For people planing this now. I'd recommend to have at least x8 line width. The setup is severely bottlenecked. Technically it works but the GPU is wee bit wasted
Great video Elliott, indeed very educational. I'm thinking on replicating your setup but in my case I will be using the GPU for number crunching. Now I have a question for you. I'm scratching my head trying to understand how did you connected the GPU to the R610. Is it a "PCI bridge to ISA card" (1:17) what you say?? Trying to look that up shows a lot of things, none of them the one you use. Could you list the components you used or, at least, this bridge? Thank you very much.
Thanks! I used something like this to go from PCI 16x to 1x: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-PCI-E-1x-to-16x-Powered-USB-3-0-Extender-Riser-Adapter-Card-Bitcoin-Litecoin-/310897618647?hash=item4862f12ed7:g:e1IAAOxyUI1TIzwy I'm thinking that 1x PCI 2.0 may limit the bandwidth for your GPU. (I'm almost certain it limited my GPU gaming performance!) So there are more expensive ways to achieve better performance (I think). Check this out: www.onestopsystems.com/expansion-kits Something like the 8000 Expansion kit may offer better throughput. It depends on how much money you have to spend and whether you'll see much performance increase. Thanks for getting in contact, I hope this helps! :)
Thank you very much for the speed and the links, Elliott. They are surely helpful. Since my budget is very limited (personal size budget, not corporate), so I'll go with your first choice to test the waters, while saving for the upgrade. Will test the bottleneck with the GPUs I have handy. I wish you a happy 2017!
Hi Elliot, Since you asked, it is time for me to come back and share my experience. The Extender came right before my Christmas leave, so I tried it first on a computer at home. The card was a Nvida GT 440, nothing fancy. That was the second card on the system, the first a GT 730. After a week on, the numbers almost doubled those with only the GT 440 as the only card on the system. Once back I plugged the Extender with the 440 on the Poweredge R610 and provided some electrical juice... Not to see the improvement that I expected, at first. Maybe needs time, so i've given it a week also for the numbers to stabilise. Since I do not have a tool to measure the performance of the card I must rely on the performance of the BOINC platform which, in turn, rely on some other factors that sets the computer performance. That said, numbers do not match the expected outcome. This tells me that, maybe, it is not the Extender, or some component within, but some other thing what limits the performance of the card. My guess is that the limiting factor is the motherboard itself. I expected that since my card was way less demanding than yours, the impact of using the Extender would be none or very low. But seeing that the outcome is way less than that on the PC with the very same extender, the bottleneck must be somewhere else. Also the SO is Win10 Pro and no playing with the BIOS settings and same version for the drivers. Sorry for the long post. What are your thoughts Elliot? Thanks.
Hi, sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. Thanks for getting back to me with your findings. Your results are very interesting. What are the specs of your PC and specs of the PowerEdge R610? I wouldn't have thought the performance would be limited by the CPU or RAM, but it depends on how the BOINC platform works maybe. Another factor could be the PCI speeds. Although your GPU isn't very demanding, I suppose x1 at PCI 2.0 is slower than x1 at PCI 3.0. (Half the bandwidth) This would have had an impact if your 'test' PC was running PCI 3.0. The GPU states it requires PCI 2.0 x16 which is 8000MB/s bandwidth. You're trying to run it on PCI 2.0 1x which is only 500MB/s. However, I very much doubt that the GPU uses all 8000MB/s of bandwidth, so it's unlikely it would affect the performance majorly. If you find any resolution to the problem it would be great to hear!
I just installed an rx480 in my poweredge r810 with 2 e7-4870 10 cores, and used the server psu to power it. I will make a video of that soon! It is a beast!
Elliott Mo the r810 has an x16 length slot, with an x8 bus width, and the board that the psu's plug into can be modded to accept an 8 pin PCIe power wire that way everything is internal to the server. the 2 u form factor means no heat issues as well.
Love your video man. One question though. Can we keep power on the graphic card ? and do we need to actually power up the graphic card first before power up the server ? What if we restart the server ? Is graphic card still reconize ?
Thanks mate. Always apply power to the graphics card before powering up the server. If you power off the server, turn graphics card power off after the server has shut down. If there's no power to the GPU before tuning on the server, the card may not be recognised at startup. If you pull the power on the GPU whilst the server is on, it will likely crash the server. (They're not designed to be hot swappable!) Hope this answers all your questions. Cheers
Possibly. Especially as the server is only PCI 2.0. But I thought it was interesting as a concept and little project. Would be fine for something like mining or accelerating calculations etc.
I'm doing this same thing with a r710. I will be using 8x powered risers and 2 Gpus. One on each CPU. For a kinda LAN gaming rig. Thanks for the vid man
Hi, That's great to hear! Can I ask where you are getting your 8x powered risers from? (A link maybe?). I could only find the 1x risers without paying about £80. Awesome that someone else is also putting GPU's in servers. Perhaps it would be interesting if you did a quick video once you've completed it. (I'd definitely be interested in having a look!!)
Hey, I have a question! So you just played you game directly off of the windows server OS? Or can this particular setup be used after setting up the server with Vsphere or something and being able to "remotely" Game?
Yes, directly off the OS. It is possibly with GPU device pass through on the hypervisior level, however I know e.g. Vmware are a bit fussy on the GPUs it will allow to pass through. Think you might be able to trick it though.
Great Video ! Can you up-grade the monitors to 1080P Wide Screen ? Also can you do a Dual GPU set up ? And power it with two or three Servers ? Is this now a Work Station ? Thank you for the video ! tjl P.S. Linus just did an Un-Boxing of a computer in Canada (2017) !
Hi, Thanks! Yes you could connect 1080P monitors, i just didn't have any to test with. You could do a dual GPU setup, you'd just need two riser cards or a server which has space and connectivity for two GPUs. I don't have the GPU connected anymore, I just did this as a cool experiment! I did see Linus's video thanks, some cool kit ;)
Hi, I haven't personally, but after a quick google, it seems people have had problems with passing a display output through an additional GPU, and the power outputted though the different PCIe slots. My solution will connect a GPU to the server, but I would suggest doing a bit of research to find out exactly the limitations.
So would you get a significant performance reduction bridging between that external case and the server compared to just running that same graphics card directly into a rig with the same processors as the server? Just seems sketchy.. I don't believe a usb3 cable can send the same amount of data at the same speed to the servers main board as you would from directly plugging the graphics card into a pcie slot. I don't believe you mentioned anything about how loud these servers are. These things sound like jet engines. I can hear my server running in my basement from the second floor.
Yes, you're right. The usb3 cable obviously can't transfer the same amount of data as if the card was directly plugged into the pci slot. So technically my R610 is pci 2.0 x8 which has a bandwidth of 4GB/s whereas the usb riser card is x1 (I assume pci 2.0) which has a bandwidth of only 500MB/s. I'm not sure on how much this actually effects the performance, but 500MB/s is a huge reduction from 4GB/s. I did mention that you'd want this in a separate room in you're house or garage, I had it running downstairs in my house for a few months and I think my network switch was actually more noisy! (Still too loud for a home environment though) Which server do you have?
Dell PowerEdge R610 VMware Server Dual x5675 6-Core 3GHZ 64GB I tried to just unplug the some of the fans from the mainboard, so that they won't run, and the server will boot and and run for a while, but eventually it will crash. A box fan above the CPU's was just not enough to keep the CPU's cool . Right now it's just sitting in an old wooden piece of furniture to muffle the sound. I could immerse the entire blade in mineral oil, that would work to muffle the sound, but it would be a messy experience.
Wow! Nice server specs! All I can suggest is updating the firmware for all the components in the server (Just let it run through the dell update repository). Mine isn't too loud. I've had it in my bedroom for a while now and it doesn't annoy me too much. I wonder if it could be because your CPUs are slightly higher speced (Higher operating temperature). The server will adjust the fans to run at higher RPM depending on the model of your hardware. Mineral Oil Server would be a first!! Cool idea!
The server doesn't see the riser, so as long as the pcie device would normally work in the server, it will work through the riser. No additional config needed :)
Elliott Mo thanks for the response, I changed the riser to other pci slot and it works perfectly. Thank you for your support. One last question, do you think that the server could handle 2 gtx 1070?
Now I installed the newest drivers, but when I used the nvidia-smi command, I get `Unable to determine the device handle for GPU 0000:05:00.0: Unable to communicate with GPU because it is insufficiently powered.` Do you know what could be the problem?... I´m using two 750W psu... thanks again!
The Flying Maverick Have you got the external power connectors connected on the GPUS? Out of interest, what are you using this for? Thanks for commenting :)
Hey Elliot, I was thinking about getting an R710 for some minor computing, and just saw your tutorial and was impressed with the out of the box (literally aha) solution. My question is I read alot about the PCI-E on the R710 bottle necking power to 25W, is this a similar issue with the R610 that is solved by the bridge and PSU or does this solution not work for the R710? I'd appreciate your feedback!
Hi, sorry for taking a while to get back to you. If the GPU you're using requires external power then you will need to wire it up to a power supply, or I have known someone to wire in extra PCI power cables from the server PSU! Yes, if the GPU tries to draw more than 25W through the PCI slot then the server will halt boot up. You can probably plug your GPU straight into the R710 if it fits, and just run some extra power cables from the server PSU or an external PSU. Hope this helps. Feel free to ask more questions. :)
Isn't the video card a 16 bit bus running on an 8 bit mining card? What you really needed in 2016 when you did this was to use a PCI-E 16X Flexible Connector Cable Riser Card Extension Adapter PC Graphics Card. That way the video card can run at the full 16 bit.
Hello, nice mod. I have a question if you tried to fire graphics at FullHD resolution. It needs to use a server for VIDEO rendering , and needs to launch a program in FullHD
Does adding this connection to your server make the fans of the R610 increase dramatically? Right now mine is pretty quiet but every time i try to add a raid card the server freaks out.
Nope, not at all. The raid card is pretty big so will obstruct airflow and therefore increase the fan speeds (and noise). I think installing the raid card will also affect the fan rpms through the lifecycle controller. I suggest updating all firmware in the server after installing the raid card (Use the R610 dell repository). This should bring the noise level down a little through software optimisations. Let me know how this goes and I hope I helped. :)
I ended up trying this MSI GeForce GT 710 DirectX 12 GT 710 1GD3H LPV1 Card and it works wonders. I disabled the intergrated video controller otherwise it saw 2 monitors. This card fits inside the server so i'm happy with that. Another plus, no change in fan noise. Thank you for your help!!
@@elliottmo5869 Thanks for your message! And Now I am thinking... My power supply has 7 sata power connectors... What if I add a pci sata hub that I can add 8 sata drives to it... and power all harddrives inside the external case with the power supply... Is that also possible? or, will I damage the harddrives when I turn off the power?
@@BasNunnikhovenHey, the most ideal solution would be to buy a chassis with more drive space ;) Turning on shouldn't be an issue. Just make sure the external enclosure is turned on before the main server, otherwise the server may have trouble detecting the drives. On shutdown the server should send the command to park the read/write heads on the disks, the same as the internal disks. Once the server has been shutdown, turn off the external drive enclosure. That should work!
This video didn't really answer why you would put a GPU in a Server or what the use case is. Personally in a small factor build I want all those precious expansion slots / PCIe lanes for network cards, raid controllers, or faster than sata storage. I also would want an old hot power hungry GPU in a system that is meant to be run for extended periods of time.
Couldn't you have just had a power supply with a jumper pin from green to any black for power, keep the card plugged into the server and plugged in the power from the power supply that way? Essentially an external power supply for the graphics card?
Hi, I did that within the external GPU 'enclosure'. Unfortunately the R610 only supports 1 slot PCI cards, so it wouldn't fit in the server. It also doesn't have any x16 slots so nowhere to directly plug the card directly into the server.
Gotcha. I am running into a similar situation with a Dell R810 and trying to make an Nvidia Grid K1 card work inside the server. No power connectors, but was curious if the power could be just ran from outside the server chassis? I would think that solution would work with a 2U server vs 1U like the R610.
Andrew M. Sheppard Haha yeah I could have done. Would have had to cut the top of the server to fit the GPU in too! Awesome idea if I didn't mind cutting the server ;)
Awesome video thank you. This is what i was looking for and will be getting one of these today from a friend :) I hope to do the same but i am not familiar with servers.
Yes excited to start learning about servers and what one can do with them for home use. Will defiantly be asking more questions once i get started. thanks again
What were the names of the other things you use? you mentioned a pci bridge card and what else? hard to understand my hearing is very bad even with the volume raised up.
Red Phoenix Hi, basically you just connect the gpu into a pcie riser. (1x to 16x slot) something like this: rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F263443041544 You can get better band width with an 8x to 16x riser (or even just a 16x to 16x ribbon cable) 8x example: rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F263443041544 You can also go more advanced and have a look at the products these guys sell. Pretty expensive, but good throughput! www.onestopsystems.com/expansion-kits
I want to put a usb 3 card in. Can you recommend one and is there anything special I have to do? I just ordered an r610. I am very new to this. Also I need to put a very cheap audio card in. It doesn’t hav to be good quality. I have software that just needs to see an audio card. Thanks.
Hi... thanks for the video... I work editing video, sometimes I need to connect 3 professional videocameras Full HD to a computer for switching between the cameras in alive; and as you see I need a super powerfull machine... I was going to buy a HP Z800 workstation refurbished but I just watched your video and I wonder... ¿This kind of servers will works fine for editing video? Could I to buy a Video tarjet NVidia Quadro 4000 for working with a Video Professional monitor? Are these kind of Workstation very noise? or normal noise like a desktop computer?
Hi, Thanks for commenting. To be honest, I wouldn't recommend using a rack server for editing. This R610 is quieter than most rack servers, but noisier than a desktop (especially when it's under load). It's also easier to add in graphics cards to a desktop machine. Performance wise, I have tried editing on this server with dual E5520 CPUs and 16GB RAM, but it really doesn't perform very well. I barely got any CPU utilization and it was quicker to render using my i7 4770k. (I was using Adobe Media Encoder to render the footage) Personally, if I had the money, I would go for a single 6 or 8 core CPU. Something like the Intel Extreme Edition i7's or the E5 v3 line of Xeons (i wouldn't go any lower than that for your processing requirements). Any more questions, let me know! Regards,
Specs will be similar / same as an R610, however it depends on the server configuration. So 5500, 5600 CPUs, up to 192GB RAM, and a mass of drive configurations. Have a look at the service tags on the Dell support website. Should give you an idea if the hardware hasn't been changed. :)
I can't recommend the exact card to use, as this depends on your requirements, but I would have a look at some of the cheaper quadro cards e.g Nvidia Quadro nvs 450 or Matrox cards. You could also probably get away with putting in a low end gaming video card, but make sure it doesn't need external power. I hope this helps.
Hello Im actually trying this method but my second psu doesnt turn on In few forums i read that the the 24 pin should is the reason bcz it needs a signal from mobo, If u have any other options help me out
Some info regarding the CPU and what not would have been nice when mentioning the FPS... but otherwise the video was nice. However... that music was really annoying and definetely too loud.
+Nikola Radovanovic Hi, I believe that uses a thunderbolt connection so you wouldn't be able to use this on a server (I haven't come across any servers with thunderbolt connection). Should be amazing on PC though!
Thank you very much! I would like to expand the server with 1 or 2 eGPU but not sure do I have the tools/knowledge to make it D.I.Y like you - are there any external case I can just buy and use? Best regards
+Nikola Radovanovic which server do you have? I believe this company sells pci enclosures (www.onestopsystems.com/desktop-pcie-enclosures), but you'd probably save money by just buying a pc case and using the pci slots.
+MrWelschvide Hey! It wouldn't be a farm unless you multiple servers with GPUs, but in theory yes. Although I am unsure on how well premiere performs on lots of cpu threads across multiple servers. (I don't think it does farm rendering/ across many cores very well) Nice idea though!
@@elliottmo5869I am sure would be great for mining. I have try running on an 1440p resolution on mid high settings 3D games it's not playable. I guest for a low end resolution.
I don't think the riser card actually uses the USB 3.0 protocol. I think it is just using the 9 pins to transfer the PCI x1 connection data. Similar to a passive riser cable, just using a few electronics to maybe amplify the signal slightly for transfer over a longer cable. USB 3.0 protocol can theoretically transfer data at 5Gbits/second which is in between PCI 3.0 x1 and x4 so the riser may use the USB protocol, I'm not entirely sure.
+ Elliott Mo thanks for the reply. I wish there is a solution which don't use USB port. I am not sure if using long ribbon from box to box (unprotected) be a good idea. But that for sure be PCI-e solution. Thanks
Great information, thank you. But get rid of that music or turn it down. It's perfectly fine to fill the dead air when you have nothing to say, just pease don't asult the listener.
For people planing this now. I'd recommend to have at least x8 line width. The setup is severely bottlenecked. Technically it works but the GPU is wee bit wasted
There are a lot of pcie extension cables available on the market.
@@kahelsoro Could you recommend any?
Great video Elliott, indeed very educational. I'm thinking on replicating your setup but in my case I will be using the GPU for number crunching. Now I have a question for you.
I'm scratching my head trying to understand how did you connected the GPU to the R610. Is it a "PCI bridge to ISA card" (1:17) what you say?? Trying to look that up shows a lot of things, none of them the one you use.
Could you list the components you used or, at least, this bridge? Thank you very much.
Thanks! I used something like this to go from PCI 16x to 1x: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-PCI-E-1x-to-16x-Powered-USB-3-0-Extender-Riser-Adapter-Card-Bitcoin-Litecoin-/310897618647?hash=item4862f12ed7:g:e1IAAOxyUI1TIzwy
I'm thinking that 1x PCI 2.0 may limit the bandwidth for your GPU. (I'm almost certain it limited my GPU gaming performance!) So there are more expensive ways to achieve better performance (I think). Check this out: www.onestopsystems.com/expansion-kits
Something like the 8000 Expansion kit may offer better throughput. It depends on how much money you have to spend and whether you'll see much performance increase.
Thanks for getting in contact, I hope this helps! :)
Thank you very much for the speed and the links, Elliott. They are surely helpful.
Since my budget is very limited (personal size budget, not corporate), so I'll go with your first choice to test the waters, while saving for the upgrade. Will test the bottleneck with the GPUs I have handy.
I wish you a happy 2017!
No problem! Please let me know your findings!
You too! :)
Hi Elliot,
Since you asked, it is time for me to come back and share my experience.
The Extender came right before my Christmas leave, so I tried it first on a computer at home. The card was a Nvida GT 440, nothing fancy. That was the second card on the system, the first a GT 730. After a week on, the numbers almost doubled those with only the GT 440 as the only card on the system.
Once back I plugged the Extender with the 440 on the Poweredge R610 and provided some electrical juice... Not to see the improvement that I expected, at first. Maybe needs time, so i've given it a week also for the numbers to stabilise.
Since I do not have a tool to measure the performance of the card I must rely on the performance of the BOINC platform which, in turn, rely on some other factors that sets the computer performance. That said, numbers do not match the expected outcome.
This tells me that, maybe, it is not the Extender, or some component within, but some other thing what limits the performance of the card. My guess is that the limiting factor is the motherboard itself.
I expected that since my card was way less demanding than yours, the impact of using the Extender would be none or very low. But seeing that the outcome is way less than that on the PC with the very same extender, the bottleneck must be somewhere else. Also the SO is Win10 Pro and no playing with the BIOS settings and same version for the drivers.
Sorry for the long post. What are your thoughts Elliot?
Thanks.
Hi, sorry I didn't get back to you earlier.
Thanks for getting back to me with your findings.
Your results are very interesting. What are the specs of your PC and specs of the PowerEdge R610? I wouldn't have thought the performance would be limited by the CPU or RAM, but it depends on how the BOINC platform works maybe.
Another factor could be the PCI speeds. Although your GPU isn't very demanding, I suppose x1 at PCI 2.0 is slower than x1 at PCI 3.0. (Half the bandwidth) This would have had an impact if your 'test' PC was running PCI 3.0.
The GPU states it requires PCI 2.0 x16 which is 8000MB/s bandwidth. You're trying to run it on PCI 2.0 1x which is only 500MB/s. However, I very much doubt that the GPU uses all 8000MB/s of bandwidth, so it's unlikely it would affect the performance majorly.
If you find any resolution to the problem it would be great to hear!
I just installed an rx480 in my poweredge r810 with 2 e7-4870 10 cores, and used the server psu to power it. I will make a video of that soon! It is a beast!
DREWSASTER Nice! I'll be sure to check it out! :D
Elliott Mo the r810 has an x16 length slot, with an x8 bus width, and the board that the psu's plug into can be modded to accept an 8 pin PCIe power wire that way everything is internal to the server. the 2 u form factor means no heat issues as well.
DREWSASTER Sounds ideal!
Elliott Mo I'm not anywhere near as good at editing video as you, but you'll see what I'm talking about
DREWSASTER Haha cheers! I look forward to watching it :p
Love your video man. One question though. Can we keep power on the graphic card ? and do we need to actually power up the graphic card first before power up the server ? What if we restart the server ? Is graphic card still reconize ?
Thanks mate. Always apply power to the graphics card before powering up the server. If you power off the server, turn graphics card power off after the server has shut down. If there's no power to the GPU before tuning on the server, the card may not be recognised at startup. If you pull the power on the GPU whilst the server is on, it will likely crash the server. (They're not designed to be hot swappable!)
Hope this answers all your questions. Cheers
@@elliottmo5869 So keep graphic card power on even server reboot it's still reconize then right. Thank for answering.
Very nice! But you connect with a pcie 1x. Is this represent too much performance lost?
Possibly. Especially as the server is only PCI 2.0. But I thought it was interesting as a concept and little project. Would be fine for something like mining or accelerating calculations etc.
There are workstations for that purpose. The riser card can never carry the whole bandwidth. But good video, thank you.
Great video! Really informative, thanks
+TitchTheFarmer cheers mate!
You should probably stick something non conductive below that riser card and the metal case.
James David Robinson Hi, the riser card actual came with a foam coating on the bottom so there was no risks of shorts etc. Thanks for the comment :)
was a bit worried too ^^ glad to hear it - shame with the music tho :/ ears be dead
Elliott Mo What was the original gpu that and with it and can those pc’s play games like counter strike source and at what FPS?
Great! Would this work with Nvidia GTX video cards?
Yes! In fact it would work with any PCIe device. :)
Information wise the video is great. You just have to cut or minimise the music, use a different colour room and finally get a better microphone.
I've gotten a 2950 and I was thinking sort of the same thing. Glad to see someone else try it our
I didn't think there was a solution for this, very very cool!
Chad B Thanks! :)
Great video : ) I'm now a subscriber
I'm doing this same thing with a r710. I will be using 8x powered risers and 2 Gpus. One on each CPU. For a kinda LAN gaming rig. Thanks for the vid man
Hi, That's great to hear! Can I ask where you are getting your 8x powered risers from? (A link maybe?). I could only find the 1x risers without paying about £80. Awesome that someone else is also putting GPU's in servers. Perhaps it would be interesting if you did a quick video once you've completed it. (I'd definitely be interested in having a look!!)
Hey, I have a question! So you just played you game directly off of the windows server OS? Or can this particular setup be used after setting up the server with Vsphere or something and being able to "remotely" Game?
yes that's possible, look into GPU passthrough on esxi
Yes, directly off the OS. It is possibly with GPU device pass through on the hypervisior level, however I know e.g. Vmware are a bit fussy on the GPUs it will allow to pass through. Think you might be able to trick it though.
Elliott Mo thanks man looking for a proper pcie riser for my gtx 960!
Thanks for the info
I going to use mine in a Linux distro for calculations
But the concept should be the same
Great Video ! Can you up-grade the monitors to 1080P Wide Screen ? Also can you do a Dual GPU set up ? And power it with two or three Servers ? Is this now a Work Station ? Thank you for the video ! tjl P.S. Linus just did an Un-Boxing of a computer in Canada (2017) !
Hi, Thanks! Yes you could connect 1080P monitors, i just didn't have any to test with. You could do a dual GPU setup, you'd just need two riser cards or a server which has space and connectivity for two GPUs. I don't have the GPU connected anymore, I just did this as a cool experiment!
I did see Linus's video thanks, some cool kit ;)
Hello, have you ever add a graphic card to a Dell T620 server that doesn't have a GPU enablement kit? Thanks for your video!
Hi, I haven't personally, but after a quick google, it seems people have had problems with passing a display output through an additional GPU, and the power outputted though the different PCIe slots. My solution will connect a GPU to the server, but I would suggest doing a bit of research to find out exactly the limitations.
Great video. Is your server powered by external power? or with his psu?
So would you get a significant performance reduction bridging between that external case and the server compared to just running that same graphics card directly into a rig with the same processors as the server?
Just seems sketchy.. I don't believe a usb3 cable can send the same amount of data at the same speed to the servers main board as you would from directly plugging the graphics card into a pcie slot.
I don't believe you mentioned anything about how loud these servers are. These things sound like jet engines. I can hear my server running in my basement from the second floor.
Yes, you're right. The usb3 cable obviously can't transfer the same amount of data as if the card was directly plugged into the pci slot. So technically my R610 is pci 2.0 x8 which has a bandwidth of 4GB/s whereas the usb riser card is x1 (I assume pci 2.0) which has a bandwidth of only 500MB/s.
I'm not sure on how much this actually effects the performance, but 500MB/s is a huge reduction from 4GB/s.
I did mention that you'd want this in a separate room in you're house or garage, I had it running downstairs in my house for a few months and I think my network switch was actually more noisy! (Still too loud for a home environment though)
Which server do you have?
Dell PowerEdge R610 VMware Server Dual x5675 6-Core 3GHZ 64GB
I tried to just unplug the some of the fans from the mainboard, so that they won't run, and the server will boot and and run for a while, but eventually it will crash. A box fan above the CPU's was just not enough to keep the CPU's cool . Right now it's just sitting in an old wooden piece of furniture to muffle the sound.
I could immerse the entire blade in mineral oil, that would work to muffle the sound, but it would be a messy experience.
Wow! Nice server specs! All I can suggest is updating the firmware for all the components in the server (Just let it run through the dell update repository). Mine isn't too loud. I've had it in my bedroom for a while now and it doesn't annoy me too much.
I wonder if it could be because your CPUs are slightly higher speced (Higher operating temperature). The server will adjust the fans to run at higher RPM depending on the model of your hardware.
Mineral Oil Server would be a first!! Cool idea!
Hi, is any adicional config on the bios server needs to be done? Or something else? Nice video and thanks in advance
The server doesn't see the riser, so as long as the pcie device would normally work in the server, it will work through the riser. No additional config needed :)
Elliott Mo thanks for the response, I changed the riser to other pci slot and it works perfectly. Thank you for your support. One last question, do you think that the server could handle 2 gtx 1070?
The Flying Maverick technically yes, but you'd be severely bottle necking the GPU. Even with 1x 1070 on its own
Now I installed the newest drivers, but when I used the nvidia-smi command, I get `Unable to determine the device handle for GPU 0000:05:00.0: Unable to communicate with GPU because it is insufficiently powered.` Do you know what could be the problem?... I´m using two 750W psu... thanks again!
The Flying Maverick Have you got the external power connectors connected on the GPUS? Out of interest, what are you using this for? Thanks for commenting :)
Hey Elliot, I was thinking about getting an R710 for some minor computing, and just saw your tutorial and was impressed with the out of the box (literally aha) solution. My question is I read alot about the PCI-E on the R710 bottle necking power to 25W, is this a similar issue with the R610 that is solved by the bridge and PSU or does this solution not work for the R710? I'd appreciate your feedback!
Hi, sorry for taking a while to get back to you. If the GPU you're using requires external power then you will need to wire it up to a power supply, or I have known someone to wire in extra PCI power cables from the server PSU! Yes, if the GPU tries to draw more than 25W through the PCI slot then the server will halt boot up. You can probably plug your GPU straight into the R710 if it fits, and just run some extra power cables from the server PSU or an external PSU.
Hope this helps. Feel free to ask more questions. :)
Thank you so much!
Isn't the video card a 16 bit bus running on an 8 bit mining card? What you really needed in 2016 when you did this was to use a PCI-E 16X Flexible Connector Cable Riser Card Extension Adapter PC Graphics Card. That way the video card can run at the full 16 bit.
Really interesting way to accomplish this, and nice video. Thanks!
Mormodes Hey, thanks for such a positive comment! Glad you enjoyed the video!
Hello, nice mod. I have a question if you tried to fire graphics at FullHD resolution. It needs to use a server for VIDEO rendering , and needs to launch a program in FullHD
do you think a 1660 ti would work
GREAT video!!!
Yitzchok Chakiris thanks!
Does adding this connection to your server make the fans of the R610 increase dramatically? Right now mine is pretty quiet but every time i try to add a raid card the server freaks out.
Nope, not at all. The raid card is pretty big so will obstruct airflow and therefore increase the fan speeds (and noise). I think installing the raid card will also affect the fan rpms through the lifecycle controller. I suggest updating all firmware in the server after installing the raid card (Use the R610 dell repository). This should bring the noise level down a little through software optimisations.
Let me know how this goes and I hope I helped. :)
I ended up trying this MSI GeForce GT 710 DirectX 12 GT 710 1GD3H LPV1 Card and it works wonders. I disabled the intergrated video controller otherwise it saw 2 monitors. This card fits inside the server so i'm happy with that. Another plus, no change in fan noise. Thank you for your help!!
+Garrett Boskie No problem! I'm glad it works for you! :)
nice one! will u be uploading any lighting/sound vids soon?
Hi, No sound ones planned. But may have a look at doing a lighting one. Depends on how much time I have. You'll have to wait and see.. :P
Ah right. I've just uploaded some fairly exciting gig logs, and will definitely have alot more to come! 🙂
You seem to do so many events!!
Okay, Sp you turn on/of the external power supply at the same time as you turn on/of your server?
Make sure the GPU PSU is turned on before the main server.
@@elliottmo5869 Thanks for your message! And Now I am thinking... My power supply has 7 sata power connectors... What if I add a pci sata hub that I can add 8 sata drives to it... and power all harddrives inside the external case with the power supply... Is that also possible? or, will I damage the harddrives when I turn off the power?
@@elliottmo5869 Because I have a dell proliant dl360p gen8... It has 8 Sas drives of 600 gb... but I want to add 5 extra 4 tb drives to it
@@BasNunnikhovenHey, the most ideal solution would be to buy a chassis with more drive space ;)
Turning on shouldn't be an issue. Just make sure the external enclosure is turned on before the main server, otherwise the server may have trouble detecting the drives. On shutdown the server should send the command to park the read/write heads on the disks, the same as the internal disks. Once the server has been shutdown, turn off the external drive enclosure. That should work!
This video didn't really answer why you would put a GPU in a Server or what the use case is. Personally in a small factor build I want all those precious expansion slots / PCIe lanes for network cards, raid controllers, or faster than sata storage. I also would want an old hot power hungry GPU in a system that is meant to be run for extended periods of time.
is it possible to use more recent graphics card with this method? I work on blender and i abolutely need to find a way to conect a quadro card.
Nice one, Yes! Same principle.
will this work with a poweredge r410?
+Hamzah Bondok Hi, yes this should work with the r410
Couldn't you have just had a power supply with a jumper pin from green to any black for power, keep the card plugged into the server and plugged in the power from the power supply that way? Essentially an external power supply for the graphics card?
Hi, I did that within the external GPU 'enclosure'. Unfortunately the R610 only supports 1 slot PCI cards, so it wouldn't fit in the server. It also doesn't have any x16 slots so nowhere to directly plug the card directly into the server.
Gotcha. I am running into a similar situation with a Dell R810 and trying to make an Nvidia Grid K1 card work inside the server. No power connectors, but was curious if the power could be just ran from outside the server chassis? I would think that solution would work with a 2U server vs 1U like the R610.
Tyler Shelton Ah right, yeah running external power should work fine. Just make sure you have power on the gpu before server power up. :)
Thanks for the info.
Andrew M. Sheppard Haha yeah I could have done. Would have had to cut the top of the server to fit the GPU in too! Awesome idea if I didn't mind cutting the server ;)
Awesome video thank you. This is what i was looking for and will be getting one of these today from a friend :) I hope to do the same but i am not familiar with servers.
+Red Phoenix Glad the video was helpful! If you have any more questions, let me know! :)
Yes excited to start learning about servers and what one can do with them for home use. Will defiantly be asking more questions once i get started. thanks again
What were the names of the other things you use? you mentioned a pci bridge card and what else? hard to understand my hearing is very bad even with the volume raised up.
any links?
Red Phoenix Hi, basically you just connect the gpu into a pcie riser. (1x to 16x slot) something like this: rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F263443041544
You can get better band width with an 8x to 16x riser (or even just a 16x to 16x ribbon cable) 8x example: rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F263443041544
You can also go more advanced and have a look at the products these guys sell. Pretty expensive, but good throughput! www.onestopsystems.com/expansion-kits
I want to put a usb 3 card in. Can you recommend one and is there anything special I have to do?
I just ordered an r610. I am very new to this. Also I need to put a very cheap audio card in. It doesn’t hav to be good quality. I have software that just needs to see an audio card.
Thanks.
Hi... thanks for the video... I work editing video, sometimes I need to connect 3 professional videocameras Full HD to a computer for switching between the cameras in alive; and as you see I need a super powerfull machine... I was going to buy a HP Z800 workstation refurbished but I just watched your video and I wonder... ¿This kind of servers will works fine for editing video? Could I to buy a Video tarjet NVidia Quadro 4000 for working with a Video Professional monitor?
Are these kind of Workstation very noise? or normal noise like a desktop computer?
Hi, Thanks for commenting. To be honest, I wouldn't recommend using a rack server for editing. This R610 is quieter than most rack servers, but noisier than a desktop (especially when it's under load). It's also easier to add in graphics cards to a desktop machine.
Performance wise, I have tried editing on this server with dual E5520 CPUs and 16GB RAM, but it really doesn't perform very well. I barely got any CPU utilization and it was quicker to render using my i7 4770k. (I was using Adobe Media Encoder to render the footage)
Personally, if I had the money, I would go for a single 6 or 8 core CPU. Something like the Intel Extreme Edition i7's or the E5 v3 line of Xeons (i wouldn't go any lower than that for your processing requirements).
Any more questions, let me know!
Regards,
thanks.. thanks... so mucho for response, it has been usefulll, again thanks!
didn't work for me at all. the server didn't even see the card
What’re the specs on the T610, I have two that I don’t know what to do with
Specs will be similar / same as an R610, however it depends on the server configuration.
So 5500, 5600 CPUs, up to 192GB RAM, and a mass of drive configurations.
Have a look at the service tags on the Dell support website. Should give you an idea if the hardware hasn't been changed. :)
I have a Dell PowerEdge R710. I want to connect it to a quad display. Which video card should I use that would be compatible with r710? Thanks.
I can't recommend the exact card to use, as this depends on your requirements, but I would have a look at some of the cheaper quadro cards e.g Nvidia Quadro nvs 450 or Matrox cards. You could also probably get away with putting in a low end gaming video card, but make sure it doesn't need external power. I hope this helps.
Hello
Im actually trying this method but my second psu doesnt turn on
In few forums i read that the the 24 pin should is the reason bcz it needs a signal from mobo,
If u have any other options help me out
Yes, this is correct. You need a piece of wire to bridge the green wire to ground on the 24 pin. You can buy plugs to do this too
@@elliottmo5869 hey is it possible to contact you regarding the build more ?
@@kimi-do1ks sure. You can message me on Instagram: promotechnical
@@elliottmo5869 i did
Would this work on a r710? I need that 128 gb of ram ;)
[With 2x 8x gpus
Yes, you might even be able to install them straight into the server depending on how much power they draw.
Thx
Is it works?? Did you test it?
raser with x1 speed? REALY? lol you can buy a x4, x8 or x16 for more productivity
Mellon FarSeer Yeah you can buy x8 or x16 ribbon cables, but not like the one I bought for a decent price.
@@elliottmo5869 yes you can
@@Channel358a if you can show me a pcie x8 or x16 extender / riser, which isn't a ribbon cable, I would be interested to see.
Some info regarding the CPU and what not would have been nice when mentioning the FPS... but otherwise the video was nice.
However... that music was really annoying and definetely too loud.
MadIIMike thanks for your comment. I'll take it into consideration for my next video. :)
Not to mention running a server will greatly higher your electric bill. Not worth it at all.
Hello,
can similar be done with i.e. ROG-XG-STATION-2 ? Thank you in advance
+Nikola Radovanovic Hi, I believe that uses a thunderbolt connection so you wouldn't be able to use this on a server (I haven't come across any servers with thunderbolt connection). Should be amazing on PC though!
Thank you very much!
I would like to expand the server with 1 or 2 eGPU but not sure do I have the tools/knowledge to make it D.I.Y like you - are there any external case I can just buy and use?
Best regards
+Nikola Radovanovic which server do you have? I believe this company sells pci enclosures (www.onestopsystems.com/desktop-pcie-enclosures), but you'd probably save money by just buying a pc case and using the pci slots.
I also have Dell PowerEdge R610. Thank you very much for the input. Great video
Nikola Radovanovic Thanks! No problem! :)
would a 750ti work in the server as it does not need psu cables?
+Ben power wise, yes! However the server I'm using only has an 8x pci slot whereas I belive the 750ti uses a full length 16x slot so it wouldn't fit.
You could cut the back out of the 8x pcie slot to make it fit though ;)
Would be a good idea in an R710. I haven't looked for a 16x riser for an R610 actually. Could be something to look into! :)
Can you use these for premiere pro render farm?
+MrWelschvide Hey! It wouldn't be a farm unless you multiple servers with GPUs, but in theory yes.
Although I am unsure on how well premiere performs on lots of cpu threads across multiple servers. (I don't think it does farm rendering/ across many cores very well)
Nice idea though!
why would you play a game on a server...
in america we just cut the fucken panel and make it fit
You are using a PCIe 16x GPU and covert to PCI 1x that is bad. You only get 1x GPU.
No graphics card fully saturates 16 PCIe lanes. Agreed, 1x, especially on a PCIe gen 2 board will probably be limiting the GPU performance.
@@elliottmo5869I am sure would be great for mining. I have try running on an 1440p resolution on mid high settings 3D games it's not playable. I guest for a low end resolution.
@@SilentKnight87 Ah okay. Yeah, mining would be fine.
Is USB 3 good enough to transfer ?
I don't think the riser card actually uses the USB 3.0 protocol. I think it is just using the 9 pins to transfer the PCI x1 connection data. Similar to a passive riser cable, just using a few electronics to maybe amplify the signal slightly for transfer over a longer cable. USB 3.0 protocol can theoretically transfer data at 5Gbits/second which is in between PCI 3.0 x1 and x4 so the riser may use the USB protocol, I'm not entirely sure.
+ Elliott Mo thanks for the reply. I wish there is a solution which don't use USB port. I am not sure if using long ribbon from box to box (unprotected) be a good idea. But that for sure be PCI-e solution. Thanks
Great information, thank you.
But get rid of that music or turn it down. It's perfectly fine to fill the dead air when you have nothing to say, just pease don't asult the listener.
Hi, thanks for your feedback. I'm not quite sure what happened to the audio levels in this video.
Are you need config bios?
No from the settings I had. Try and see if it works
where you buy your pic bridge
+gael gallegos Hi, this isn't the exact pci bridge, but I got mine off ebay. Something like this: Look at this on eBay www.ebay.co.uk/itm/152082167570
1U lol bring on the thermal problems
+TechBaron, Cameras and more! The server does run pretty hot to be honest :/
Are you reading from a piece a paper xD
What's the geek haha yeah I am on some bits, thought I'd give it a go, but it doesn't make very engaging video :/