@MattSpeller said:

yup if anything will tell you, this will

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Hooray. PCI-E 3.0

Tried to upload a .jpg 3 times. Keep getting parse errors on Mango if that's a concern.

@MattSpeller said:

yup if anything will tell you, this will

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Just what I need, thanks!

Ok scratch my theory. I hooked up an identical 4th 2560x1440 27" Dell monitor and it ran flawlessly w/ all 4, but all 4, even the HDMI one, were 59 Hz. What a weird thing.

Does anyone know of an easy way to tell from within Windows whether your card is running in a PCIe 2 or 3 slot and to verify it's at full 3 speed?

I suppose it could be that I'm doing all 3 over independent display port jacks and not using the HDMI or DVI, so if there's just one internal Display Port controller that all 3 jacks share, maybe it's hitting that bandwidth limit.

@g.jacobse said:

I understand - I don't see limitations on the card, if the monitors can push to 60, I'd say go ahead.

Well, interestingly enough, when I do that, and try to set it to 60 Hz, it acts like all is well and good and lets me either apply or "ok" them, but then... doesn't save them. It may be that it's maxing out at 3 1440p screens, two in portrait. Oh well. Maybe I'll try them all in landscape sometime and see if that makes a difference. Or maybe I'll updgrade to the 980 ti ( is that the fastest card out now? )

@g.jacobse said:

Going by the spec's I don't see that there is any reason for it.

It maybe that the cards is pushing that because of the display mode / resolution you have them set to.

Is it causing you issue at 59Hz?

No issues, but every hz I can get the better. I remember trying to work off of 30Hz when a few companies' worth of developers said they were able to do so w/ the 39" 4k t.v.s that came out and it drove me mad, so I'm a little hyper-aware of the Hz I'm at. I can't say I particularly percieve the 1 hz, it's more of a principle thing I guess.

I just noticed that my shiny new 970 is only pushing my 3 monitors at 59 Hz. It does give me the option of swapping to 60 if I go into the list all modes section of the Windows monitor configuration panel, but... wtf? Why would it do this? Are there any downsides to my manually setting all of them to 60?

Skylake is available for purchase now ( with a release date of Friday after this ), though it seems to be only i5s ( at NewEgg at least ) and it seems they're pretending the procs themselves are sold out in order to force people into combos.

http://promotions.newegg.com/intel/15-3811/index.html?icid=324906

While running the EVGA Precision built-in benchmark the CPU temperature climbed to the highest I've ever seen it: 38C, while the GPU got up to 74C.

@creayt said:

I'm pretty impressed w/ the Xeon + GTX 970 setup so far.

I'm guessing Dota 2, even at 3620x2036, just isn't very intensive though. I'll hold back my real judgment until I find something to tax it. Dota 2 is interesting though because it lets me multi-task pretty hard while playing. There are a lot of moments of auto-pilot and if you die you can get a lot of other stuff done while waiting to respawn etc.

Is it weird that my CPU temp hovers at around 27-32C and my GPU sits at around 64C? Is that a red flag or to be expected w/ my monitor setup?

@nadnerB

I will say, first impression is that it was noticeably quieter than the AMD it replaced, even completely silent under load while gaming, streaming a video from DishAnywhere, running a bunch of serverware in the background, an IDE, a text editor, Slack, IM, Spotify, and about 20 browser tabs.

I'm pretty impressed w/ the Xeon + GTX 970 setup so far.

@nadnerB said:

OOOOH! Very interested to hear what you think of it
 
Nice to see you were clothed when taking the photo
That's a very large phone. What is that? A 6 Plus?

So far so good. Being able to run 3x 1440p screens, two in portrait, without a stutter and to connect them all to individual slots ( this card has 3 full sized display port jacks, and HDMI, and a dual-link DVI ) is magical and helps Windows hold onto my config. W/ the daisy chaining method I'd find it'd forget them and cost me configuration time a lot.

Currently looking for some cutting edge visual games to test out its gaming prowess.

Took that picture w/ an iPad actually haha. My iPhone 6 Plus's camera is broken.

it hath arrived.

The Xeon re-emerges victorious.

@MattSpeller said:

@creayt for sure, it's only 17amps at 12v haha - you'd have the brightest case in the land.

Maybe I'll just kidnap a bunch of fireflies and trap them in the case.

@MattSpeller said:

@creayt said:

Can anyone recommend any subtle little accent lights

One or two of these should do it

Hahahaha, I'm not sure my CX750M can handle it.

Next question!

Can anyone recommend any subtle little accent lights that can be installed inside the case to illuminate certain parts of it through the side glass?

Setting the fan levels to 2 instead of the default of 10 has completely remedied the noise without any observable impact on CPU or motherboard temps. I'll keep monitoring throughout the day. Problem solved. Thanks all.

My table-top AM06 is now louder than the 8t Xeon powering 3 1440ps across the desk from it. We'll see if that changes when the GTX 970 gets here in the next few hours.

@scottalanmiller said:

@g.jacobse said:

Do the fans make that much noise?

Normally they do. You've got to have one seriously silent machine for them not to be at least annoying. Even my MacBook Pro is too loud for what I would like.

Oh god. Don't remind me. My retina MacBook Pros were by far the loudest computers I've ever used.