-Post pics of your computer-

[shadow001]

Got the 3 video card blocks in and i'll be out for the next few hours at least to install them, fill up the system and bleed the whole thing....Will post pictures once it's done....

[moshpit]

Got the 3 video card blocks in and i'll be out for the next few hours at least to install them, fill up the system and bleed the whole thing....Will post pictures once it's done....

OOoo, YAY! I love pics of drag racers! All that chrome sticking up everywhere just gives one a feeling of manly power, GRRRRR!

[Dungeoncrawler]

Seriously thinking of adding a proc block to my system. Any suggestions on a good brand?

[moshpit]

Seriously thinking of adding a proc block to my system. Any suggestions on a good brand?

Danger Den

[Mangler]

Seriously thinking of adding a proc block to my system. Any suggestions on a good brand?

Swiftech, koolance, ek and heatkiller are the best brands for cpu cooling atm.

Imo, I would go for swiftech or Ek since they have the best mounting systems for their cpu blocks.

[Greasy]

Swiftech, koolance, ek and heatkiller are the best brands for cpu cooling atm.

Yep, any of these are great setups.

Koolance also offers quick connect barbs. They're pricey, but they really do seem to make loop maintenance a breeze. I've got a set, but have yet to install them into my loop. <insert lazy>

[shadow001]

And here they come....First one:






It spawned a twin:





Omg they're triplets:





And a couple of pictures of them installed in the system to finalise:








Did a quick run with 3D mark without overclocking yet just to set a baseline and the temperatures under load don't exceed 45*C for the GPU's, but i'll run more games and benchmarks to see the temperatures, but at first view it seems i got plenty of room to play and it's quiet as a mouse.....


Video cards running at 90*C under load are officially banished, and i recovered 3 PCI-e slots since they're not blocked by the stock heatsinks no more....

[moshpit]

*waves checkered flag* And he's off! Shadow001 has NO competition on the drag strip today, he's killing ALL competitors by choking them on his smoke!

Seriously, now that you're water cooled on the GPUs, you BETTER drag race that beast! If you're not at the top page of 3Dmark11 after you find your max GPU clocks, I'll be sad

Edit: Still think ya outta Phase Change cool those CPUs. You have the LAST generation of Intel that likes sub-zero cooling, not taking advantage of it is almost wasteful. Sub-zero overclocking is becoming extinct for Sandy Bridge and all following Intel CPUs, AMD will be the only sub-zero friendly CPUs from here on out.

Edit #2: Never mind on the Phase Change cooling. I can only imagine how heavy that rig is already.

[Greasy]

Edit #2: Never mind on the Phase Change cooling. I can only imagine how heavy that rig is already.

It would take you and ThirdEye to pick it up as it is.

[moshpit]

It would take you and ThirdEye to pick it up as it is.

LOL!!!!

[Kombatant]

Got me a NZXT Phantom case and a Thermaltake Frio cooler lately and installed them. The lower part is still a mess, but I like what I am seeing so far; my old trusty PhenomII 940 is able to do 3.7GHz now


...and yes I know my system looks like **** compare to most of yours

[caveman-jim]

thats probably the worst placed usb header row I've ever seen

nice case and cooler, looks boss

[nycdarkness]

Why is there such a dramatic slant on the gpu

[sittal]

Why is there such a dramatic slant on the gpu

i notice it too

[shadow001]

At a guess, i'd say the weight of the cooler and coupled with temperature variations as the card is powered on and off every day, will make it happen eventually...It doesn't help that it's installed in a tower case either.

[moshpit]

I've also see such situations happen from a slightly misaligned motherboard sitting oddly in relation to the slots in the back, causing cards to flex at an odd angle like that. Seen it a few times in fact. It's only takes 1mm of misalignment and may not affect all cards even.

[aviphysics]

I think it looks worse then it is cause the CPU cooler is not on quite straight.

My guess is the power cords to the GPU are pulling down on it a little.

[CurrentlyPissed]

No love for the Laptop

[Dungeoncrawler]

No love for the Laptop

Nice lappy .

[moshpit]

No love for the Laptop

I liked it. A lot. Got side tracked by other discussions though. It's very nice!

[nycdarkness]

Gonna be some new pics up tonight. HEHE. ALOT of boxes coming from newegg today =P. While some of it wont be utilized till I finish moving next week.

The biggest change being 6 monitors are coming today

[Ristogod]

And a couple of pictures of them installed in the system to finalise:





Did a quick run with 3D mark without overclocking yet just to set a baseline and the temperatures under load don't exceed 45*C for the GPU's, but i'll run more games and benchmarks to see the temperatures, but at first view it seems i got plenty of room to play and it's quiet as a mouse.....

I'm amazed at how much radiator surface you were able to install internally and rear externally on that case. Very good job. Very nice looking and well thought out. I'm curious as to what your plans are to maximize the potential of that machine.

[moshpit]

I'm curious as to what your plans are to maximize the potential of that machine.

He'll be running a LOT of 3Dmark (and avoiding PCMark like the plague ). And occasionally encoding something. Oh yeah, and playing a few games. That's about it.

[aviphysics]

He'll be running a LOT of 3Dmark (and avoiding PCMark like the plague ). And occasionally encoding something. Oh yeah, and playing a few games. That's about it.

and making other Ragers jeolous.

[moshpit]

and making other Ragers jeolous.

I'd be jealous, if it was a single socket 990X on phase change. As it is, nope. Not jealous at all. I like his GPU setup. And his wiring job IS top notch. I'll also give creds for an excellent job with the H20, but those are all things well within easy attainable range.

The CPU situation though, I'm more amused by then jealous of.

[shadow001]

I'm amazed at how much radiator surface you were able to install internally and rear externally on that case. Very good job. Very nice looking and well thought out. I'm curious as to what your plans are to maximize the potential of that machine.

At a guess, i'm thinking you're suggesting i use it as a folding machine every now and then at least as well?..... It can crank out some serious performance in that too

[moshpit]

At a guess, i'm thinking you're suggesting i use it as a folding machine every now and then at least as well?.....

How about like ALLLLL the time! I can only imagine your total PPD on many-iterations of the CPU client VM'd off while running the GPU client natively. Have you tried this? What is the PPD of that beast in that scenario? Screenshots are worth major points!

Edit: And going back to aviphysics' earlier statement, okay, I'll give on this one, THIS is a scenario to be jealous of the whole machine on. If shadow doesn't become our forum's TOP single machine PPD producer, he will need to be smacked upside the head until he gives in and starts FOLDING! Cavey, sick him!

[shadow001]

How about like ALLLLL the time! I can only imagine your total PPD on many-iterations of the CPU client VM'd off while running the GPU client natively. Have you tried this? What is the PPD of that beast in that scenario? Screenshots are worth major points!

It'll be something interesting to find out eventually, but i still need to flash the bios on the video cards to allow higher voltage limits as i seem to be hitting a wall at 940Mhz GPU speeds with only 1.138 millivolts to play with, so i've created my own Bios using a couple of utilities out there, where the GPU voltage can go to 1.250 millivolts, and will flash the cards this weekend...

[moshpit]

You should run 11 instances of the VM'd CPU client at very minimum. Leave a tiny bit of CPU resources for running GPU client as well, if that's even doable or not...

[Ristogod]

At a guess, i'm thinking you're suggesting i use it as a folding machine

Nope. Was just wondering what you plan on using it for. My first thought was a lot of media encoding and gaming.

I tried folding myself, but I kept getting GPU crashes before. I think I've handled that issue now, but just haven't gotten back into folding.

[shadow001]

Nope. Was just wondering what you plan on using it for. My first thought was a lot of media encoding and gaming.

I tried folding myself, but I kept getting GPU crashes before. I think I've handled that issue now, but just haven't gotten back into folding.

Anything and everything really and do it well.....There's enough CPU ~ GPU power to last for years and 24 GB of ram onboard....I built it for the long term really.


Once there's systems out there twice as fast as this thing can by in all applications, not just certain ones some people focus on( ), and assuming this system actually has any difficulty with any piece of software out by then...I'll consider my options once we reach that point.

[Dungeoncrawler]

And here they come....First one:

What is the difficulty level with removing the stock fans and mounting the waterblock's for the gpu's? I've never done one before.

edit - look at all that space between those cards

[Mangler]

What is the difficulty level with removing the stock fans and mounting the waterblock's for the gpu's? I've never done one before.

edit - look at all that space between those cards

The difficulty level is pretty low, you just need a good phillips-head screwdriver, or you might strip some of those tiny screws on the backside of the card.

And all the new fullcover blocks have stand offs, so you cannot over-tighten them so that risk is pretty much gone now too.

[Dungeoncrawler]

The difficulty level is pretty low, you just need a good phillips-head screwdriver, or you might strip some of those tiny screws on the backside of the card.

And all the new fullcover blocks have stand offs, so you cannot over-tighten them so that risk is pretty much gone now too.

Kewl; I see evga has the 580 hydro for $149.99 with free ground shipping. I would die to have my cards in a single-slot config. Btw, is he running all three cards off that one rad?

[Mangler]

Kewl; I see evga has the 580 hydro for $149.99 with free ground shipping. I would die to have my cards in a single-slot config. Btw, is he running all three cards off that one rad?

No, he's running them on the two 240mm radiators, but since they're stacked they are probably not performing better than one single 360mm radiator would.

[shadow001]

What is the difficulty level with removing the stock fans and mounting the waterblock's for the gpu's? I've never done one before.

edit - look at all that space between those cards

Actually they're not just philips head screws but also torx head screws as well and there's 9 screws for the top cover alone(philips head), then there's 4 larger philips head screws for the heat sink of the GPU itself, and then there about 12~13 more screws located in the back of the PCB itself(these are the torx head screws), and these also use locktight so they're pretty hard to come off and all of them located in the back of the PCB....


Once that is done, you have to disconnect the fan header and apply the supplied thermal pads, wich you have to cut to the proper size, to 7 locations on the board and apply thermal paste to the GPU itself, then comes the block install using the supplied screws in the kit and plastic washers(to avoid shorts).....


Repeat as necessary for now many cards you'll install, and yes, it took a few hours to do all 3 cards, install the connecting pipes in parallel and i had to lay the tower on it's side since all 3 cards will get installed at the same time and it was nearly impossible with the case upright....The comes the filling with distilled water and checking for leaks and bleeding the air out, so it is a fairly time consuming process....


The flip side is that apart from the noise reduction, the cards ran up to 925Mhz at 1.138 volts and full load temperatures never exceed 65*C with the fans at 100% speed.....The stock cooler makes the cards easily hit 85~90*C at full load at lower voltages and running at stock speeds(772~800mhz depending on brand), so water cooling is a lot of work but the cooling performance is in another league too and i recovered 3 PCI-e slots in the process...

[Dungeoncrawler]

and i recovered 3 PCI-e slots in the process...

That's what I'm talkin-bout

[shadow001]

No, he's running them on the two 240mm radiators, but since they're stacked they are probably not performing better than one single 360mm radiator would.

It's mostly maximizing the room i have available in the case, and there was no way to get anything larger than that, but it does work nicely though wich is the important part.



For absolute cooling performance then nothing would beat a mountain mods extended ascension:




Or:





You can stuff pretty much any configuration you can dream of in either case along with 5~6 large radiators, but be prepared to pay 600~700$ of either case depending on tthe options you want....

[Roadhog]

No, he's running them on the two 240mm radiators, but since they're stacked they are probably not performing better than one single 360mm radiator would.

lol, i've already told him those radiators aren't enough. Which they aren't if you are hitting 65c+ load on water. lol I'd love to see his temps running furmark for a while.

[moshpit]

lol, i've already told him those radiators aren't enough. Which they aren't if you are hitting 65c+ load on water. lol I'd love to see his temps running furmark for a while.

I agree with the furmark part, he shoulda hit a bit more stability testing, but what's wrong with 65C full load? It's not GREAT for water, but it's hella better then stock air cooling.