Final Spec

JonJ678 · 7 Jun 2009 at 18:51

X500 looks very nice. Doesn't hold very many hard drives, 4 internal and 1 in a floppy drive bay.

It certainly looks like you wont struggle for cable space with the psu. There is a lot of space behind the psu, certainly looks like ample space. Failing that, there's a hard drive cage in the perfect place to hold the extra cables, leaving you with space for 2 hard drives + floppy drive, or three hard drives.

I don't see why a modular psu is required at all, loads of space (relative to the average matx case). That lian li is beautiful, if I wasn't so taken with my current case I'd want one.

You have a 120gb of programs? How on earth? Programs on ssd, data on hard drive is the way forward

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 18:57

JonJ678 said:
X500 looks very nice. Doesn't hold very many hard drives, 4 internal and 1 in a floppy drive bay.

It certainly looks like you wont struggle for cable space with the psu. There is a lot of space behind the psu, certainly looks like ample space. Failing that, there's a hard drive cage in the perfect place to hold the extra cables, leaving you with space for 2 hard drives + floppy drive, or three hard drives.

I don't see why a modular psu is required at all, loads of space (relative to the average matx case). That lian li is beautiful, if I wasn't so taken with my current case I'd want one.

Wasn't aware that the floppy could be converted to a HDD... amazing! I was looking for 5 HDD case... eventually gave up for 4... What kit would be required to turn floppy to HDD?

I can't give up the hard drive cage next to the PSU, will be needing at the very least 4 HDD's. So whats my best option with that in mind? Technically the pp&c is shorter than the zalman, but has more cables..

Edit: I have two OS', with CS4 and three 3D programs... Need more than 60gb

EdGey · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:00

do you plan to go crossfire in the future? if not get a lower wattage PSU.

why not spend less on the case and get a 4870X2 instead? The price is good at the moment.

240 on the case seems overkill when you then settle for a 4890.

and +1 for corsair on the power supplies.

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:00

JonJ678 out of interest whats your case that you thinks prettier than the x500

JonJ678 · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:01

None at all, they use the same mounting holes. You just put the blanking plate back in afterwards.

If you have a look at a photo of the case, there is space behind the psu. Quite a lot of it. Cables can be put back there. it is actually 15cm deep, amazing just how small it is. There's probably a build log somewhere of the x500 but google didn't immediately provide one for me.

Look to the left of the psu mounting bracket, lots of space

Inside of the psu I'm recommending

My case is the akasa omega, I'll see if I can find a picture

And the case with the sides off being lined with bitumen

Pretty though the X500 is, form follows function for me, and my omega holds water cooling rather well.

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:02

EdGey said:
do you plan to go crossfire in the future?

+ why not spend less on the case and get a 4870X2 instead. The price is good at the moment.

240 on the case seems overkill when you then settle for a 4890

Heh case talk again...
I've owned macs most my life, think that about explains it, but if not... "We" mac people prefer aesthetics to function.... sad but true... I also don't need that much graphics power for 3D programs..

Not sure on the difference between SLi and Crossfire, but would probably consider it in the future... quite distant though...

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:06

JonJ678 said:
None at all, they use the same mounting holes. You just put the blanking plate back in afterwards.

If you have a look at a photo of the case, there is space behind the psu. Quite a lot of it. Cables can be put back there. it is actually 15cm deep, amazing just how small it is. There's probably a build log somewhere of the x500 but google didn't immediately provide one for me.
Look to the left of the psu mounting bracket, lots of space

My case is the akasa omega, I'll see if I can find a picture

Ahhh i did look at the omega as an option, OcUK doesn't do it and I fell for the Lian Li anyway! Nice though!
Wont most of the cables go between the side panel and the motherboard anyway?
Thats amazing about that extra hdd... saved me my last reservation on getting the Lian Li, so thanks!

Edit: What do you use bitumen for? Thought it was similar to tar?

rick fowler · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:10

out of interstest what 3d programs you using,reason i ask if its maya or 3dsmax the software is not very good with ati cards and will crash and do all sorts of un-normal things? i found out the hard way and cannot use my 4850 with it so had to invest in a nice new gtx285 whic autodesk kindly said would be the best card to have before stepping up to the fx range of nvida,anything with cuda and open gl cards are recommened for 3d appliction.

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:14

rick fowler said:
out of interstest what 3d programs you using,reason i ask if its maya or 3dsmax the software is not very good with ati cards and will crash and do all sorts of un-normal things? i found out the hard way and cannot use my 4850 with it so had to invest in a nice new gtx285 whic autodesk kindly said would be the best card to have before stepping up to the fx range of nvida,anything with cuda and open gl cards are recommened for 3d appliction.

Ahhhh serious? Yes I use both, well use 3D Studio on PC.. Maya on Mac....
Is this issue not resolved for 4890? seems best value....
Ahhh.... not cool

Edit: Other than rendering, does the GPU even play a part in 3D Studio? Heard it was processor based....

rick fowler · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:18

sorry but ati cards are not supported with autodesk dont get me wrong you can use them but will cause you to have major problems with crashing and if using maya 2009 like i do the grid will vanish and go black and allsort better of with a nvida card if poss,people do use them still but i read so many post on autodesk about it it's unreal sorry to bring the news but i thought i would mention it,one of the reasons they dont like ati is do to the open gl ect which maya and 3dsmax use

JonJ678 · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:19

I bought it from here about a year ago, they don't stock it anymore unfortunately. Lovely case. I've put a solid side panel on it as water means cooling isn't so difficult. A lot of cables can be fed behind the motherboard with most cases, helps considerably with cable management.

The bitumen is indeed very like tar. The shiny part is a foil coating. Its main feature is density, I'm using it to mass load the sides of the case. Makes the case quieter, build log coming soon.

The 8800gt you can see in one of those has been flashed to a fx3700. If Rick would be good enough to run the specviewperf benchmark I would really love to know how the 285 compares to my modded 8800gt in 3D work. Mine will clearly lose in games, but I tend to do cad work more than play games.

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:22

rick fowler said:
sorry but ati cards are not supported with autodesk dont get me wrong you can use them but will cause you to have major problems with crashing and if using maya 2009 like i do the grid will vanish and go black and allsort better of with a nvida card if poss,people do use them still but i read so many post on autodesk about it it's unreal sorry to bring the news but i thought i would mention it,one of the reasons they dont like ati is do to the open gl ect which maya and 3dsmax use

JonJ678 said:
I bought it from here about a year ago, they don't stock it anymore unfortunately. Lovely case. I've put a solid side panel on it as water means cooling isn't so difficult. A lot of cables can be fed behind the motherboard with most cases, helps considerably with cable management.

Thats quite an extreme method for silencing! Interested to know if it works!

The bitumen is indeed very like tar. The shiny part is a foil coating. Its main feature is density, I'm using it to mass load the sides of the case. Makes the case quieter, build log coming soon.

The 8800gt you can see in one of those has been flashed to a fx3700. If Rick would be good enough to run the specviewperf benchmark I would really love to know how the 285 compares to my modded 8800gt in 3D work. Mine will clearly lose in games, but I tend to do cad work more than play games.

Thats quite an extreme method of silencing! Interested to see how well it works!

Im stumped now... Was about 10 minutes away from being ready to order... The 4890 is 160GBP... Can't stretch for a 285 nor 275.... I dont think... unless scrap the SSD... Bad times..

rick fowler · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:22

hi jon yes mate where i get specviewperf benchmark mate i will gladly help you in your quest,i gotta dash again nightshift email me mate and i sort ready for tuesday when it comes

JonJ678 · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:29

Legend mate, I'd really appreciate that. Here's the link http://www.spec.org/gwpg/downloadindex.html they want you to fill out a small questionaire, but thats reasonable given the effort they put into the benchmark. Its quite fun to run as it draws wonderful things on your screen, I'm happy talking you through it. Sad to say that the download is fairly large.

Rick's done quite lot of research into this, I'm inclined to trust him on it. Drop down to 260 if need be, its still a very, very nice card. This is a i7 rig isn't it?

Sli means two nvidia cards, crossfire means two ati cards. Not worth it unless you're fairly obsessed with games, but your board will do either if you choose to later

As for silencing, I'm putting some effort in. So far I've fitted a shroud to the psu and soft mounted the fan, made a vibration reducing bracket for the pump, and lined most of the case with flashing tape. None of these are very major, but they're about all thats left for minor modifications. Case sounds a lot better when tapped, but only one layer so far

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:35

JonJ678 said:
Legend mate, I'd really appreciate that. Here's the link http://www.spec.org/gwpg/downloadindex.html they want you to fill out a small questionaire, but thats reasonable given the effort they put into the benchmark. Its quite fun to run as it draws wonderful things on your screen, I'm happy talking you through it. Sad to say that the download is fairly large.

Rick's done quite lot of research into this, I'm inclined to trust him on it. Drop down to 260 if need be, its still a very, very nice card. This is a i7 rig isn't it?

Sli means two nvidia cards, crossfire means two ati cards. Not worth it unless you're fairly obsessed with games, but your board will do either if you choose to later

Thanks, guess I could go for a 285 and drop the 128 SSD for a 64.... Which 285 do you recommend? Unless the Asus one is any good? somehow much cheaper than the other 285's, could still attempt to get 128gb SSD...

You keep editing! heh.. You seem to be manic about sound.. I find speakers help

Does watercooling help much, thinking future (way future)..

JonJ678 · 7 Jun 2009 at 19:46

Watercooling is far superior to air. Cools better, makes less noise. Keeping it all internal is a bit of a challenge, but part of why I chose the omega is that it's fairly well set up for water but isn't the standard answer people choose. To say it weighs a lot when full is an understatement. Step after that is chilled water, an idea I'm vaguely playing with. Depends on how good I can get with finite element analysis this summer.

Id choose the ssd over the graphics card, but as I'm well happy with an 8800gt that might not surprise you. I can't really recommend a 285, as when I upgrade it'll be to a 280gtx as that has a good chance of being flashed into an fx5800. I think a 260gtx will do you well, overclock it a little and youre away. There are two versions of it, I've seen mixed reviews as to which is better. The newer is die shrunk, so should be cooler. Apparently the heatsink it comes with is worse though, hard to be sure.

And another edit. I'm quite bothered by sound, most of the current effort is the result of my motherboard being on rma though. Deprived of a quick computer to play with I've turned to altering the case as subtly as possible to improve things.

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 20:14

Decided the best thing may be to drop the wd black for now... get the Asus 285 (cheap as discontinued - great deal therefore). I will then use my external WD my book hard drive as an internal (1TB 16mb cache, 480mbps... too crap? its for data as you pointed out before).. get to keep my 128 g skill in that scenario..

I dont understand how you an flash a card to make it rival better cards... Not exactly sure if thats what you're saying though!

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 20:32

Okay Jon, it's just you and me in this thread

(if you're still here of course).. I've decided just to stretch my budget (justified it against buying a new mac)... to get the 285 and the 128gb GSkill...
So can you check this spec please

+ 160GBP 128GB G.Skill SSD

JonJ678 · 7 Jun 2009 at 20:39

This makes sense actually. The my book will have a WD green sata drive inside, you can break the casing off it and you'll be left with an internal drive. I did this with my 500gb one when I needed another hard drive. You can use it through usb if need be, but this will be far slower than through sata.

The 8800gt is the same hardware as the fx3700, the only difference is the bios. So in that case, you can edit the bios to match the workstation card. Similarly the 280gtx is very similar to the fx5800, issue there is that the workstation card has more ram. This might make bios modding impossible, it'll certainly make it harder. Well worth a shot given the relative prices of the two cards. It all hinges around drivers, for the same hardware quadro drivers vastly improve performance in cad. Flashing the card is mainly a means of getting the quadro drivers to work with it. Performance improved a lot, thread is here if you're curious http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17995195

But yeah, Id probably turn the current external drive into an internal one. Running off my old 500gb my book now come to think about it. Performance is worse than a black drive, but for data its irrelevent

Ok, based on that spec, almost all looks good. What're you doing with case fans? I suspect the lian li comes with a load of fairly high quality ones. Does this mean you're putting two fans on the TRUE? If so, you'll want a Y fan splitter. Adding the second fan is good for a couple of degrees most times, I'd be inclined to only use one fan pushing based on the internal structure of the case. Will also save you 18 quid.

Further things you can do. Lapping the true will get you anything up to 5 degrees or so. Its fairly time consuming but well worth doing, it took quite a lot of effort for me to beat my lapped true with water.
You don't need to mount the ssd in one of the drive bays. Ive got mine attached to the back of my motherboard tray, as it doesn't get hot or vibrate you can put it anywhere. There were spare holes in the tray, so I put a screw through one of them into the mounting hole on the drive

tcody · 7 Jun 2009 at 20:50

JonJ678 said:
This makes sense actually. The my book will have a WD green sata drive inside, you can break the casing off it and you'll be left with an internal drive. I did this with my 500gb one when I needed another hard drive. You can use it through usb if need be, but this will be far slower than through sata.

The 8800gt is the same hardware as the fx3700, the only difference is the bios. So in that case, you can edit the bios to match the workstation card. Similarly the 280gtx is very similar to the fx5800, issue there is that the workstation card has more ram. This might make bios modding impossible, it'll certainly make it harder. Well worth a shot given the relative prices of the two cards. It all hinges around drivers, for the same hardware quadro drivers vastly improve performance in cad. Flashing the card is mainly a means of getting the quadro drivers to work with it. Performance improved a lot, thread is here if you're curious http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17995195

But yeah, Id probably turn the current external drive into an internal one. Running off my old 500gb my book now come to think about it. Performance is worse than a black drive, but for data its irrelevent

Ok, based on that spec, almost all looks good. What're you doing with case fans? I suspect the lian li comes with a load of fairly high quality ones. Does this mean you're putting two fans on the TRUE? If so, you'll want a Y fan splitter. Adding the second fan is good for a couple of degrees most times, I'd be inclined to only use one fan pushing based on the internal structure of the case. Will also save you 18 quid.

Further things you can do. Lapping the true will get you anything up to 5 degrees or so. Its fairly time consuming but well worth doing, it took quite a lot of effort for me to beat my lapped true with water.
You don't need to mount the ssd in one of the drive bays. Ive got mine attached to the back of my motherboard tray, as it doesn't get hot or vibrate you can put it anywhere. There were spare holes in the tray, so I put a screw through one of them into the mounting hole on the drive

Well you appear to be a genius.. Again you've given me room for another hdd! Yeah will definitely mount that somewhere else then!
Okay so your suggestion is to scrap a fan and "lap" the true... bear with me whilst I google what that is!