Project: AirRAID

Case Build - Part 2

Onwards!

11installbegins.jpg

Good shot of the case and the beginning of cable tidying. First, you can see the removed hard drive bays in the background - I removed them to improve the airflow in the case. Secondly, it really pays to think about cable tidying right from the start of any build. I've used black electrical tape as a cheap 'braid' on my bares wire cabling, its surprising effective and takes 2 minutes to apply.

12frontfans.jpg

Another Imageshack "I've re-rotated your photo for you" :(
Anyways, front case fans got installed on the supplied rubber mounts. These work really well.

13frontfans2.jpg

They look even better lit up ;)

14mbnbremount.jpg

Ok, back to the motherboard. I was never really happy with the mounting of the northbridge heatsink, so removed it and cleaned up the board. This time I mounted it using the pushpins method - its seems more secure and less prone to moving around.

15nbpushpins.jpg

You can just see below the VX the pushpin used for the NB Heatsink install here.... but I'm getting ahead of myself here :)

16vxfaninstall.jpg

120mm Enermax Cluster installed on the Venomous X. Enermax fans were used through out the build.

17vxfanzip.jpg

I learned from the first install I needed to use zip ties to keep the fan on the VX, thanks to the mosfet install on the motherboard. So rather than having a clip on one side and a ziptie the other, I just use white zipties on both sides and it looks better for it.

18fanon.jpg

Fan tested sperately just to make sure its working and its not catching on any HS fins etc...

19mbfanholder.jpg

Here's the fan holder from the HD Hotswap bay, being re-used for another fan mount inside the case.

20mbinstall.jpg

And there we go, motherboard finally makes it back in to the case.

Still more to come!
 
Case Build - Part 3

Glad the thread filled over to another page.... here's more!

21mbinstall2.jpg

More fans get installed - The rear case fan, the motherboard fan as well as the rear 80mm Northbridge 'extractor' fan... the motherboard 120mm is prime positioned to blow more air at the northbridge...

22mbfaninstall.jpg

Close up of the motherboard / tray cut / mb Fan holder install...

23rearfans.jpg

A slight repositioning of the 80mm fan means its not jammed between the mosfet and VX, allowing for better mosfet contact and also less dispersion of the VX airflow over the mosfets.

24raidinstall.jpg

Time for the raid card install. Due to the wiring getting a little tricky for the Xonar Sound Card and the PERC card around the southbridge heatsink, I spent a fair bit of time getting the wiring right here...

25fantest1.jpg

Ok, all the fan cooled components were in so it was time to get the PSU mounted and test the fans to make sure they were all working before powering up the rig later.

26fantest2.jpg

More fan test goodness :)

27fantest3.jpg

Curse you Imageshack! :D But thats the front fan filters in place.

28raidcable.jpg

In this also-rotated-90deg-darn-photo this is the SFF-8484 to Sata fanout cable in place. Its only 50cm long, I'm currently looking for another cable thats much longer so I can hide it too...

Even more to come!!
 
Case Build - Part 4

Getting there....

29cabling1.jpg

Now fans are tested, time start routing cable behind the motherboard tray and through the cutouts as needed.

30cabling2.jpg

Another 90deg'er. But I can fit the ATX power cable through a cutout comfortably here, as well as the necessary cables lower down for the Case switches, Floppy power for the sound card and ofther bits..

31cabling3.jpg

Another 90deg'er. This is the top of the case, some room above the SATA Drive for hiding cables too....

32cabling4.jpg

Another 90deg'er. Managed to get 5 SATA power routed around the case nicely, despite not routing around the rear of the case motherboard.

33secretsauce.jpg

And theres the secret sauce. A rolls worth of electrical tape, and some clever placements of cable and the majority of the mess is hidden behind the motherboard. You can see on the right side as well where all of the the fan 7v power connectors are as well.

Ok, I've run out of photos now, buts theres still some more to come... the finishing touches as well as the side window and finish shots!
 
Cant belive i missed this thread!

Awesome and origional build Arthalen. Will be one heavy PC when finished, you should pop it on the scales!

Im looking forward to see how this will OC with all the extra chipset cooling. If it comes close to a custom WC loop in terms of cooling ill be very impressed.

Look forward to seeing more mate :)
 
Cant belive i missed this thread!

Awesome and origional build Arthalen. Will be one heavy PC when finished, you should pop it on the scales!

Im looking forward to see how this will OC with all the extra chipset cooling. If it comes close to a custom WC loop in terms of cooling ill be very impressed.

Look forward to seeing more mate :)

Ahh cheers dude :D

You'd be surprised how light it actually is! After stripping out some of the non-essential case peices, its easy to move around.

I've finished messing around with the RAID setup (settled for a mind boggling 550MB/s sequential read speed RAID-0 :P ), I'm getting to overclocking again.

Anyways, here's some more photos....
 
Case Build - Part 4

Ok, here's where I've gotten to now...

img0172s.jpg

Asus Xonar DX Soundcard squished in between the ATI 5850 and the PERC5/i. Squeezing in the floppy power cable was.... interesting!

img0173ac.jpg

ATI 5850 also made it in comfortably, with the dual power cables threading through the motherboard cutout nicely.

img0175ss.jpg

Wallah! One built PC with no cable clutter (apart from the RAID Card cable, lol).

img0176bp.jpg

Nop,e Im not hiding cables at the top either, as this shot shows! (Well, not much anyways :P )

img0177kj.jpg

(Thank you Imageshack!) Front shot of the case with aluminium fascia fitted...

img0178iq.jpg

Arrghh! Thats it, bug report sent to Imageshack. Anyways, here it is all light up like a Christmas Tree Fairy!


img0179ff.jpg

And one purely from the side...

So, thats how it looks now. The last mod to do is the Side Window, but until I source a proper Jigsaw to do that last Mod then it'll be open case for a while. Its off the ground so no little fingers will be poking it :)

Now, on to the Overclocking and seeing just what I can get out of this thing.....
 
Looking really good! "Jealous" Love the look of all those fans!!! :)
Quick question, how hot does the raid card get? because looking at your gfx card, it looks a little cramped for air intake. Would popping the fan from the raid card onto the southbridge heatsink provide the gfx card with some 'fresher' air so to speak, or would it mess up the air flow in the case? Might reduce the gfx card temp a little. Just a thought.
 
Looking really good! "Jealous" Love the look of all those fans!!! :)
Quick question, how hot does the raid card get? because looking at your gfx card, it looks a little cramped for air intake. Would popping the fan from the raid card onto the southbridge heatsink provide the gfx card with some 'fresher' air so to speak, or would it mess up the air flow in the case? Might reduce the gfx card temp a little. Just a thought.

Hehe, thanks! :D

The RAID card is absolutely fine, the heatsink is cool and the backside of the card is 'just' warm, so I have no worries there. a lot of its heat is generated by the Intel IOPS processor, and that huge Thermalright keeps it tamed easily :D

As for the GPU and strapping an 80mm fan to the Southbridge - its a good idea, and I have a spare 80mm Enermax Cluster. I'll look at that when I come to GPU overclocking, but in all honesty, the 5850 is tearing through everything I throw at it :D

I think that main HDD cage could be easily modified for notably lower airflow impedance if you need more HDDs at some point.

Absolutely, and the RAID card can take another 4 hard drives (8 Drive RAID-0 madness ?!?). I just never liked the sideways orientation of the drives, so decided to get maximal airflow for now by removing that cage and re-using the Hotswap bay.

Use TinyPic instead of Imageshack - Imageshack has always been slow compared to TinyPic.

Great tip - will take a look :D
 
yeh sorry I meant the IOPS processor - dunno what i was thinking!
Looking forward to seeing what you can squeeze out of it!
 
Well, I got some basic software installed this morning to check temperatures and the like, and its been running at 3.0Ghz with ease while I've been messing with it, hopefully tonight I'll give it a good whipping into shape and hit the promised land of above 3.6ghz.

Interesting note: With the NB remount, its now idling at 45C after booting to windows. The CPU was idling at 22C after booting into windows :D
 
nice work!! good to see all that Thermalright kit paid off! I have yet to break the 4.0GHz boundary but maybe an investment in some thermalright might do it. ;)
 
Thanks for the kind comments guys, but the bad news is I don't have a flying chance of getting it stable at 4.0Ghz unfortunately.

My self imposed Vcore limit is 1.65v, and I'm at that now running Prime95 SmallFFT test at 3.75Ghz. I've been backing down from 4.0Ghz step by step and running the small FFT test to ensure that my CPU is stable at the rated overclock before moving on to check NB and Memory stability.

My experience tells me that if I can get two hours stable Prime SmallFFT, I'm looking at a possible 24/7 overclock. Especially as most of the time I'll never max out the CPU as much as what Prime does.

Temperature wise, the Q6600 is loving it - even now its just scratching 70c (these chips are rated upto 100C :eek:), idle wise its at the 30c mark. To me, thats absolutely fine.

One thing of note was I was surprised to hear a fan spin up to max when I'm doing the Small FFT testing - its the PSU Fan, so I know I'm putting the PSU under a lot of load for it to heat enough to have to kick in full whack.

Here's my current settings:

CPU Ratio: 9.0x
FSB Frequency: 417Mhz
FSB Strap to NB: 333mhz
PCIE Frequency: 100Mhz
DRAM Frequency: 1,000Mhz
Command Rate: 2T

CPU Voltage (Vcore): 1.65 BIOS Set, 1.635 in Windows
CPU PLL Voltage: 1.74v
NB Voltage: 1.73v
DRAM Voltage: 2.30v
FSB Termination Voltage: 1.56v
SB Voltage: 1.15v
SB 1.5v Voltage: 1.55v

Loadline Calibration Enabled
CPU GTL Reference: 0.63x
NB GTL Reference: 0.67x

I haven't given up totally on 4.0Ghz yet - I may be missing something (GTL Reference/FSB Termination voltage?) on the voltage settings besides lots of Vcore to get the 4.0Ghz. Atleast I know it will boot into Windows and be stable long enough for me to get the screenshot :eek::D

I'll keep posting back with results as they come.
 
Back
Top Bottom