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Electronic Music personal: Power supply died and my potential future supercomputer.
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Written March 04 2010 , Tags: FFT, DSP, super computer, computer died
Well 4 days ago I cleaned my room really good, removed carpet and rearranged everything. I pluged my computer back in, heard a high pitch sound from the PSU, and it wouldn't turn on. I expected my PSU would die soon, iv'e had the computer for about 4 years now. I'm just hoping it didn't take the motherboard or graphics card with it. For the time being I'm on my server and can't make music(this server can barely handle flash plugin). On a different note, I was looking at computers last night in case i have to get a new one and I think I would save up to build a personal super computer using the Tesla GPGPUs. Which brings me to a thought, while my music software would not utilize the full power, I could write a CUDA application that could do extremely complex sound synthesis, not only could I have the ability to virtually recreate acoustic instrument sounds in a virtual enviroment, but i could create completely new sounds and hybrid instruments on a system that can computer over 1TeraFLOPS and cost less than $8,000(ouch, still expensive).
Comments
hope its just your psu thats at fault. whatever you do, dont buy a cheap powersupply from ebay.
i fried a laptop by buying a cheap replacement from ebay and it ran 240 volts into my beloved laptop. lovely! oops! the above post was from me, not monty (he must've still been logged on on my laptop)
On a similar (warning) note, I fried an external HD recently after following bad advice from a forum suggesting (from more than more person I might add!) the model number for a suitable replacement PSU. Shops don't sell them so I had to order it from Hong Kong via Ebay. A few weeks later it arrived and looked the part, correct voltages...or so I thought. It actually turned out that the 12v and 5v volt pins were switched and the diagram on the PSU was incorrect! So I had sent 12volts down the 5volt pin and now it appears that my HD is deader than it was before. If you are serious about protecting your equipment be wary of cheap stuff from ebay.
regarding GPUs, be aware that they are very fast with integers and single precision numbers but suck at handling double precision numbers, so the FLOPS/s for double precision are very lower than 1TFLOP.
never had psu problems like you guys describe.
I guess I'd invest the 3$ in a power supply tester if I had a lappy or critical data on the HDD. I've burned out one PSU by installing too many components, then leaving it on all the time.
I've also had two PSU fans that started getting really loud. I did a little research into it, and most PSU fans use sleeve bearings, which wear out really quickly. Ball bearings and magnetic bearings are supposed to be much quieter and more durable. It's entirely possible to switch out the fan on a PSU, since they're generally just standard sized case fans, but opening one a PSU will almost certainly void the warranty. If you're into building your own systems, a PSU can be a good investment, since it can last longer than your motherboard. Well, when you start wishing you had the latest technology it's the motherboard, CPU, RAM, HD, etc that get replaced, and not the PSU (most new power standards can be derived from an existing PSU by use of adapter cables). A good case is probably the best investment for a DIY computer enthusiast, but after that a good PSU. I think your supercomputer idea is far away from music making, and close to software engineering. It's probably better not to get too deep into that sort of thing. You might spend too much time on it and stop getting better at making music. Then, what was the point of getting into it in the first place? I can think of a lot of things I'd do with $8k before building a supercomputer. I would build myself a 1U rack computer that was completely fanless, for recording. For that I would need new mics, and a really nice recording interface. I'd put it in a luggable rack case with a rackmount LCD. Then, I would get myself a 6U behemoth for home with all the newest fastest components, and a couple of stunningly large LCDs. Some new monitors would be good, two pairs, one small and one large, and a sub, and maybe even rear and center speakers for surround mixing. Some room treatment, a custom made desk and a really nice chair... how far over $8k have I gone so far? @delete
Each Tesla 1060 is 933GFLOPS Single precission and 78 GFLOPS double precission, if i really save up i might go for the c2070 cards. @eyesnine, i custom built the my main computer, it was cutting edge when i built it cost me a little over 1K. before I really got into composing/producing music I was into programming. I don't think doing software stuff would really hold me back from working on my music, i normally take breaks from music from time to time so that i can study theory and imagine new tracks. Plus, I won't be able to afford a personal supercomputer at this rate(no job). @everyone else, i will definately buy a nice power supply when I have the money. i had this one for over 4 years before it died, and likely it died from cooling off after i cleaned my room as I never shutdown my computer for more than about 8 minutes max at a time for all those years. don't hate on the supercomputers people. get it!!!
Recent blogs: Modular Sequencing in Reaktor
1) CUDA isn't terrible to program for, but it DOES take a while to wrap your head around. It's a lot of fun to use though.
2) DON'T get a Tesla - you're paying A LOT more for heaps of RAM on the card, which you WILL NOT use. (You can easily stream to the card if you double-buffer, so you don't need your entire dataset on the card.) The gaming cards are actually FASTER than the Teslas. Get a high-mid-range gaming card. The GTX-275 has been a very good deal for quite some time now. The new Fermi cards will be the bomb. 3) Get a good-value i5 / i7. The new Intel stuff talks A LOT faster to CUDA cards than the old Core 2 stuff. (PM me if you like, I sometimes go for long periods without checking em411)
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