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US$189 AKiTiO Thunder2 PCIe Box (16Gbps-TB2)


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I only experience the coil whine during the initial load of the 3D and Benchmark tools.... but not during the whole test of the tool..

Also, with Yosemite, these applications iMovie, Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere and no longer working... it crashes after few minutes compared with Mavericks. I assume that either this is related to driver issue.

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Hi AKiTiO friends,

I'm new to this. I just want to know if my diagram is OK and if someone can tell me how to connect the PCI riser to the PSU. I just want to know how to connect everything before I buy all the components. This is going to be my little 3D render computer for C4D and Octane Render.

post-31117-14494998769775_thumb.jpg

I already own the PSU and the computer.

I need:

1- AKiTiO Thunderbolt 2

2- ASUS GTX 980

3- Dual 6-Pin PCI Express to 8-Pin PCI Express

4- PCI-e Riser powered

5- Thunderbolt cable

Thanks for the help!

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I think I found the problem, probably is because of my powered riser. I finished the molex to barrel mod and now running with Akitio and VGA being powered by the barrel connector (and a 6 pin pcie). The voltage is much more stable than using the powered riser (although I replaced it with another one before).

With the powered riser and Furmark, the voltage and power consumption fluctuate a lot between 80-100%, but with barrel connector, the power consumption stays flat at 100%.

I will get back to you guys if I get any problem.

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@linh1987

I can let my setup run for a pretty long time as well without crashes or stuttering, but it only starts occuring when putting it on some kind of load such as gaming.

I can use photoshop and 3DS Max without any problem for a whole day, but from the moment I start up Far Cry 3 of Guild Wars 2, crashing or stuttering will occur from a few minutes to an hour or so, not immediately. But running benchmarks for some reason does not seem to trigger stuttering or crashing. It seems to be a combined load of cpu and gpu that starts it.

Could you test your setup playing a real game?

Thanks again. :)

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In fact I was playing Diablo 3 and having 3D Mark running since this morning without problem. I had the same issue where the VGA is fine for non-gaming loading but will crash randomly even with a game running in the background, but it haven't been like that for today, which is why I posted.

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Sometimes the entire system crashes with a BSOD, while other times, the stutter is with the game. The game becomes unresponsive for a while, the screen goes black, and then sometimes comes back, not always. I can still hear the game sounds, ppl talking over teamspeak. Half the time, the game comes back but with unplayable stutter. Lowering the settings then doesn't help. And the other hald time the screen stays black, but the game goes on since I can hear the sound and ppl over TS.

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I'm speaking for my AkiTio/GTX 970 (with no riser) setup; I've been playing Steam Game (DOTA 2) in high settings for straight 3hours, game crashes randomly (1 or 2) but NOT the OSX.Benchmarks like Unigine and Lexmark doesn't gave me crashes or stuttering.

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Did you use some guide to create the molex-to-barrel plug?

I'm interested in doing that myself but lack the experience to did it without any guidance.

And please provide some pictures if possible about your setup. :)

@linh1987

Would you like to post a picture of your setup and barrel mod so others can see? I hope it holds up!

@entzoe could you provide a guide on how to modify the Akitio PSU to a molex-to-barrel adapter?

Thanks in advance! :)

An offshoot thread created with the replies to the above queries. Should help others wanting to the same in the future:

http://forum.techinferno.com/enclosures-adapters/8317-%5Bguide%5D-making-molex-barrel-adapter.html#post113069

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So here's my story about the new GTX cards 980's and 970's

I originally purchased the EVGA GTX 970 and I was able to work it with AkiTio with no issues (running on OSX) played steam games for whole day, no freezing and stuttering. When the EVGA 980 was available in our local store, I returned my 970s and at the same time had the GTX 780 Ti replaced since I still have a 2 year replacement plan. To my surprise, GTX 980 wont run on my AkiTio......I can't explain.... I wanted to return 980 and get back the 970, but its not available anymore. So for the meantime I just used my 980 on my Sonnet. After a month, no sight of EVGA 970 in our local store, but there were MSIs, ASUS and Gibabyte. So I returned my 980... and tried each one of these brands and non worked!. Until last week, the EVGA GTX 970 became available again. And my AkiTio came back alive again....

I'm not sure what's going on but the only brand of 970 works for my setup is EVGA. I'm baffled why the other brand works in your setup.

Mac Mini

450W Corsair PSU

AkiTio

EVGA 970

LG 31 4K Monitor and 24 Inch Apple Cinema Display.

(I am powering my GPU from PSU, and powering my AkiTio from PSU using the modified molex barrel plug from the original AkiTio power supply) no powered riser used in here

It also works with Sonnet of course. My Sonnet is now listed on eBay. I'm going for the cheapest setup.

Since you have a working setup for the Mac mini with EVGA GTX970 and the AkiTio Thunderbox was it this one that you ordered EVGA 04G-2974-KR GeForce GTX 970 Superclocked 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 ACX 2.0 PCI Express 3.0 - Newegg.com I just want to make it work as simply as possible and the GTX970 is within my budget. Thanks Entzoe

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Very interesting video! But why do we need one? I heard that the Akitio can be powered by a PCIe riser.

Some cards are fine with the 25W from AC-adapter to the slot, some cards require the full 75W (therefore a powered riser is needed).

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Here is a good news, Gigabyte just built a Mini-ITX GTX 970 that's only 12cm wide

Gigabyte Builds First Mini-ITX GTX 970 Graphics Card

The Mini-ITX variant of a GTX 970 looks very nice so I ordered one :-) I have no idea when it will ship.

post-25391-14494998779965_thumb.png

This is only the second GPU that I bought because my last computers have been a 12" PowerBook G4, 17" iMac G5, 15" MacBook Pro C2D and currently a 13" Retina MacBook Pro i5. My previous build was from 2002 and I used a NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440 :P

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