of the other AMD 16c/32t (TR 2950X) projects designed to exploit 'black, white and grey' - until I turn it on 

   

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

[Avacado]

Just no way around that problem sometimes. Most of the software that controls the RAM RGB can be set and retains the settings even while not open.  I would be less worried about open control programs with a 2950x and 64GB + of RAM than on a 4 core with 16 or less. 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Avacado

[tictoc]

I disable remove all the RGB on everything.

 

Memory - Buy non-RGB sticks

GPU - Remove and/or disconnect LED power

GPU/CPU blocks - Remove and/or disconnect LEDs

Motherboard - Disable all RGB in BIOS

Fans - Buy non-LED fans, or remove LEDs from fans

 

If I did want to have some case lighting (hasn't happened yet), then I would just go with LED strips and an independent controller.

[J7SC_Orion]

16 minutes ago, tictoc said:

I disable remove all the RGB on everything.

 

Memory - Buy non-RGB sticks

GPU - Remove and/or disconnect LED power

GPU/CPU blocks - Remove and/or disconnect LEDs

Motherboard - Disable all RGB in BIOS

Fans - Buy non-LED fans, or remove LEDs from fans

 

If I did want to have some case lighting (hasn't happened yet), then I would just go with LED strips and an independent controller.

 

...yeah, as stated the RGB memory is really the only 'non-team player' re. disconnect options...however, of the four (binned-by-a-mobo-vendor) DDR4 3866 Samsung-B  kits I had for quite some time, three are RGB, and I don't think I want to buy any more DDR4 at this stage, with DDR5 lurking and otherwise having enough Sammy-B DDR4.  May be I just slap a RAM cooler on it (even though RAM temps are in the low-to-mid 30s C) 

[tictoc]

Many of the better bins do seem to be going on RGB sticks. 

 

If they are B-die, you could pump some more voltage into them, and as long as you keep them relatively cool, you might be able to squeeze out a bit more performance if you can run DDR4-4000 with decent timings and 2000MHz fclk.

[J7SC_Orion]

5 hours ago, tictoc said:

Many of the better bins do seem to be going on RGB sticks. 

 

If they are B-die, you could pump some more voltage into them, and as long as you keep them relatively cool, you might be able to squeeze out a bit more performance if you can run DDR4-4000 with decent timings and 2000MHz fclk.

 

...yeah, RGB seems to be here to stay  . Some Ripjaws have the same chips but come w/o RGB, but since I already got these...These RAM kits will hit 4133 on stock 1.35V voltage and timings on Intel Skylake, but I'm quite happy with the Zen3 5950X doing FCLK 1900/DDR4 3800 on tight timings - seems like the best balance between between bandwidth and latency. The Raven project is also not a pure bencher/gamer but will also be drafted for some productivity tasks as well.

 

...as to general RGB overload, at least I got rid off the standard air RGB / Strix 3090 OC 'display' now...

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by J7SC_Orion

[J7SC_Orion]

...as posted before, I have been steadily moving away from 'traditional cases' over the last few years with new builds, unless they are a full-on server etc. With CPUs and GPUs adding boost algorithms with temps as one major parameter and employing 16c/32t CPUs and 500W GPUs, heat management is thus paramount, and using 480x64 rads (among others) limits case choices anyhow.

 

...on the TR project, I used a TT Core P5 and added 5x 360x60 XSPC RX360 rads along with 4x D5 pumps, but with Project Raven, I decided on a more unusual approach...not least as I also wanted this system to be able to be easily moved (wheels)...

 

...starting with a smaller but fully height adjustable 'lap-top desk'...

 

  

...and reinforcing it with an 'extra leg' and other bracing to carry a lot of weight, I decided on locating all the rads, tubes and wiring for 24 fans plus 3 fan hubs on the underside...

 

 

 

 

...while the 'top' part gets a sub-frame (modded older 'test-bench') to correctly align all the components to each other...here an early 'lay-out' test...

 

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by J7SC_Orion

[Bastiaan_NL]

It's an interesting "case" choice. I like the movable aspect and the ability to expand it in every direction (as there are no limits)!

 

4 hours ago, J7SC_Orion said:

heat management is thus paramount, and using 480x64 rads (among others) limits case choices anyhow

With 2 x45 rads and push/pull fans even a big case will look small. With a setup like that good airflow is required for 700W of hardware to maintain good temperatures. 

[J7SC_Orion]

...Raven's motherboard and vBios fully updated and resizable_BAR enabled...wasn't really wanting for fps before, but frame times seem to pick up, depending on app...Cyberpunk 2077 4K RTX Ultra definitely likes r_BAR 

 

[ENTERPRISE]

That is one sweet build bud !

[J7SC_Orion]

8 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

That is one sweet build bud !

 

...thanks. It's a ton of fun customizing it to my liking - which leans towards the unusual (or degenerated into that...) 

[J7SC_Orion]

...Peekaboo

 

...progress  ...entering the final appearance mod stage (pics of that soon) after everything is wired, setup and stress-tested. CPU and GPU are both good samples (nothing worse than a good-looking sloth when it gets to building a performance system).

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 23, 2021 by J7SC_Orion

[J7SC_Orion]

...project (blue) Raven was coming along nicely re. GPU performance evaluations...

 

  

  

...until I discovered a problem (or three) with EKWB's ""quality"" (more on that in a future post).

 

As I'm waiting for RMA and other vendors' new parts to come in for the GPU cooling, I thought I would try to give the CPU a bit of a workout in the meantime...base numbers (first pic) are promising...then some old-school all-core oc via bios only...more to come on either front...

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by J7SC_Orion