Chandi

Chandi interior

Chandi is a server that I built in June 2009 at the height of my distributed computing mania, mainly to test a theory that it should be possible to get three GTX 295 cards to work with Folding@home or BOINC while running Vista or Windows 7 as the OS. That wasn't very successful until recently, when the latest NVIDIA drivers made it easy. I also had a problem with random crashes, which I think I've traced to the southbridge. It looks like I'll have to RMA this motherboard.

The goal was to build a no-compromise box leveraging the experience I already had from building some earlier PCs. Since I went with a Core i7 processor, the specs are similar to Bhavani, except for the beefy PSU to power the graphics cards. I originally had an Enermax 1050W installed, and it was very nice but didn't quite have the grunt to run all three GTX 295s, so I replaced it with a Sparkle 1250W in 2010. I had to get an extension cable for the 8-pin EPS12V power cable, since the PSU is mounted at the bottom of the case and the original cable had to stretch across the expansion slots to reach. The Antec Three Hundred still remains one of my favorite case designs.

I couldn't find a definitive meaning for Chandi in Sanskrit, but it is the name for one of the fierce aspects of Shiva's consort in Hinduism. See, for example, the story of Manasa.

Components

see more photos of the hardware at Photobucket

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© David Park
Last updated: Tuesday, March 1, 2011 3:01 AM UTC