Advice on first build for deep learning

pukka_pies · Jan 24, 2017

Hi everyone,

I am a researcher in the area of deep learning, and am looking to put together my first build primarily for this purpose. (I will also use it as a home server for storing/streaming personal media files but this is not so important.)

After some digging around in various places, I have put together the following spec with the help of PCPartPicker. At first I will get just one Titan X GPU but would like to scale up to the maximum of 4 GPUs over time. I’m a newbie to self-builds so I’d be very grateful for any advice/feedback on the following :

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 VFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus X99-E WS/USB 3.1 SSI CEB LGA2011-3
Memory: 4 x 16GB DDR4-2400
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5” SSD (for operating system)
Samsung SM951 512 GB M.2-2280 SSD
3 x WD 6TB 3.5” 7200RPM Internal hard drive (will add more later as needed - mostly for personal media and large datasets)
GPU: NVIDIA Titan X (Pascal) 12GB (will scale up to 4 GPUs over time)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 1600W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (as I understand this much W will be needed with 4 GPUs)
Case: Any suggestions?
Other: TP-Link Archer T6e AC1300 PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi Adapter

One thing I am unsure about is cooling of the GPU(s). Is it a good idea to buy an extra water cooled system?

KittyFish62 · Jan 24, 2017

Okay, first of all, what are you trying to accomplish with this? It almost seems like a waste of money to me, although you are a newbie of course. 4 Titan Xs are overkill for anything, not to mention overpriced nowadays and power consuming. Also, you really don't need the motherboard that you're using. It's a server motherboard and uses an older cpu socket. You can get a regular motherboard for more than 4 times less. With the storage, just use one ssd if you're not going to use two for anything, and 512 gb is plenty for anything on an ssd. Also, do you really need 18tb of storage? That's way overkill for anyone.

pukka_pies · Jan 25, 2017

Hey, thanks for the reply. As the title suggests, the build will be primarily used for training large neural network models. Just to make clear - I'm a newbie to self builds, not to deep learning. Four GPUs really isn't overkill in this field. I'd like to learn more about the hardware, hence the decision to go through with a self build.

There are some very helpful blog posts out there I found such as:
http://www.slideshare.net/PetteriTeikariPhD/deep-learning-workstation
http://graphific.github.io/posts/building-a-deep-learning-dream-machine/
The above spec is based around blog posts like these, although I would be grateful for further opinions, hence the post. What motherboard would you suggest instead?

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Advice on first build for deep learning

pukka_pies

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pukka_pies

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