Stress testing and other questions

So as I prepare the paperwork for the impending divorce that is sure to follow from my soon to be purchase of a workstation Aventum 3 I had a few questions and wasn't quite sure what thread to place them in so please excuse me if this is the wrong thread. I also tried to chat online with a fellow named Brian but he didn't seem to know anything technical and informed me that calling Digital Storm wouldn't put me in contact with anyone who knew the technical side either so I resolved to just get on this rather lively forum and ask.

Is it possible to ask for additional testing to take place, such as stress, leak, thermal, etc... during the configuration for our order?

Are we able to ask for plumbing (wire running) of future upgrades to already be in place?

Since I plan to watercool this build and it's future iterations, I was wondering if installing a redundant pump was possible?

The motherboards listed for the current workstations can use a Xeon and ECC, but aren't workstation class or validated in any fashion so I was wondering if you simply don't list them or if I need to talk to someone?

Additionally acrylic tubing seems rather fragile to me and I was wondering if you had any experience with PETG as another option?

This will be the first computer build that I've let someone else do for me since -------- back in 98'(before-----) I think and the only reason behind it is the case as well as the ability to not spend months building another custom computer. I also expect it to likely cost in the upwards of $9k American and I have seen what I think are a great many 12yr olds running around asking for advice on completely made up and rather outlandish builds and wanted to assure you that this isn't the case.

I appreciate any help or direction you guys can give,
Cheers
Mik






Competitor's names removed.

Edited by Snaike - 04 Sep 2015 at 10:58am

Unless someone comes along that has dealt with the questions with DS, it would be guess work.    I suggest calling or email their team the questions.   They will have answers because I'm sure its come up before.

DS does do alot of custom work specific to each customer.

Good luck.

Originally posted by Steven I guess I'll tackle these one at a time. Originally posted by MLJ Is it possible to ask for additional testing to take place, such as stress, leak, thermal, etc... during the configuration for our order? We do full stress testing, benchmarking, and thermal testing in our normal setup. Did you have a specific test in mind? As for testing the computer, as you know many drives need at the very least 72 hours to be broken in to find bad sectors and in order to see if you are seeing errors after a few major disk write/s. I can break it down further but I can't imagine a reason to fill the chat space with something that is only understood at a NAS/server level. Originally posted by MLJ Are we able to ask for plumbing (wire running) of future upgrades to already be in place? Power cables are pre-wired and we have designed a custom water block for fluid delivery. If you have any special requests we can generally accommodate if the request is feasible for us. Firstly that looks brilliant and your engineering team should be praised and likely was for such a subtle and clean design. However as for the power cables you didn't answer that at all, you merely said you had them pre-wired, so should I expect a AX1500i to come wired for four expansion cards and multiple sata/m.2 bay's? This confuses me because it seem's like you are saying yes to everything being wired for all contingencies and at the same time not committing to it. Originally posted by MLJ Since I plan to watercool this build and it's future iterations, I was wondering if installing a redundant pump was possible? The pumps we normally use are more than enough for 4 GPUs and CPU/Chipset loops. I will check with the team to see if there is room for an additional pump. UPDATE: There is only room for the single pump in the AVENTUM 3. The team assured me that is more than powerful enough for the entire loop. Again As for the question of the pump when I said redundant I didn't mean that you didn't have the proper GPM or were skipping on parts mate. I have watch you all over the years and I am trying to make sure I am being as respectful to a icon in the business as I can but downtime is simply not an option and cooking silicon wouldn't make my breakfast any better. Please make no inference that in any way I think your choice of parts are sub par or chosen without extreme care. If you have a server you understand that having a UPS is the just as true in any serious server/switch/rack, system. Originally posted by MLJ The motherboards listed for the current workstations can use a Xeon and ECC, but aren't workstation class or validated in any fashion so I was wondering if you simply don't list them or if I need to talk to someone? We can special order a workstation grade board for you if needed. We don't get many requests for these boards so we tend not to carry them in inventory. I am a having a little trepidation since if you don't often get requests for workstation boards in workstations why are they listed as 1/3rd of your product offerings? Originally posted by mlj Additionally acrylic tubing seems rather fragile to me and I was wondering if you had any experience with PETG as another option? Acrylic is more fragile than say copper or soft tubing but there are numerous downsides to using PETG even though it can be stronger in some cases. PETG suffers from more evaporation than acrylic and is also not UV resistant.

UV is not an issue but even if it was a great deal of PETG is UV resistant for example thermoplastic polyester evaporation isn't a problem as both are easily negated and will not suffer the same loss as moving across countries multiple times with fragility and having something break.

I really do appreciate your reply and thank you for the time it must have taken to talk to all the members involved in your great company. I really do respect the work you do here but I have some serious concerns as to what a workstation is from you gents against what it might be from ---------. To be honest you guys kick ass all over the gaming market but it seems like this is a little out of sorts.

Please take this in the spirit in which it is written and we can all just grab a cider and have a good endweek.

Oh and thanks to Steven for rocking on

-Mik






Competitor name removed.

Edited by Snaike - 04 Sep 2015 at 10:07pm

((Holiday Bump) thank you for the kindly responses)

-Mik

Welp we just got moved into housing so I finally have internet again. I wanted to check in and see if any of the forum members had a critique or opinions to offer on the build I've been looking over for the last few months. This will be mostly a content creation machine for large photo post process work, 3ds rendering, and gaming in 4k. I use another computer that runs a little duo for color checking so no worries there.

Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Aventum 3
Exterior Finish: Exotic Paint Finish - Storm Blue - Digital Storm Metallic Translucent High-Gloss Finish
Trim Accents: - Not Available
Processor: Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 5960X 3.0GHz (Eight-Core) (Extreme Performance)
Motherboard: ASUS X99-E WS (Intel X99 Chipset) (Workstation Class)
System Memory: 32GB DDR4 2800MHz Corsair Dominator Platinum DHX (Extreme-Performance)
Power Supply: 1200W Corsair AX1200i (BACKORDERED ETA End of September) (Digitally Controlled Power)
Expansion Bay: - No Thanks
Optical Drive: Blu-Ray Player/DVD Writer (Play Blu-Ray and Burn DVDs) (Slim Slot Loading Edition)
Storage Set 1: 1x SSD mini-SAS (1.2TB Intel 750 Series) (2.5 inch - NVM Express) (Extreme Performance)
Storage Set 2: 1x Storage (2TB Western Digital/Seagate/Hitachi)
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Graphics Card(s): 2x SLI Dual (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB (ASUS Strix Edition)
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
Extreme Cooling: H20: HydroLux Level 3: Digital Storm Exotic Custom Cooling System (2x Video Cards + CPU + Chipset)
H20 Tube Color:Blue Tubing (Requires Custom HydroLux Liquid Cooling System)
Chassis Fans: Upgrade All Fans to Corsair Airflow Performance Edition (Up to 6 Fans)
Internal Lighting: Digital Storm RGB LED Lighting
Airflow Control: Digital Storm Thermal Management Control Board & Software
Boost Processor: Stage 2: Overclock CPU 4.5GHz to 4.8GHz (Requires High-End Motherboard Selection)
Boost Graphics Card(s): - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my video card(s)

Thanks for the spot check,

-Mik

Apologies I plan to populate all the drive bay's and quite a few of the pci-e slots as long as they aren't being shared somewhere. I get about 900-1000W estimation and I would like a little overhead especially if Amd ever manages to get it's sh*t together with zen. Additionally I have no idea how I clicked the nebulous option for a hard drive I'll slit my throat before ever buying another seagate. Thanks for the chime in.

-Mik