can a guru please look over my planned 3x 5770 setup please?

[hamdi]

hello mineurs

i plan to build the following setup,
could one of the gurus please take a quick look over it and please point me to any mistakes i might have done planning?



processor
AMD Athlon II X2 240e, 2,80GHz, Dual-Core, S-AM3, Boxed

ram
DDR2-RAM 1 GB, 800 MHz, CL6, KINGSTON ValueRAM

gpu
3 piece of PCI-E 2.1 SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5770, Lite retail, 1024MB

motherboard
Mainboard Socket-AM3+ ASUS M5A78L-M LX, Micro-ATX, 1 PCIe-x16, 2 PCIe-x1

power
ATX 430 Watt, CORSAIR CX430



i would boot with linux off a usb stick to mine


thanks for your inputs, guys!!

[tunatime]

i would get a full sized Mb as that thing going be crammed as hell and a bigger psu as once you oc those cards there going be pulling 100w+ each i woudl go whit a least a 500w

just saw you buying ddr2 ram you can put ddr2 ram in a am3 board get some ddr3 ram

[Basiley]

yeah, only weak place seems to be PSU.
1x 57x0 isn't hungy , but 3x require something more serious than ~400W PSU :-|
even slightly more.

[hamdi]

thanks for the input, so 550 watt will be just right... okay

i took that small motherboard since it is by far the cheapest i found that takes 3 cards.


so you say it will be crammed, but i will get the cards into it?


thanks guys!

[trippp]

How many PCIe power connectors does the PSU offer? Those GFX cards, do they need one or two connectors each? If your PSU doesn't have enough connectors, you can use a couple of these:
http://img.ncix.com/gif/17110.jpg

You also need PCIe extenders or risers to make the PCIe-x16 cards fit in the x1 sockets.

[hardly]

That ram won't work in a DDR3 motherboard, and if I recall correctly, AM3+ boards won't do AM3 CPUs.

And, you'll want much more than a 550 watt power supply to run 3 cards, regardless of what cards they will pull more than that. You also have to factor in the motherboard and CPU power pull.

[dikidera]

Havent looked at the mobo, but if it's AM3+ mean it's going to be compatible with Bulldozer. If the mobo doesnt support DDR3, then the ram wont work. 430w are not going to be enough. The processor wont be good unless you use linux

[tunatime]

yea what i meant to say eiler is you cant not can put ddr2 in and am3 board.

yes you can get 3 cards to work on that mob but i think you would be beater off just getting 2 higher up cards  as a 5770 gets about 200mhs whit a med Oc and 220 whit a high oc, where if you could find cheep 58xx cards you could get 350-420 per card or get 6950s that will do 350 oc and not unlocked(you can get the 1gb ones for sub 200 after mir) to 400+ oc and unlocked

[hamdi]

very good info! thanks gonna think about it!

[Reikoku]

First of all, the 5770 is a decent card on a budget, they run at about 100W each and as such this machine probably needs around 550W of continuous power. I would recommend making sure your PSU supplies continuous load 550W, not peak 550W.

You will need a pair of risers to put the 5770s in the PCI express x1 slots. These are commonly sold as PCI express x1 to x16 in line or flexible connectors. I believe cablesaurus is selling them in the marketplace right now.

AM3+ boards will cope with AM3 processors but I don't recommend the DDR2 RAM. Spend the extra 5 dollars and get a DDR3 stick. Consider a cheap HDD, flash memory has a tendency to die.

[Cluster2k]

If you're using mostly or all second hand parts, go for it.  Otherwise it will never pay for itself let alone make you any money.

[LegitBit]

As others have said, AM3+ is backwards compatible with AM3, so that combo is fine, though you may be able to get a cheaper AM3 Chipset board since you don't really need the support for newer processors unless you plan on using that for gaming at some point.

Also, as others pointed out, get some DDR3 Ram, it is actually cheaper on average than DDR2, is faster (usually depending on timings), and DDR2 is not compatible with pure AM3 or AM3+ boards.