I recently decided that it was time to replace my workstation with a new computer. My everyday working computer is a Shuttle XPC SFF, with a Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, a Blu-Ray Burner, 8GB of memory, a EVGA GTX 260, and a 1TB Western Digitial hard disk. It's been a nice computer for the two years or so that I have been using it. I'm an IT professional so I tend to run a lot of apps at once and processor/memory is more important to me than gaming performance. I used to be hardcore gamer but I don't have much time for it these days and haven't built a serious gaming rig in about 10 years.
My plan was to kill two birds with one stone. I wanted a nice system for music playback, and planned to fit the new machine with a RME HDSPe AIO audio interface with the optional word clock. I sold off my Transporter and Denon DVD 5910CI and planned to build this computer in the best HTPC case I could find.
Here is what I started out with:
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/NewGoodies.jpg)
Luxa2 HTPC Case
EVGA X58 Classified Motherboard
EVGA Superclocked GTX 570
Intel i7 Core 970 Six Core Processor
G.Skill Ripjaw Series 24GB DDR3 1600 Memory
Liteon Blu-Ray Burner
Crucial 128GB 2.5" SATA III Solid State Disk
Western Digital 2.0TB SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Disk
Corsair AX850 RT 850 watt Modular Power Supply
RME HDSPe AIO Audio Interface with Word Clock
The Luxa2 case was very expensive and at $599 was much more than I ever expected to pay for a PC case without a power supply. But it was just drop dead gorgeous and I decided that I had to have it.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/Luxa2.jpg)
It was very spacious inside and this rail on the top is where you mount your optical drive and hard disk. There was no provision for mounting a 2.5" SSD so I bought an adapter that would allow me to fit the Crucial SSD to the space provided in the Luxa2 case.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/Luxa2_2.jpg)
By this time I just drooling at the thought of having this beautiful rig in my rack. And unfortuately that is as close as I ever got. Much to my shock and dismay....the motherboard would not fit in the case. This was really a stupid mistake on my part. I have built many computers, both for myself and for others. Years ago I used to build HTPCs for friends of mine on AVS Forum. But it has been a while since I hand picked all of the components from scratch like this. I originally picked out an ASUS Rampage III mini ATX board that would fit the Luxa2 case. But at the last minute I was concered by all of the negative feedback about it and decided to shop for a different board that was a little better received by the system building community. I settled on the EVGA X58 Classified. But I forgot to check the form factor, which is Extended ATX and is pretty much only going to fit into a full tower case.
So now I had a decision to make. Do I send back the X58 motherboard and buy the ASUS I originally picked out, or do I send back the Luxa2 case and find another enclosure? I really agonized over this for a full day. And in the end the motherboard won out. There were only two mini ATX motherboards available that would take a LGA 1366 processor and neither of them would support 24GB of DDR3 1600 memory. So my choices were rather limited. I decided that I was not going to start making compromises on performance because this rig was going to be my primary working PC. So I got a RMA from New Egg and sent the Luxa2 case back. The restocking fee was $92 plus another $30 to ship back UPS ground.
What did I replace that case with, you ask?
Why an M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank, of course!
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/ThermaltakeArmorPlus.jpg)
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/motherboard.jpg)
At first I was pretty pissed at myself but I got over it fairly quickly. I just had to remind myself that what was most important in a computer to me was processing power and memory. In that regard, this is easily the most powerful computer I have ever owned. And since I ended up with a full tower case I have already decided on a few upgrades and have ordered a second GTX 570 for SLI and will put in a better CPU cooler, and add a second 2TB disk. Here's a pic of the finished build.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/FinishedBuild.jpg)
All I really have had time for is to do a quick install of Windows 7 x64 Ultimate Edition. I have not done anything else. I am in the process of running migration backups of my current system and once that is done I will put the new machine in place.
My old computer, the Suttle XPC, will be reinstalled with Windows 7 -- it is running Windows Vista at the moment. Afterwards it is going to go into my audio rack and will be used as a source to feed my Eastern Electric Mini Max DAC. I plan to add a M2Tech Hiface to it.
--Jerome
I don"t know Jerome, but I'm not 'feeling' the replacement case.
Like the rest of the build. My old htpc that I was using as an MCE extender in my bedroom may be dying, and that's fine by me as it's built on a P4 3.0 chip. I've been getting the urge to build a new one but getting my audio system square has been getting any extra money.
Still, now that I'm working again I may copy this, though with your original case, so I'll have to wait for a few more mobo's to get in the pipeline.
Quote from: etcarroll on May 24, 2011, 07:07:10 PM
I don"t know Jerome, but I'm not 'feeling' the replacement case.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Having said that, the Thermaltake Armor+ was the least shitty looking full tower case I could find that had a removable motherboard tray, cable management, and toolless design. If I had to settle for something less than I originally planned I wanted it to be easy to work on. And I compromised aesthetics because I was not willing to bend at all on performance.
But I could have done without the big gaudy 23cm fan on the side panel.
Don't hold your breath waiting for a better selection of X58 based mini ATX form factor motherboards. Most of these boards are marketed to hardcore gamers, and big towers with in-your-face looks seem to appeal to that crowd.
--Jerome
I put the machine into operation today and I have to say that life is damn good with a solid state boot disk. From POST to the Windows login prompt in about 10 seconds works for me. :thumb:
--Jerome
That's a purrrrdy motherboard setup.
Bryan
Quote from: jsaliga on May 25, 2011, 03:23:53 PM
I put the machine into operation today and I have to say that life is damn good with a solid state boot disk. From POST to the Windows login prompt in about 10 seconds works for me. :thumb:
--Jerome
Wow! A 10 second boot sequence? :shock:
Now that got my attention. Nice machine. :thumb:
I thought about going all out and putting a water cooling setup in it but visions of a $300 cooling system leaking coolant all over my $4,000 computer was enough to nix that. So instead I bought one of the best thermal electric coolers I could find. That should be here today and then I will start overclocking. This CPU should be able to get to at least 4GHz and remain stable.
--Jerome
With the peltier cooler and SSD will it be pure silent i7?
Bitchin!
Yeah, it will be pretty quiet. The stock Intel CPU cooler on the six core processors is actually a decent one with 8 heat pipes, but the fan is fairly loud relative to everything else going on the case. I could have just put a better fan on the stock cooler, but decided to go for something a little more massive instead.
I'll talk about audio as soon as I get most of my apps installed and data restored. I have the RME card hooked up to the Eastern Electric Mini Max DAC. I'm hoping to do some critical listening over the holiday weekend.
--Jerome
The new goodies came in today.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/computerupgrades.jpg)
The Coolermaster V10 is massive. Here it is next to the largish stock Intel heatpipe cooler.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/CMV10_Intel.jpg)
And here it is mounted on the motherboard.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/CMV10_motherboard.jpg)
Then I added the second GTX 570 for SLI...
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/Nvidia_SLI.jpg)
I think that's it for now. I'll overclock it tomrrow.
--Jerome
That heat sink is massive, wow.
I put an SSD into a new laptop at work for a user last week, love the 10 second boot time. I will be putting one in my main PC at home. :thumb:
Yikes, that's big. I've always used copper flowers in my builds and thought they were big, but there's no comparison to this monster.
Sure it's big, but anything less would not be fit for the M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. :rofl:
All kidding aside the Coolermaster V10 strikes me as a very effective cooler. Replacing the stock Intel unit with this beast lowered the idle temps by 10 degrees Celcius and the fully loaded temps by as much as 20 degrees. At stock speeds none of the cores exceeded 44 degrees on the Prime 95 large FFT torture test. Naturally, I expect the temps to climb when I overclock but this monster of a cooler will keep the CPU well within safe limits. The performance numbers for it that I have seen suggest temps in the neighborhood of 65 degrees with an i7 970 overclocked to 4GHz, and that is what I am aiming for.
--Jerome
Wow, that's impressive. :shock:
I've been drooling over one of the 6 core, 4GB kits on TigerDirect, but you paid more in shipping then what I'm looking at grand total. :rofl:
Nice, very nice.
Bob
Thanks. I have it overclocked to 4GHz and it is rock-solid stable so far. This is the first machine I have owned with a SLI graphics setup. I'm not a hardcore gamer but I still enjoy PC games when I can find the time for them and want the best graphics performance possible.
I thought my last PC with a single GeForce GTX260 was pretty good. I could crank up the graphics detail on most games and not have frame rate burps, but it did happen on a few. Two GTX570s should cure that and if it doesn't I can always add a third since my motherboard supports triple SLI, though if I did that I would have to upgrade the power supply to a 1200 watt unit. I'm happy with the system so far.
--Jerome
That actually seems like it'd be a really good video production machine... I use Adobe Premiere CS5 64-bit and it makes a huge difference when you have good memory and processor. I recently bought a new machine that could keep up and not crash.. requiring a good graphics card, 8G of RAM, 2.8G AMD, etc.. Had I seen your 'tank' of a PC, I might have gone that route instead... It looks really well put-together and well organized. Congrats.
-C
This is turning into something of an adventure Carl. And I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. Overclocking to even 4GHz on this setup isn't really doable. The machine is nice and stable, even at 4.2GHz or 4.5GHz. The problem is heat. I thought that the Cooler Master V10 would be a good alternative to water cooling that would get me to 4GHz but I was wrong. The CPU goes on a steady heat ramp and after about 10 minutes under 100% load on all six cores the temps get to 85C.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/OC_1.jpg)
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/OC_2.jpg)
Why am I determined to overclock? Because without it I am leaving a lot of potential performance on the table. Stability is not the issue and the voltage bumps I am using are not particularly agressive. At first I thought that I may have mounted the Cooler Master heat sink incorrectly or it wasn't making good contact with the processor, so I took the machine apart and reassembled it and am getting the same results.
So, as much as I was hoping to avoid water cooling it seems to be the only real choice with these hexacores if you want to squeeze the most performance out of them. I could bump the overclock down to about 3.6GHz and keep the temperatures at ~ 65C. But with water cooling I should be able to get to 4.5GHz. While this might sound crazy I am going to ditch the Thermaltake Armor+ case (a move that Gene will probably applaud) and replace it with a Silverstone TJ07 Black case. The Armor+ will support a water cooling rig but not with the radiator on the inside of the case, and I really don't want a big 120x3 radiator hanging off the back of my machine. The SilverStone can accomodate a radiator on the inside of the case (in fact it can take one three fan and one two fan radiator, so I could go with a dual loop configuation if I wanted to.
(http://www.silverstonetek.com/images/products/tj07/TJ07B-3-4-02.jpg)
--Jerome
I also applaud the Silverstone case, 2 of my builds are in them, and my media server almost was but I got a great deal on an Antec P-180 case instead.
Six cores @ 4.5Ghz? :shock:
You'd better make sure that the generators for your emergency cooling system are not in the basement where they could get flooded by a tsunami. :lol:
I've seen a few people on Overclockers.com run their quad cores at up to 5GHz.
--Jerome
Quote from: etcarroll on May 31, 2011, 07:06:39 PM
I also applaud the Silverstone case.
Glad you approve. ;)
Seriously, I decided on the SilverStone purely based on function. It's a nice looking case, to be sure, but it won out because of its suitability to host a completely integrated water cooling loop. It also gives me some flexibility. While I am not planning on water cooling the graphics cards, I can add a second loop if I want to. I also looked at custom cases that are handmade and designed from the ground up for water cooling. They get very large, like double wide full tower ATX cases -- no thanks.
If the SilverStone didn't offer the features that I needed then I very likely would have ended up buying a Cooler Master HAF X. The only other case that qualifies is the Corsair Obsidian 800D, but I ruled it out due to numerous reviews citing issues with airflow. Even though I am going to water cool the processor, I still need to move air to those Nvidia GPUs and the MB.
--Jerome
I always believed that, for PCs at least, function needs to trump looks. I'm just pleased the Silverstone cases, and the Antec, happened to look good while providing the function I wanted. ;)
Quote from: jsaliga on June 01, 2011, 04:38:46 AM
Even though I am going to water cool the processor, I still need to move air to those Nvidia GPUs and the MB.
You bet. It wan't too long ago that most computers had less memory and processing horsepower than those GPUs alone. :roll:
Well...I totally chickened out on the water cooling. (http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-scared007.gif) (http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys.php)
I recently read about the misadventures of a water cooling noob who ruined several hundred dollars in hardware because of a radiator problem that happened after a supposedly successful leak test. That was enough for me.
But I haven't given up my desire to overclock. A friend recommended the Noctua NHD-14 CPU cooler. It's another massive air cooler. I told him about the poor overclock results I was getting with the Cooler Master V10 and he said that if I tried the Noctua and couldn't get my processor to at least 4GHz with temps under 75C @ 100% load that he would buy it from me for cost. So I am going to give it a try.
I have also decided to add a third GTX 570 for 3-Way SLI and will replace my 32" HDTV that I am using as a monitor with 3 Dell 24" Ultra resolution 1920 x 1200 monitors for surround gaming. The Silverstone case was still a good buy because it has better ventillation than the Thermaltake, and with three GPUs it is going to need the extra airflow.
--Jerome
I nixed the Dell monitors and instead decided to go with three Acer G Series 24" 120Hz monitors so I could use Nvidia 3D Vision. It's all on order and should be here on Friday.
Geez, I've created a monster. 8)
--Jerome
What are you gonna use this monster for?
World domination. :rofl:
--Jerome
Seriously, the three monitors will service two purposes. It will help to make me a bit more productive at work (I work mostly from my home office). But the more obvious purpose is for Nvidia Surround Gaming.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-surround-technology.html
I'm not the hardcore gamer I used to be but I still enjoy PC gaming when I can find the time.
--Jerome
Awesome!! And the occasional CD rip at 50x... ;)
Quote from: jsaliga on June 15, 2011, 04:50:33 AM
Geez, I've created a monster. 8)
--Jerome
We'll have to start calling you "The Baron" :rofl:
(http://i3.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/250/draft_lens15280331module133357331photo_1289748167Best_Comedy_Movies_9.jpg)
Quote from: jsaliga on June 15, 2011, 06:20:27 AM
World domination. :rofl:
--Jerome
Then you must be a member.
(http://www.geocities.ws/GDI_AFFT/dnrc_link_icon_3.gif)
The three monitors came today and I have them set up. The way Nvidia does multiple monitors is really optimized for gaming, so when you configure Nvidiva Surround your screen resolution goes to 5760 x 1080 (assuming that you are using three 1920 x 1080 displays). It's pretty cool when you fire up Crysis 2 and change the in game display resolution to match. But it isn't so great when you are trying to multitask with all three monitors since you have to size your application windows for each screen. It will take some getting used to but overall I really like it.
Tomorrow the Nvidia 3D Vision glasses and the third GTX570 will be here and then I will have 3D and 3-Way SLI.
I'll probably set off power monitor alarms at Connecticut Light & Power when I fire up the three video cards. :rofl:
I'll post some pics once it is all done.
--Jerome
You're cracked..................
And I'm jealous.
Have fun!
Quote from: etcarroll on June 16, 2011, 06:18:44 PM
You're cracked..................
I must be....
I had to send the Silverstone case back. As nice as it is it will not take either of the CPU coolers I have. It would have been ideal for water cooling, but otherwise it is just not a good fit. The restocking fee was $52.
So...I am left with the Thermaltake Armor + and will probably just stay with it. The only place to go from there I think is a custom built case.
--Jerome
Quote from: jsaliga on June 16, 2011, 04:21:54 PM
I'll probably set off power monitor alarms at Connecticut Light & Power when I fire up the three video cards. :rofl:
--Jerome
You've been worried about how to cool the CPU and GPUs, at this rate you may have to up the BTUs on the A/C for the room. :rofl:
PS - I agree with Gene, I'm jealous. That sounds like one amazing machine.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh - $52 restocking fee, that crushes my soul. ](*,)
Here's the rig before the changes...
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/before.jpg)
...and here it is after. Note that 3 GPUs requires at least a 1000 watt power supply, so I upgraded to Corsair's flagship unit.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/after.jpg)
And the obligatory photo of surround gaming in action. This is Crysis 2 at 5860 x 1080 on the Very High graphics settings across the board, one notch down from Extreme. I'll play with it later and run some benchmarks. On the right hand side of this picture is the Nvidia 3D glasses. I have not installed them yet and won't get a chance to try them until tomorrow. But I expect to be pretty impressed.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/NvidiaSurroundGaming.jpg)
The reason you still see the Cooler Master V10 CPU cooler in the after picture is because the other cooler would not fit the motherboard. The heat pipes could not clear the massive Northbridge heat sink.
Which brings me to some lessons learned. It is harder today to properly match components. This is because, in my opinion, manufacturers, especially in the performance and enthusiast space, are not doing enough to document compatibility of their products with other components. While it can be argued that a manufacturer cannot possibly test compaitibility with all possible configurations, it would seem they aren't even testing compatibility with most likely configurations. For instance, there are not that many 3-Way SLI motherboards on the market.
This means that if you want to build a high end, smokin' hot machine you should be prepared for a few false starts and an RMA or two. Lots of research can help, but it can't guarantee a mistake free build. The three incompatitilities in this build set me back a total of $142 in restocking fees and $119 in merchandise that I can't use but decided not to return.
In the grand scheme of things being out $261 on a system build that costs about $4,500 is not the end of the world.
Strangely enough this time around I am getting better temps from the Cooler Master V10. My idle temps are about 4C lower. I remounted it once and it made no difference...but maybe the third time is the charm. If I can get a decent 4GHz overclock with temps below 85C at 100% load then I may leave things the way they are. I'll do some more testing over the weekend.
--Jerome
Are you using a silver based thermal paste, I forget the name of what I used, but it did make a minor, but definate cooling improvement in cpu temps.
I would hope the CM V10 comes with a quality paste, but if not...............
http://www.arcticsilver.com
I used Artic Silver 5 each time I mounted the V10.
--Jerome
BTW...Artic Silver isn't the only game in town. There are a number of very good TIM compounds out there, some of them are non-metallic. When I was researching water cooling I read up on several of them but didn't see any reason to change. I wasn't going to try something else when I had a perfectly good tube of AS5 handy.
--Jerome
That's it, AS5 in all my builds.
What is TIM, Tim? (I wish your name was Tim just for this question.) :D
iirc AS5 claims to be non conductive, but is it really? All that silver in there makes me wonder. In the old days a CPU heatsink was not grounded so electrical insulation didn't matter so much. I wonder if it is more important now that you are building a small city on top of that chip? Reason I ask is it would be nice to use AS5 or similar super thermal grease on amplifier power transistors. But the heat sinks are almost always grounded so dielectric grease is mandatory.
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/4GHzOC_Intel970.jpg)
I am encouraged by these early results at 4GHz. After a 10 minute Prime95 torture test temps are looking pretty good and the machine is stable with a VCore of 1.25 volts. I'll run this test for an hour and a couple of sweeps of memtest, and then I'll benchmark the machine. But so far so good.
--Jerome
With this much overclocking going on will the i7 still go into turbo mode and boost the speed even further when less than six cores are being used?
And is this a useable feature or is it just marketing hype because all six cores are active almost all the time as a practical matter? Just wondering, as I have almost no hands on inexperience with the i series processors. My office PCs and just hitting their three year upgrade points later this year so I will have to get up to speed on this in the near future. The last I looked, the corp standard this year was to buy i5 based machines since we are doing more run of the mill office type stuff and have not need for the heavy lifting that an i7 would provide.
I disable the turbo boost feature when overclocking. If you are using stock settings the turbo feature will allow for a x25 CPU multiplier, which will get you to 3.325GHz on a 3.2GHz I7 processor.
I have never tried using turbo when overclocking so I don't even know if it will have an impact. What I do know is that I don't want anything changing any settings from the values that I tune since it can introduce instabaility. I currently set up my machine where it is stable at 4GHz with a VCore at 1.25 volts, using a base clock of 191MHz and mutiplier of x21. I wouldn't want turbo to bump it to x22, since that would increase CPU speed by 200MHz and might make the machine crash without a corresponding bump to VCore. I also disable Intel Speedstep (C1E) in the BIOS and make some adjustments to the Windows 7 power management settings. Bottom line: I want to be in control of the CPUs performance and thermal management rather than the OS.
--Jerome
Quote from: jsaliga on June 19, 2011, 07:13:12 AM
I disable the turbo boost feature when overclocking. If you are using stock settings the turbo feature will allow for a x25 CPU multiplier, which will get you to 3.325GHz on a 3.2GHz I7 processor.
I have never tried using turbo when overclocking so I don't even know if it will have an impact. What I do know is that I don't want anything changing any settings from the values that I tune since it can introduce instabaility. I currently set up my machine where it is stable at 4GHz with a VCore at 1.25 volts, using a base clock of 191MHz and mutiplier of x21. I wouldn't want turbo to bump it to x22, since that would increase CPU speed by 200MHz and might make the machine crash without a corresponding bump to VCore. I also disable Intel Speedstep (C1E) in the BIOS and make some adjustments to the Windows 7 power management settings. Bottom line: I want to be in control of the CPUs performance and thermal management rather than the OS.
--Jerome
The impact I was thinking about was exactly the instability you discribed, so we are on the same fear in that concern. Glad to know I was on the right track. Thanks for the info.
Here are results of a 90 minute stress test:
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/4GHzOC_Intel970_1.jpg)
The temps ramped up a bit and would get as high as 79C and as low as 70C, and cycle up and down between these two endpoints. While this is a little higher than I would have liked I believe it is acceptable. Note that my high temp limit of 85C is 15 degress lower than the Intel spec, and I do that because I want some assurance that I can put the processor under a full load and leave the house for a few hours and not come back to a fried CPU. If I cut it too close to the high limit and there is a thermal ramp that I didn't anticipate it could produce some unpleasant results.
This also suggest that 4GHz is the most that I can get out of this air cooler and maintain the margin of thermal safety that I want. If I bump the CPU to 4.2GHz I will most likely need to increase VCore at least a little, and that will drive up temperatures.
--Jerome
Any idea why the two middle cores on the chart are running so much cooler than the other two?
Not really, but it seems to be typical on I7 Gulftown processors.
--Jerome
Benchmark Results:
Default Settings (133MHz base clock with x25 CPU multiplier)
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/PCMark_Stock.jpg)
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/3DMark_Stock.jpg)
Overclocked to 4GHz (191MHz base clock with x21 CPU multiplier)
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/PCMark_4GHz.jpg)
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/3DMark_4GHz.jpg)
I was not able to run the 3D Mark Vantage tests with the extended desktop (5880 x 1080). The benchmark would stall while loading the scene data on the first test. I therefore reduced the screen size to 1920 x 1080 for the 3DMark tests.
Overclocking to 4GHz netted a 15.5% increase in the PCMark score, whereas it only produced a 8% increase in 3DMark scores. The latter is to be expected, however, because CPU performance isn't as important to graphics performance as the GPU.
Was it worth all of this for 15%? A fair question to be sure. To me the answer is yes. An i7 970 Gulftown processor sells for about $600. If I can get an extra 15% of performance from it without taking major risk then it is very much worth it to me.
--Jerome
As it turns out I was not as impressed by the Nvidia 3D Vision as I hoped to be. Yesterday after watching the final round of the US Open Golf Championship I spent a few hours playing some games with the 3D glasses. The experience is largely going to be goverened by how well the game supports 3D Vision. Some are not so great, such as Crysis 2, and others are quite good, such as Batman: Arkham Asylum.
If that were all there was to it I might be a little more enthusiastic about Nividia 3D Vision. But, in my opinion, the technology is not quite ready for prime time. Batman is probably the best looking 3D game, but another so called Nvidia 3D Vision Ready title was Battlefield Bad Company 2 (my favorite game from last year). I found it very difficult to play in 3D because I was always disoriented by the image depth, which means that I missed a lot and also got killed a lot. So playing in 3D was a hinderance in this case.
Bottom line, I found that games were more immersive (and enjoyable) without the 3D Glasses. If someone were to ask me which should they buy, a GTX560 and a pair of 3D Glasses or a GTX570 I would recommend that they forget the 3D glasses and get the better graphics card or save the money towards a SLI setup with three monitors. Nvidia Surround Gaming is pretty amazing that technology seems work very well, and is worth the cost of admission.
--Jerome
I got over my worries about water cooling and jumped in with both feet. I found a company called Caselabs that custom manufactures computer cases that are designed for water cooling. The case I ordered is big (yep, larger than the Thermaltake Armor +, and can accomodate up to five 480mm radiators. I will be using two in seperate loops: one loop will be for the CPU and motherboard chipset, and a second loop will be for the GPUs.
http://www.overclock.net/case-labs/968780-case-labs-th10-1-a.html#post12783342
The case in the thread above is gloss white. Mine will be in matte black.
An order has already been placed and the case should be shipping by the end of the week. My water cooling components are also on order and some of it is already here. Those components include:
Koolance CPU-370 Water Block
EK EVGA Classified Motherboard Water Block
Three Koolance VID-NX580 GPU Water Blocks
Two Swiftech MCR420-QP 4 x 120mm radiators (one for the CPU loop and another for the GPU loop)
Two XPSC Acrylic Reserviors
Two Swiftech MCP655-B cooling pumps
PrimoFlex Pro LRT tubing
Compression fittings
Biocide (to prevent algae from growing)
--Jerome
I have started my water cooling build. Rather than cross posting it, anyone who is interested can follow my build log on Overclockers.com here...
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=682955
--Jerome
Sweet! Looking forward to Monday to see the final product at least assembled.
Bryan
I have finished the water cooled PC project. I hit a bump in the road along the way. My EVGA X58 Classified 3 motherboard failed after moving it to the new chassis. Instead of replacing it I moved on to a i7 2600K (Sandy Bridge) processor and Asus Maximus IV Extreme-z motherboard. I have updated the linked thread with pictures.
I am running my processor at 5.0GHz with temperatures in the low 60C range. My three Nvidia GTX570s never get over 42C under full load. On air the GPUs would run at about 84C under 100% load with the fans going full blast.
--Jerome
That's an awful lot of horsepower just to watch internet porn, isn't it?!?
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Finally someone said it! :rofl:
Weren't the 3 fancy video cards for 3D video? The man has built a freaking holodeck (sp?)! :thumb:
The 3 video cards are for running a panoramic display configuration with three 24" 120Hz monitors:
(http://www.indierockfan.net/pics/CLTH10_2.jpg)
My desktop resolution is 5832 x 1080. The odd horizontal resolution is used to provide parallax correction for the monitor bezels.
--Jerome
Simply amazing. :thumb:
Nice rig Jerome! Ever try any driving games? ;) Speakers look nice too! Are those AudioKinesis?
Thanks guys. A lot of time and money went into getting this done but it was worth it.
Gaming wasn't the only consideration in putting this computer together. As you might recall when I started out all I really wanted was a decently powered computer in a nice HTPC case to install in my audio rack. A lot has changed since then. :-k
After rethinking what I wanted out of this system, I came to the conclusion that a larger workspace would improve my productivity. I'm an IT consultant and frequently work on client networks through secure VPN tunnels. Having three full sized displays prevents a lot of wasted time resizing and moving windows around.
Naturally, it is also great for gaming. I like games that don't have much of a learning curve since I don't have a lot of time available to learn a complex control system. So most simulations are out. I tend to play shooters and the panoramic display really does improve the gaming experience.
You guessed right Rich. The speakers are from AudioKinesis. They are a custom built based on the Planetarium Alpha, with integrated down firing subs. I have also added a pair of satellite subs and the 1,000 watt amp to give me the full Swam sub-woofer set up. I'm very happy with the speakers. Duke is terrific to work with.
--Jerome
Very sweet! I have heard only great things about Duke, and his products. I don't remember ever hearing them, though. Maybe RMAF.
On my first networking job I had a Toshiba 486 laptop with 10" screen and 30 minute battery life. Got the job done, and lots of fun... Sounds like you have a bit more responsibility...
jtwrace was extolling the virtues of multiple, optimally placed subs when he came to my last meet. Sounds like the way to go.