Case
Silverstone TJ10
Let's get this out of the way: we're never perfectly happy with the chassis we pick for the God Box. It's impossible for it to exist, because there are so many different conflicting goals for a potential God Box. Large numbers of hard disks mean lots of heat, vibration, and cabling to deal with, which makes them hard to fit into a small chassis. Low noise means damped side panels, minimizing direct exposure of fans to the outside world, and careful airflow management to keep components cool with a minimum of additional airflow. Dual video cards mean lots of heat, which means more airflow, which means more noise. And on top of all that, it needs to look good at least decent.
These requirements all end up being contradictory at some point.
For capacity and cooling, server-class chassis often work out, but as a rule they're generally pretty noisy and not always compelling to enthusiasts. Server-class cube chassis from Chenbro or Mountain Mods are fine examples of what might work. Server-class towers, such as the Chenbro SR10769BK, have happy homes in the Orbiting HQ, but they often aren't set up for PSUs with bottom-mount fans or extra-wide tower heatsinks.
Those wanting low-noise setups should look at the Antec P183 (which is not extended ATX friendly) and its bigger brother, the P193 (which is). The Coolermaster Cosmos merits some attention as well. The Lian-Li A71 and its brethren also work, as does the Silverstone TJ07. Those with more modest needs can look at the other parts of the guide for recommendations, although keep in mind the need for extended ATX motherboard support, two high-end video cards; and six hard drives may not be compatible with the more modest chassis listed there. Not that the God Box is "modest" by any means.
We continue with the Silverstone TJ10B in this update. Low-noise 120mm fans, extended ATX MB support, 4x5.25" and 7x3.5" (6+1 internal/external) drive bays, front-panel audio/Firewire/USB ports, and a pretty decent cooling layout all work in its favor. The TJ10BW version comes with a window, although we don't normally do windows.
Cost: $285.99 (10/23/2009) [Comparison shop for this item]
Six Scythe Slipstream 120mm fans (SY1225SL12M)
While we would love to go with very-low-flow/very-low-noise fans in the God Box, keeping a box cool that contains easily 800W of power-sucking components requires fairly serious work.
Yate Loon, Arctic Cooling, Nexus, SilenX, Noctura, EBM/Papst, and others all make a variety of good quality fans suitable for the God Box. We target medium speed models that (predictably) result in medium airflow and medium amounts of noise. You can wire up a fan controller, such as the Zalman ZM-MFC1, if you want a little more control over the fans, but most God Boxes will probably get by without one.
The Scythe Slipstream medium-speed (SY1225SL12M) is rated at 68.54CFM at 24dBA, and spins at 1,200RPM. SilentPCReview found the airflow and noise to be optimistic, but the Slipstream is still an excellent fan. We populate all six fan positions in the Silverstone TJ10 with these and hope it's the right balance of airflow and noise to cooling. The Slipstream's Kama PWM brethren (we use on the heatsinks) might also be of interest to some builders.
Cost: $7.99 each [$47.94 total] (10/23/2009) [Comparison shop for this item]
Power supply
Enermax Revolution 85+ 1050W
As absurd as it sounds, power consumption has again actually decreased in the God Box compared to the previous setup. A pair of DirectX 11 single-GPU video cards draw considerably less power (160W each peak, 107W typical peak per Xbitlabs) than the previous dual-GPU/dual-card setup, but the pair of high-end quad-core Xeons are unchanged at 130W TDP. DDR3 memory is sub 1W/module (per Micron) as compared to 10x that for FB-DIMMs, SSDs are about 1.5W each (Techreport), four hard disks (~10W each per Storagereview), plus the motherboard itself, fans, optical drives—it probably all comes out to somewhere around 700W to 800W, which is a respectable decrease from the closer-to-900W and nearly-1000W previously expected.
Compared to the Hot Rod, which doesn't break 300W, or the typical home box, which is probably well under 100W, the God Box is still ridiculous. The Enermax Modu82+ 625W, Corsair HX620, and PCP&C Silencer 750 Quad should power just about any conceivable Hot Rod, and maybe even lower-end God Boxes with much slower clocked Xeons (or careful attention to power use), if you need some perspective. From the other side, a longer-ago God Box had a 1250W power supply. Eeek.
We would like to include a redundant power supply in the God Box, but it would needlessly complicate the recommendation, particularly because not all cases play well with redundant power supplies. Quiet PC users would also find themselves deafened, or at least somewhat offended, not that a 1000W or 1200W power supply at full load is going to be quiet... Zippy/Emacs N+1 redundant units are very nice, very reliable, and very expensive, should redundant power supplies be a requirement for your personal God Box.
The Enermax Revolution 85+ ERV1050EWT has up to 85% efficiency, 80PLUS Silver certification, up to eight 6+2 pin PCIe graphics connectors, up to 16 SATA connectors, up to 6 molex connectors, and can deliver up to 87A combined on the +12v rails. It's also fairly decent as far as noise goes for such a powerful unit, at least until it gets near full load.
Cost: $263.02 (10/23/2009) [Comparison shop for this item]
APC Smart-UPS 2200
We want sine wave output to keep sensitive components happy and enough capacity to handle lots of expansion. You can keep your God Box protected, from the box itself to the monitor to—well, almost everything else attached to the God Box (except a laser printer!) on a UPS this large.
Belkin, TrippLite, Liebert, and others make excellent units as well. TrippLite, in particular, may be a better value, but for now we will stick with APC to keep the recommendation simple.
The APC Smart-UPS 2200 (SUA2200) has a 2200VA capacity (1980W maximum load) which should give a few minutes of runtime to a God Box in the middle of a hyperactive gaming session, although we recommend powering down as soon as possible instead of trying to game through a power outage. It also has a NEMA 5-20P plug instead of the standard NEMA 5-15P, so keep that in mind. If your household lacks suitable outlets and cannot be wired to support such a UPS, the smaller APC Smart-UPS 1500 will probably barely do the trick (and it has the standard NEMA 5-15P plug), although we would recommend two of them—one for the God Box and one for your monitors and peripherals.
Cost: $720.99 (10/23/2009) [Comparison shop for this item]
reader comments