Greetings,
I’m a physicist with plenty of experience doing simulations, and I’m looking to learn CUDA so I can use it for work. I’m designing a machine to learn CUDA on, and to be able to eventually run one set of simulations on, with the possibility of having a smaller CUDA card that I could do simple tests on as well. Here’s what I’ve put together.
Proc: AMD Athlon II X3 435 (2.9 GHz 3 core Athlon2)
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UD3H (AMD 785G chipset with onboard Radeon HDS4200, one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 2.0 X4 slot)
PSup: Antec EA500D Green 500W 80 Plus Power Supply
Case: Antec Three Hundred Black ATX Mid Tower (140 mm top fan, 120 mm rear fan)
Mem : G.Skill 4GB (2x2GB)240 pin DDR3 1333
HDrv: Western Digital 640 MB Black Caviar
Bench Card: EVGA GeForce GT 240 1GB
Eventually (upgrades)
Second Hard drive for RAID 0
SSD for boot drive
GTX 470 or 480 for more computation power, putting 470 in x16 slot and 240 in x4 slot.
Down the line, I’d put the good card (470 or whatever) into the x16 slot, and move the 240 into the x4 slot, so that I could do simple tests, prepare small changes to the code and test them out, etc., on the 240, while allowing the 470 to crunch the serious calculations. The performance hit for the x4 slot isn’t important for these little tests. Obviously, in the initial setup, the 240 would be in the x16 slot.
This combination would enable me to get started for around $550, buying from NewEgg and taking advantage of a combo for the Case and PS. It’s loosely based on the most recent Tom’s Hardware $750 gaming build, with tweaks to make it better for my purposes (like the Mobo, I’d rather have x16/x4 than a system that goes to x8/x8 - I don’t want to run SLI or crossfire, and would only put one powerful CUDA board in.
The EVGA GT 240 has 96 cores, 1 gig, runs off of slot power, no supplemental connectors, and is a single width card. Also, many people have had success unlocking the 4th core of this processor - AMD’s process is pretty reliable, and I don’t need to overclock the processor, so I could get a 4 core processor for $75 US.
So, now, for my question - do any of you see potential problems or issues with this setup? I think ASUS also has a x16/x4 motherboard with one of the AMD onboard video chipsets. Would there be compatibility issues with the onboard ATI video and nVidia CUDA cards? I like that I wouldn’t have to worry about putting the monitor on a computation card - I’d just plug into onboard. Do I have enough power for the full build? (470 = 225W, 240 = 75W, Proc = 90W, …) Will the case be able to vent enough heat? I think there’s space for a side fan (there’s definitely a mounting spot,) which would help with the airflow to the 470. And will the GT 240 have full CUDA capabilities and be enough to let me learn how to write good CUDA code, or would I need a more powerful card for that?
I’d run some flavor of Linux on it, so are there any Linux issues any of you are aware of with these components? I’ve tried to do my homework and check on compatibility, but would appreciate some experienced hands sharing a little wisdom.
Thanks in advance
Regards,
Martin