The hardware would be installed before it gets THAT cold, probably once the temps are in the 50F, October-November.  We usually get our first snowfall in November, right around Black Friday. I can only hazzard a guess that if the system is operating to a good degree (pun) before the real cold hits that it can compensate.

I am definitely thinking that a linux distro would work better and installed on a bootable USB thumb drive, or maybe even a USB3 thumb drive due to the increase in speed.


The 6870s are cards I already own, so they are kind of the default to start with.  Would there be any problems with me added a 5830 as the third cards in the system?


Does anyone have an opinions on the board or the processor to be used?  Is 3 x16 slots and no x1 slots worth it?  It does have two non-e PCI slots, and I know there are adapters to convert those to x16, but i have yet to hear a consensus good or bad on those cards.