There are an array of issues and challenges that you’ll encounter and need to overcome to overclock reliably and effectively. In this article, CTO James Lupton will guide you through just some of those challenges and tell you how Blackcore resolved them.
Challenge 1 – Component Choices
There are thousands of CPUs, motherboards, and RAM options on the market, and a very small number of components are suitable for overclocking in an electronic trading server. So how do you choose? Well, here's some quick tips and questions to ask yourself when choosing your components:
The CPUs
- Not all CPUs have the ability to apply an overclock
The RAM
- Not all RAM has the ability to apply an overclock
- Which RAM is compatible with your platform - RDIMM or UDIMM?
- Will you target high bandwidth or low latency? What is the acceptable trade-off?
The Motherboard
- Are the sockets compatible with the CPU that you want to use?
- Does the motherboard and BIOS support overclocking?
- Is enterprise-grade tooling (such as IPMI) available or is it designed for consumer use?
- Will it fit in your chassis?
The Power Supply Unit (PSU)
- What wattage do you need for your OC?
- How do you even determine how much power your OC might draw?
- Do you have the right connectors for the components you plan to integrate?
- Is additional power headroom available if you want to add PCIe cards with external connectors?
- What about for future proofing new generations?
The Chassis
- Will all the components fit?
- Will there be enough space for good airflow?
- Have you considered expansion for PCIe cards?
- Will your cooling solution be adequate for the heat generated?
The full list of considerations is much larger, but this gives you a good starting point. As you delve into these choices you will soon find that most off-the-shelf motherboards will not support overclocking, IPMI, and enterprise toolsets whilst also fitting in a server chassis. That the majority of off-the-shelf overclocked RAM will target high bandwidth, not low latency – maybe good for AI but not great for electronic trading. Finally, not all CPUs behave in the same way, two CPUs of the same SKU, whilst identical in features and stock performance, will have different overclocking capabilities – another complexity for you to navigate.
Challenge 2 – Effective Liquid Cooling
Here at Blackcore, it has taken us many R&D cycles to create a reliable, long-lasting, high-performance liquid-cooled server. Even now, we are constantly innovating our liquid cooling system to ensure we improve for future systems. To build an effective liquid cooling system you are looking for:
- High thermal transfer
- Compatible materials
- High flow rates
- Non-conductive and ecologically safe liquid
To achieve the above there are details that must be considered. The liquid cooling system is made up of the following: water block, radiator, fans, pump, tubing, and fittings. Each element comes with its own challenges...
Water Block
- Is it compatible with your CPU socket?
- Which material is better suited? Copper or nickel plated?
- Can you route your tubes to the input/outputs provided?
Radiator & Fan
- What are the physical dimensions?
- Will the fin density and thickness work?
- How will the airflow, CFM, and pressure drop be affected?
Tubing & Fittings
- Do we need soft or hard tubing?
- Is the tubing porous?
- How will you route the tubing?
The Pump
- How will speed and pressure be affected?
- What is the pump's lifetime?
Something to consider is that the materials used in each component of your loop are important, they essentially form a small chemical ecosystem. Galvanic Corrosion is something that can occur, leading to a buildup of sediment in your loop. This occurs when Aluminium and Copper are mixed. Additionally, Copper provides the highest thermal transfer so is a great choice, but can be susceptible to oxidation over time. This can be a problem particularly when used as the cold plate of your water block if you intend to use liquid metal as the thermal interface material (TIM). Over time the Gallium mixes with the Copper and affects the heat transfer from the CPU to the block. A good alternative is Nickel Plated Copper, which adds a thin protective layer to the Copper, and does not react with liquid metal, whilst still maintaining a high amount of thermal transfer due to the main medium of heat transfer still being Copper. It’s worth noting that the quality and type of nickel plating can have a huge effect on the effectiveness of thermal transfer.
Challenge 3 – Overclocking
Over the years we have faced many overclocking challenges. Truthfully the only way to overcome these challenges is through trial and error, education, and years of previous experience. To overclock effectively you must understand hundreds of overclocking settings and their impact on performance and stability, as well as their impact on component lifespan. Additionally, you must have robust and effective testing practices for stability.
There are also specific complexities to consider for each component.
CPU
- What is a safe clock speed?
- What is safe voltage / power draw?
- What is vCore, SVID, VCCIO, VCCSA etc?
RAM
- Should you focus on frequency or timings?
- What is a safe voltage?
- What is tCAS, tRAW, tREFI etc?
Testing
- How do you test effectively?
- What constitutes as stable?
- Is the system's statistics/reporting reliable?
At Blackcore we are constantly monitoring, evaluating, and tuning the above to ensure a safe, stable high performing overclock is achieved every time.
Why should the Electronic Trading industry choose to overclock?
Simply - increased performance. Overclocking can improve not only the compute performance of a CPU, increasing the speed and quantity of calculations performed per second by your trading application but also other aspects of the system such as lower memory access times, faster cache access, and lower latency across the PCIe bus. This means you can move small packets of data between the key hardware pieces faster than a stock system – all of which aids in the effort to get a network packet into a system, decide an action based on that packet, and send a response as fast as possible.
If you would like to learn more about overclocking, please email your account manager. If you are new to Blackcore and would like to learn more, you can email [email protected] or book a call with our CRO Ciaran Kennedy here.
James Lupton