Cooler Master's 5-CPU monstrosity has your craptop cowering in a corner
By Paul Miller 
posted February 28th 2009 5:08PM
posted February 28th 2009 5:08PM
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posted February 28th 2009 5:08PM
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Yes, there's nothing like having a renderfarm that goes down completely when one powersupply fails.
I still want one, but ShadowMaker is right, they should have gone with a redundant power supply. I also want to know how these boards are networked together, because the main use for these would be either a renderfarm or a HPC cluster, both of which tend to be network IO bound. I suppose you could string them together from the outside with a bunch of short Cat6 cables, but that would be a mess, and would bind you to the fastest ethernet card speed you could afford... which would be 1GbE right now because 10GbE buyers could afford bigger iron.
I would like to see something like a PCIe controller with a ribbon cable looped between these -- even a software emulated network connection hubbed over the PCIe connectors would be a good use of available CPU, and should offer much lower latency. Does anyone know of such a solution? That would make it worthwhile to try the metal file cabinet multi-board case mod out, which this reminds me of.
Fred,
This is an excellent article reviewing different Interconnects like GigE, 10GigE, Myrinet, Infiniband, etc: http://www.clustermonkey.net//content/view/124/34/
That said, I haven't seen anything like a cheap PCIe card "LAN" that directly connects CPUs. I think the best option for a cheap cluster is to is good Gigabit Ethernet cards. There are GigE cards that offload the TCP/IP processing to an onboard processor and can use "RDMA" direct memory access between computers...
Either I'm the only one that reads this stuff while actually working or there are just a bunch of kids on engadget now. Why is it no one sees the huge benefit of having a render farm in a box. Even if you didn't go the linux route for actual clustering it would make a great After Effects render farm. And provided that those MBs are supported by the OSx86 community it would be an enormous help to Compressor since everything is offloaded and can be divided between cores.
Those that complain about the PSU, when is the last time you had a good PSU fail? The only ones I've had fail are the cheap bundled PSUs that come with atx cases.
@Billy Bob Thorton
No, but I think the better option would be to just get a manufactored blade server. Since they are not running anything other then onboard graphics on the boxes and they are mainly going for CPU power a blade server would be much more efficient then slapping 5 M-Itx boards in a case. IBM has some very efficient blade servers that include the remote interface and internal switch.
Is it actually a massive, supercomputer or is it just 5 separate ones just in one case?
5 separate ones. It's stupid as hell; totally useless and pointless. If they managed to somehow cluster the systems together, then I can see a point. However, like stated in the article, it's just a showcase of the quality of the power supply.
^ agreed
Show me something innovative, not just "we fit 2 engines in one car - but you'll have to get another car to use it" bull
More like 5 cars merged together, but you have to drive it on special, redesigned roads. :P
For you guys who don't seem to know what clustering is and how it is useful look at this older project http://helmer.sfe.se/ aka the Ikea cluster
That's the biggest fail I ever seen.
Probably it doesn't run Crysis @60FPS.
Bitchin'.
ridonkulous? My craptop is indeed cowering at the mere mention of this thing.
What did my craptop ever do to you, Engadget? :(
They must just mean apple crapbooks.
You must mean, Crapintosh.
/Sigh
You people.
*Indignantly:* What do you mean by "you people"?
perhaps calling us a bunch of morons or childish. let's virtually kill him!!!
stab* @#kick**%* punch$ punch* kick* stab* slice* cry** i just got my ass beat.
hehehehe
now that's childish!
You guys really have to flame on Apple in every possible post?
Re: Patricks 7
Why not? Who would want one of those anyways. (If I dont stop here, Ill writte an essay)
So...... What happens if one cpu fails?
Then one of the five systems fail. They're independent, because it's just 5 computers in one case. It's stupid.
So its 5 separate systems under one roof? SO? Waste of money and space and whatever.
Wish I had the money to blow it on crap like this.
isnt it the exact opposite of waste of space...seeing as its all 5 computers in one case
its for chinese WoW gold farmers.
Nice try, Engadget, but I think "dubs" is the word you were looking for.
GRAMAR NAZI STRIKES AGAIN!!!
Nice try, Fruition, but I think "GRAMMAR" is the word you were looking for
Oh the sweet irony.
What have I become?!
But will it run Crysis?
Will it run GTA4!?
Yes, but with Anti-aliasing turned off.
It'll run 5 games at once. Can it run 1 game really well? No.
Seriously though all jokes aside I want to see the cysis benchmarks....
There must be something you don't understand. "Cysis", or Crysis, as most of us like to refer to the game as, is designed to be run on ONE computer. This is 5 SEPARATE computers in one case. I don't see graphics cards, or room for them. This would be used as a cluster of some sort, or a render farm. There are applications that could take a task, and break it into 5 parts, and send those parts to the 5 separate computers in this case, and work together, but independently, to get the bigger job done faster. Crysis is not one of those applications that can "offload" to multiple systems. And, even if it could, I would doubt that this would run it very fast, due to the plain differences in how CPUs and GPUs perform calculations. This would make a good ESX Cluster though! =D
first, its been done before, and better, second, some of us can afford real computers.
Was just waiting for a Mac comment.
not mac, im just saying he was implying we all have 2yr old borrowed parts.
Its a cluster server thats only good for one thing; being a server.
And yes its 5 separate computers in one huge ass case.
Actually it's five separate tiny computers in a normal case. Can it run Crysis? Sure at 640X480 with all the cool shit turned off. They're mainly just showing off their cool guy power supply.
[Enter Slashdot]
But can it run Linux?
Yes, in a Beowulf cluster as one machine.
....or you could use a 5 way KVM.....
if theyre networked you can just rdp into the subsequent four from one of them.
this would be a great system for hosting virtualised servers.
Will it run Windows ME?
No, but it'll run up your energy bill.
This would be perfect for my dad he's a stock trader and needs multiple monitors and computers the only thing is that he would need a graphics card that can handle 50' 1080p monitors and 24' 1920x1200 resolutions.
that is, if he didnt lose his job yet.
or if he's independent investor, blown away 70% of his investment,
so how does he have the money for all that stuff?
Pretty much all of them, then.