My New Q6600 & 8800 GT SLi Build (56k No Way)

Van_Dammesque · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:16

I have upgraded my computer to a Q6600 G0 and 8800GT (PoV) in Sli with 4Gb (2x 2Gb) of OCZ memory. All on a 680i EVGA board! With a 620W Corsair PSU. (EDIT: also in between the GFX cards is a Creative X-Fi Xtreme gamer)

All fitting into a Super LANBoy case!!!

I am reusing my watercooling setup. With the fans I had which could have the lights turned off and the speed of the fans were also controlled.

Feel free to ask questions!

First the computer at stock to test it:

Note the messy wires and the rheostats at the back!

Next the CPU watercooler as I took it out:

This shows the cooler is a standard Asetek Antartica (s939), which I will mod to fit the Socket T motherboard.

Now I stripped the gfx cards:

the cooler:

I used an EK fullcover watercooling block for the GT's:

The waterblock is nice and shiny, but I could not lap it since the main GPU part is at a different height to the rest of the ram and power converter chips.

Now I had lying around some ram heatsinks so I had the idea of using them to cool the MOSFETS on the GFX card, here they both are:

Going by this pic I used Arctic adhesive to attach the heatsinks:

The next step was to lap my CPU and CPU heatsink, I'm glad I did as when I started it clearly showed that both were far from flat!
1st the CPU cooler:

Then to lap it:

As you can see the shadow in the middle a bow stick out!

Van_Dammesque · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:17

The prept CPU:

Again not very flat as seen by this half way stage pic:

Don't be concerned about the wetness, all parts were thoroughly covered with a robust piece of plastic and the masking tape was replaced several times during lapping to make sure nothing was seeping through!
Now both together after lapping!

The CPU heatsink was still curved but not in the region were it covered the CPU so I was happy with that.
You can also see hack-sawed piece on the CPU to enable the cooler to fit around the components on the motherboard!
The DIY mounting is shown here:

This showed it needed to be moved to the left a touch. The CPU heatsink is mounted onto bolts which are then attached to acrylic oblong-shaped spacer (hack-sawed from my chipset cooler block

), which in turn are mounted upon four bolts on the motherboard! Doesn't look great but gets the job done and you can not really see it when it is fully built! The bottom left corner is fixed with a standard asetek bolt.

I used two rads in my last build and had one spare so I implemented the third and mounted it on the outside of the case:

The pipes were fed through a dedicated PCI-bracket to make things nice and neat! You can also see the cable tidying compared to the first pic!

After separate leak testing it was all powered up:

Van_Dammesque · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:17

Fan lights turned off:

Pic of the door panel open with the Zalman controller (unfortunately when I purchased the SATA drives, no silver ones were in stock, nevermind!)

Preliminary results:
After some failing with the overclocking the CPU (needed to flash the bios to P31) I'm at 3.3 GHz (Vcore 1.33 underload), the Gfx cards are 685/1745/1050. The temps are:
CPU Idle (35 C) and load (55 C, with a very hot room so the ambient temps are high!).
For the GFX: Idle is 38 C and load is 42 C (!!!), so plenty of head room to go! (and I will look into volt modding the cards)
My 3D Mark 06 is 17200!
I'll post back later in the relevant thread for my 3d mark and the Quad database.

MoBo · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:21

Nice picture thread of your build.

El Jimben · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:22

Nice job Van_Dammesque, that's a great looking rig

Van_Dammesque · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:26

Cheers! It was my pet project over the Xmas holidays! It took about ten days in total, but I was taking my time, especially lapping!

prosser13 · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:27

Great mounting idea for the CPU block!

RJC · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:33

Excellent job, looks pretty good

, are the EK'S fairly good as I am thinking about
putting my GTX in my loop.

Rob

Van_Dammesque · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:34

prosser13 said:
Great mounting idea for the CPU block!

When I first bought the motherboard I thought I could directly mount it, but no. I emailed Asetek for a Socket - T cooler lid but that was a month ago and no reply as yet, so decided I couldn't wait and descriptions online of the intel watercooler specs doesn't specifically mention socket-T's so I decided to mod it myself, saved few quid too!

Van_Dammesque · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:36

RJC said:
Excellent job, looks pretty good , are the EK'S fairly good as I am thinking about
putting my GTX in my loop.

Rob

The GTX version are cheaper! They are a quality piece of kit, I was going to go with a GPU cover and seperate heatsinks but had visions of them falling off and shorting, lol. The full cover does and excellent job, with these you don't have to mount the MOSFET (black bit on the end) part either. (They don't come with pushins or barbs, just the blanking screws.)

RJC · 7 Jan 2008 at 22:41

I had that problem on my 1900XT when I watercooled them, the seperate heatsinks kept falling off every time you knocked the case or it got a bit warm.

I might invest in one next pay day, cheers.

Rob

easyrider · 7 Jan 2008 at 23:19

Very nice!

MeatLoaf · 7 Jan 2008 at 23:27

Have you put the SLI bridge on the GFX cards? Didnt see it

Fireskull · 7 Jan 2008 at 23:32

MeatLoaf said:
Have you put the SLI bridge on the GFX cards? Didnt see it

Yea i think you can just see it on one of the pics at the end.

Nice build Btw.

Van_Dammesque · 7 Jan 2008 at 23:38

MeatLoaf said:
Have you put the SLI bridge on the GFX cards? Didnt see it

heh heh, I didn't at first, but it was put on later.

MeatLoaf · 7 Jan 2008 at 23:41

Van_Dammesque said:
heh heh, I didn't at first, but it was put on later.

Ah ha, i knew i wasnt blind :cool:

Very nuce rig by the way. Youd be be suprised what you can squeeze into a lanboy. I had one with a 7900GT SLI rig in there

RichL · 8 Jan 2008 at 01:01

looks great, excellent lapping.