Project: Magus refit.

Ch3m1c4L · 6 May 2011 at 21:10

Ok, so I am finally upgrading after having the same rig for three years.

Current system:

New shiny bits

EK backplates haven't turned up, hoping they will arrive tomorrow :/

New Parts:
3x Asus GTX 480's
I7 930
Asus Ramage 3 extreme
12GB Corsair Vengence 1600mhz
EK Supreme HF
3x EK FCGTX480
EK R3E FC
5x Enermax UCTB12's.
some new fittings and clips for water cooling stuffs.

Parts being carried over:
Tagan PipeRock II 1300w
BlackIce StealthGT 2x120mm
Thermochill 120.3
Laing pumps
Ek res's
tubing
Zalman Fan controller
lighting and cables
60gb OCZ Vertex
8 port RAID card
Asus Xonar D2
2x Fractal 92mm Fans
RAID Bakplanes (fitted with UCTB80's)
Customized Silverstone TJ-07

I will hopefully be starting this tomorrow, and mange to do it without breaking anything/having anything DOA. I doubt I will get all the water done tomorrow, but hope to have it running with the GPU's on air by the end of the day.
I Am also going to try to do it a bit tidier this time, now Ive got more experience with this case and PSU etc so I know what the cables end up like once the system is finished.

Ch3m1c4L · 7 May 2011 at 20:32

Sorry guys, ended up not having any time today, spent it with my son instead

Technically its better since the EK backplates didnt arrive either, and I noticed some hose clips were the wrong size, so I will get them sorted and do it next weekend where I have like 3 days free.

Orcvader: thanks, the 930 and R3E were second hand, so cheaper than a 2500/2600k

Ch3m1c4L · 14 May 2011 at 23:17

Sorry for the poor picture quality, I left my camera in London so had to take these on my phone.

And so it begins. 11:25 am I had started draining the system.

most tubing taken out now.

Had a slight issue with trying to unclip the lower GPU as shown in this pic :/

But managed it

Dodgy build up from me not cleaning my loop over 3 years (had changed coolant though) using feser one green uv coolant.

Gutted system.

*Slight* build up of dust on the cpu rad lol, although it didnt seem to affect temps. I thought they were extracting, but they were intakes, now they are etracting like they should and have dust filters before the rad so I can easily clean it.

New fans on and cleaned.

New fans on the GPU rad and cleaned it etc.

CPU (top) rad installed again.

Mobo installed, although at this point you will notice I have forgotten the cpu and mobo blocks lol.

Getting there.

CPU Loop all tubed up and gpu loop in place in order to plan routing. Also have psu cables in place

CPU loop filled up.

I am a bit concerned that my UV RED coolant, doesnt glow at all under uv light?

GPU's installed but not under water yet

Cabling looks much better now, especially down the bottom.

Reason for gpu loop not having anti kink coils on yet, is that the RED primochill coils I got sent appear to be pink, so I am awaiting a replacement.

Lots of cables to the rear that need to be tied down a bit more

Still to do:
Test the system, as currently I havent even got a monitor on it, then put GPU's under water, as well as put anti kink coils on that loop. Add another molex output to the PSU so I can plug it into the additional power molex for the gpu's. Once this is done I can fit my soundcard and RAID card in properly. Benchmark, OC. Benchmark. Play shogun 2 and crysis warhead on higher settings than before, and bad company two with more aa and 15 more fps

Ch3m1c4L · 15 May 2011 at 15:13

splash anodizing in red and black, its available in any u want and each one is unique since its by hand

same place did the powder coating and custom mounts for all my stuff, and supplied all watercooling gubbins.

cookeh, do u mean good, bad, or lots still to do with the cable management?

Ch3m1c4L · 15 May 2011 at 22:30

i do have 10 hard drives plus an ssd in there, 9 fans, 3 gpus, 2 pumps, 3 led strips and a led spot light.

the red cables are from a raid card that has single connector to 4 sata, and i need 5 of them, so theres 3 extra that i could do without but cant remove them

and those cables are like 90cm long, and they only need to be about 20 cmd long lol.

Ch3m1c4L · 16 May 2011 at 11:26

oh yea, one fun issue, was after cleaning the pumps out, not noticing that one of the O rings had fallen out, until I filled up the res and wondered why all the red stuff was pooling in the bottom of my PC lol. When it drips slowly down your hand it also makes you think you have cut yourself :/ and then stains your hands pink

Edit: Thermochill site lists the red coolant as simply red, and not uv red, but the description says that it has uv dyes. and where I bought it from it is listed as UV.

Since it clearly isnt UV, is it safe to add a UV dye to the coolant, even though it says not to? Or should I just not be lazy/cheap and drain the system and put in some proper UV coolant?

Ch3m1c4L · 20 May 2011 at 21:09

Zero tweaking done, just drivers,windows and vantage installed. CPU OC was there when I booted up (second hand mobo/cpu). Havent changed any driver settings etc, or even my RAM BIOS settings yet. Going to put water blocks on the gpu's now I know they work, then get to tweaking drivers and ocing everything more. Will also get a copy of 3d mark 2011 at some point

Previous system with (QUAD)SLI 295's had P25160 3DMarks
Previous system with SLI 280s P21221 3DMarks
Previous system with single 295 had P18983 3DMarks

New system with TRI SLI

Ch3m1c4L · 21 May 2011 at 16:25

actually I was incorrect, one card is faulty

Today has been spent swapping stuff around etc but now with one of the cards connected in any slot via any psu cable the PSU lights flash and it doesnt power up, other two work fine.

No idea what happened, but googling has other people where the cards have died like this and its a power issue on the card, so I will RMA it this week and continue the build once I have the replacement card.

Ch3m1c4L · 21 May 2011 at 23:45

dont know what I did, but I got it working. Now all GPUS are under water, so far @ stock volts on 800/1600/2000 with the cpu at 4ghz. Took some pics of gpus etc and will be uploading them later.

Previous bench was with PPU enabled (didnt realise). Got 32k or something on a run with it disabled on the newer version of vantage, before overclocks.

got 11k on 2011 before clocking, currently getting around 13k.

Getting volts as low as I can for 4Ghz before going futher, as temps arent wonderful under prime load (81 after 30 minutes on hottest core). Think the change to slow silent fans has affected performance more than I wanted it to

GPU temps are at 50/51/65 under load, and idling at 37/38/42. Not sure why the 3rd one it so much hotter, although one card does have a different BIOS version so I will be looking at flashing that as I guess that could be it? It isnt just the core that is that much higher, the diode and memory are also a similar % hotter, unless its just cause of my soundcard being near it, although that was in between my 295'S and they all had the same temp ~2C.

Power draw with cpu at 3.5ghz and GPU's at stock peaked at 956w in 3dmark 2011, after clocking it is now over 1Kw and I cant see it, as the fan controller thing can only display up to 999w :/

What sort of clocks can I expect to get out of the CPU/GPU's, and rough volts for them?

Ch3m1c4L · 22 May 2011 at 22:48

I didnt remember lol, I know where things that have mounts go ete. The reason the cabling got so bad in there was as I added things, being too lazy to drain loops in order to be able to feed cables through the holes. It is looking much nicer now though

will finish off cable management next weekend and post the pics up, and the rest of the build log. Im on it now, testing out oc's and stuff

Ch3m1c4L · 27 May 2011 at 23:46

The finished product. I do have some pics from the last stages, but it is just me putting water blocks on and they were on my phone, so bad quality. If someone requests them I will upload them, but otherwise I wont bother. Currently running the CPU at 4.0 Ghz, with bump in voltage to 1.28 from 1.25, gpus at 800/1600/2000 with stock volts.
Cpu runs a little ware, and I can feel the radiator get very hot, so I think the silent fans i stuck on arent that great for on radiators. GPU's seem ok, well two of them are fine, the third runs far hotter than the first two and I am currently unsure why.

Haveny fully decided about the anti kin coils so far, may remove them, may add more, will see what I feel like as it sits next to me for a while