Tiger Style: Build log

w3bbo · 4 Mar 2008 at 01:24

Pumps

As previously stated I wanted to stick with the DDC pumps but to get the most out of them you need to us the top inlets and as my previous mounts had the pumps mounted verticlly I wouldn't be able to utilise both top inlets. A friend however sorted me out with a nifty bracket which I had powder coated to match the case.

This enabled me to fit the pumps side by side allowing me to use the top inlets and as an added bonus allowing me to fit a few more HD's should I need to in the future by utilising the free space above the pumps. The bracket fits onto a fan which is in turn fitted onto the PA120.2 on the guts side of the UFO.

I still wanted the pumps to be as silent as possible and although they don't give off much sound they can vibrate slightly which can be transfered through the case and then onto the desk. To counter this I fitted some anti vibration mounts.:

Anyone keen eyed enough to spot the mistake here (apart from the missing barbs!).

And here they are mounted in the case :

They just fit together and in hindsight maybe the petras or EK pump tops would have been an easier choice but I have further plans for the tops which will appear later in the build log

.

w3bbo · 4 Mar 2008 at 02:10

Close but no cigar m8. The wattage of the bases dosn't match the impellors of the pumps

(although it does now after the pump mod of course!).

I'm just in the middle of writing the next part of the log m8 and uploading pics but bedtime is calling lol.

w3bbo · 4 Mar 2008 at 02:15

Stripping the Blitz

My weapon of choice for this build is the Asus Blitz Extreme. I was fortunate enough to win this motherboard which is renown for being the one of, if not the best P35 board around. I had the blitz formula previously (DDR2) and its an overclockers wet dream. It has all the settings you could want from a bios and then some! It got my previous quad to 4ghz P95 stable so I know how capable they are but this board is the DDR3 version so we shall see later how well it performs - fingers crossed.

Heres the board as it comes stock :

As you can see it comes with a pre-attached waterblock on the NB, which while effective and a lot better than traditional aircooling, it's also very restrictive and will kill the flow. While its great to see a major board manufacturer like asus to be innovative and consider enthusiasts needs, it seems to me to be a little short sighted that after providing a waterblock they use thermal concrete to badly mount it which will negate a lot of the cooling effect it has. Still something is better than nothing so big credit to Asus there.

So I needed to strip the heatsink off to get some decent thermal paste on the chipsets. The pain here is that you cannot take the nb alone off. The NB is connected to both the mosfets and the SB which inturn also cools the crosslinx via a heatpipe assembly. So that makes the whole thing a tad more difficult, anyway heres the board naked :

The heatpipe was a SOB to get off. I don't think the thermal paste(or cement as I prefer to call it!) asus used is designed to allow multiple mounts. After unclipping the push through pins, the trick to remove the heatpipe (which is the same method that should be used for maximus users) is to heat the assembly up with a hairdryer. This should loosen the cement enough for it to become pliable. DON'T pull the heatsink assembly, you need to twist it gently if you are considering doing the same. Pulling it will most likely damage the board by either ripping the NB clean away from the board ( I have seen pics of this!) or chipping the die - either way your board will be little more than a doorstop if you do this.

Pics of the naked chipset to follow:

w3bbo · 4 Mar 2008 at 02:16

Northbridge

South bridge

Crosslinx chip

Cleaning the cement off also took some effort. I found that IPA just didn't cut the mustard and I had more success with some Acetone.

w3bbo · 4 Mar 2008 at 10:11

Aye, Isopropyl Alchohol. I have some akasa tim clean which is citrus smelling but it also appears to be oil based iirc which defeats the object imo.

The mod for the pins I didn't do any crimping. I just took the motherboard headers of an old office case (I always rip them apart for spares

) and soldered them onto the end of the existing wire. The led wires just slot straight in. I guess a little solder here wouldn't go amiss but like I said previous I don't want them to be permanent.

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 00:42

Lol I didn't know thats what IPA stood for! I was thinking it was a brand name like SERVISOL

Thats the exact same stuff I use. It aint 100% alcohol but its pretty close.

Hmmm your meaning that microscopic particles of the oil will seep into the surface of the now clean & de-cemented chipset, therefor acting as a barrier between the actual surface and your newly applied premium goo!

Yup. Pretty anal I know but when you spend every last penny on the best cooling available, lap a cpu and risk killing it I can't see the point of not cleaning the cpu as best you can.

Did you test that motherboard first before you attacked it or did you just remove its brand new wrapper and maul it?

Nah, I always test it first before forfeiting the warranty. If it boots up - it works.

Lastly do you own a heatgun? I bought one a couple of months ago and it makes such a difference when your doing a load of braiding/heatshrinking, and from what you stated above this tool could also be pretty useful at warming up the heatsinks prior to attack?

Heatguns are perfect for the braiding but I wouldn't buy one for just that purpose - not when a 50p lighter can do the same job

I still don't 'get' how you managed to remove the heatsink assemble? You quickly heated up all the heatsink blocks and then wiggled each one in turn or?

I just pointed a hairdryer on full heat about 50cm away from the board for about 1 minute. Just be carefull not to heat the chips up too much, if you can get the copper to just below 'ouch' point then its good to go.

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 00:58

To 'clothe'' the blitz I wanted to use EK blocks all round. Unlike the maximus there are no mosfet blocks available. This is probably a good thing as the mosfet blocks are flow killers and have little/no effect on overclocking anyway, so I had to come up with something else to cool them - more on that later.

For the NB and SB I DID find some EK blocks but the SB would need to be modded. ANyway, here are the blocks (EK Asus 1 NB/SB).

The finish on the blocks were a little scuffy so I gave them a quick lap and they are like mirrors now.

Sexy huh?

Right this is where things got tricky. The SB block needed modding to fit due to some capacitors that were in the way so out came the trusty modders tool (Read: Dremmel) and I nibbled the acetel away to allow a good fit.

Fits like a glove now with no clearence issues at all.

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 01:17

Because the mosfets were also cooled by the heatpipe assembly I had to change that and the only viable solution was to use a thermalright HR-09S. This is what comes with the kit:

The base of the cooler was a little too long tho so again it needed modding to fit with about 2cm dremelled away. Fits fine now.

I used the pads that came with the heatsink as using paste is a little tricky as there are a few resistors that are a little higher than the mosfets themselves which would otherwise be crushed.

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 09:58

So the last bit of prepping the board was the crosslinx chip. This chip dosn't get hot but Asus saw fit to cool it so who am I to argue. The problem I had is that it only has one hole for the pushthru pins. Enzotech to the rescue!:

I used the enzotech BMR-C1 ramsinks as IMO they are superior to the very similar swiftech MC14 sinks in that they have a larger surface area (20 pins vs 16).

The last little section of the board I wanted to cool was the PLL chip as this can get toasty and is the last section of the board that I saw fit to cool. Unfortunately its directly inline with the top PCIE slot so it needed to be a small sink - I used one of the low profile Zalman sinks for this.

With the board prepped I finally feel as though I', actually getting somewhere with this build at last!

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 10:22

So onwards and upwards they say.

CPU prep

I am going to hold out a little for the QX prices to come down a little (hopefully) and unless I can pick up a bargain in the meantime the cpu I will be using is the Q6600 G0. This little baby is a 45A 'Golden' stepping and has a 1.225vid so it should clock pretty well - as always though its a bit of a lottery.

My only hope is that it clocks as well as my previous cpu and can get 4ghz stable with a lower vcore. I heard these chips can run hot so it was time for a little lapping.

Yup - massively concave as I suspected. Heres how I lap my CPU's. There are a few variances in the various lapping guides out now and I don't really want to go in how it should or shouldn't be done - I have tried most ways and here is what worked best for me :

Tools needed :

400,800,1200,1500,2000 wet'n'dry paper (NOT sandpaper).

Metal Polish

Sheet of glass

Same masking tape.

Prep you surface.
You need a flat surface - glass is perfect for this. I taped the 400 paper onto a sheet of glass. Glass from a photo frame ort mirror is fine if you dont have any other glass to hand.

Prep your IHS
I taped off the 'vent' (dunno what its really called but its the notch bit on the IHS) on the CPU. I also tape the cpu plastic protector plate to the underside of the cpu. Basicly you are preventing any ingress of dust or water to the sensitive bits of the cpu.

Start lapping
Now this is the controversial part. I sand my cpu's down using it dry, a lot of people use it wet but I get better results using it dry. The only problem with using it dry is there is a risk of getting copper/nickel dust inside the cpu IHS, but there is a chance of getting water and dust in with it wet but aslong as you tape it off then it'll be fine.

Method
I use the up down for 30 seconds then twist 90 degrees and repeat method, until it gets it flat. It dosn't matter imo whether you use the figure of 8 method or up'n'down - both have the same effect. Just make sure you apply an even amount of pressure to the back of the cpu. You can tell its pretty much flat as all the nickel plating will have gone. It will however look very 'scratchy' so then we go onto the 800 grade paper and so on and so on. After each change of paper make sure you clean the cpu, this stops any further scratching from the lower grade paper when you advance to the higher grade of paper. Each time the scratches will appear less and less until you have a dull shine. Now you can honestly leave it at around 800 grade as it should be flat but it's a little unsightly. You can check if it's flat by using the reflection of the surface with something like venetian blinds or anything that has multiple vertical lines. I use graph paper which works well and shows up any inperfections. Bare in mind the aim of the game is to get the CPU IHS flat, mirror finish is just a by product and not neccesary for low temps.

Mirror finish
I however, like to keep going until I get a mirror finish. This will make no difference to the temps but looks so much better and will get you extra e-peen points.
Once you have got as far as you can with the paper you need to then use a liquid polish/paste which will bring out the shine of the copper. a lot of people will advise against this as in effect you are filling all the microscopic crevices with paste where thermal compound should go which is bad BUT aslong as you buff the paste off and then clean the CPU off with isopropyl alcohol THOROUGHLY, its fine.

Remove the tape and your results should be similar to mine along with your load temps being much lower:

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 11:17

CPU Block + mount

Having tried and being very impressed with the D-Tek fusion I was hesitant to try anything different but as I already had EK NB + SB blocks it would be criminal not to also use EK for the CPU block so I took a risk and went for the Supreme by EK.

Reviews show it to be slightly ahead of the D-tek in terms of temps but as the next picture shows the internals - while gorgeous to look at and extremely well engineered, certainly look to be restrictive :

Once more EK makes a fine job of the base with a perfect bowed but mirror finish:

As I only plan at this time to have the cpu on its own loop the restrictiveness of the block won't effect cpu temps negatively.

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 11:34

Now while the EK mounting plate offers multiple mounts the sheer size of it also makes it incompatible with some boards, mine bing one of them. The problem is that the plate comes into contact with the mosfet cooling around the cpu sockets and the only way to fit it is to have the block vertical which is less than ideal as it then runs perpendicular to the cores on the cpu. Luckily there is an optional bracket that you can buy for skt 775 which is much smaller.

Sprayed black :

As I wanted as little chrome as possible in attempt to keep to the black/orange theme I decided to spray mine black. Here's a shot of both mounts, the original one being uppermost and modded one on the block :

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 11:37

I tested 2 of my favourite sets of paste ShinEtsu MicroSI and some MX2. Previous I have found ShinEtsu to be better but after giving both sets of paste a trial run on air the MX2 proved to be slightly better. There probably isn't much in it tbh and the 1c difference could simply be down to mounts used as it wasn't a very controlled test it was more to satisfy my curiosity.

It looks like there is quite a lot of paste on here but thats just a trick of the camera. The paste is vertually transparent its applied that thinly :

and with the now sprayed and modded EK mounting plate attached, the block was attached which looks rather svelt in black if I do say so myself

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 12:13

Pics were taken with another toy of mine - a Canon 400D with the 18-55 lens. I'm still learning how to use it as its a lot more complex than what I'm used to but the pics do come out well, even when compressed for webhosting.

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 17:04

Not any specific budget but I don't wish to go overboard and it definately aint a 'money no object' build. I sold a lot of my previous kit of at a profit or broke even which along with the free motherboard has given me some cash to play with. Some of the kit such as the PSU and case was ported over from my previous build which has saved me some cash. As I always say - buy quality - buy once

. I have been stung too many times cheaping out on components so where I can I prefer to buy the best I can afford. I was offered partial sponsorship for this rig but sadly it wasn't sufficient enough to get me to pimp other companies sites not that the offer was unwelcome of course as I'm always open to offers.

The thing that has cost me most is time. This build, with all the little difficulties I have run into, and the little tedious mods have taken a lot of time to overcome but I guess thats part of the enjoyment of custom PC ownership

.

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 18:18

shadowscotland said:
Hours spend enjoying results > Hours spend doing at task

I hope you're right m8 - just the sort of encouragement I needed after todays little episodes tbh.

Will_3rd said:
Wow your builds never cease to amaze me

Very kind of you

Lighting pt1

I originally planned to go all black with black tubing for this build with some descrete white lighting but as the U2-UFO is more of an 'in your face' case I think it looks a little sterile for my tastes with such sublime styling.

So as the name suggests I have gone for an orange and black look. Sourcing orange lighting is a total pain and I see now why it isn't a very popular colour to go for. Just about the only lighting I could find are orange led's and even those wern't pre wired so I decided to do it myself

.

I picked up a few LED's from ******s and scrounged a few of a couple of friends. Some turned out to be amber coloured which didn't really suit my needs others were the ones I was looking for so on with the testing. I intended to use the LED's in the alphacool pumps and the bayres's to light up the plexiglass as without any lighting or UV fluid plexi will look dull so here goes:

Heres a template of the 2 bayres's I intend using with the holes marked for the led's :

With the wires cut to length I temp attached them to the led's along with a resistor and then wired it up to 12v and ground on the molex (yellow and black).

Once soldered up and sleeved I then went about fitting the led's to the res which is pretty much the look I was hoping for

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 19:50

Lighting pt2

Cathodes.

Apart from the obligitory UV cathodes (AC Ryan x4) which will hopefully show up some orange UV I have going on inside the case I wanted to light up the fan grills so the fans on the front look orange but dont look 'cheap' like the thermaltake fans. I know you can gt orange yates but they didn't look right in my rig.

So I came up with the idea of using orange cathodes inside the fan shroud - problem being that orange cathodes are hard to come by so the nearest I could get were red. When I say 'red' I should say advertised as red but were more like pink. Never mind I just used some yellow permanent marker pen and gave the cathodes a few coats and now they are looking more orange. Still perhaps more red than orange but they were a lot better than when they were stock.

I fitted them each side of the shroud behind the fans and fan grills/filter so they shine through the fans without being too obtrusive.

I'm still not totally convinced and I might even go for a set of white cathodes and use some orange vinyl to get the desired effect but they will do for the time being.

w3bbo · 5 Mar 2008 at 20:18

I decided to treat myself with this build and bought a couple of new HD's.

I have heard some good reports about the new 32mb 7200.11's so I plumped for a pair to be used in Raid 0. I also hear these drives are quiet but I have my doubts they are as quiet as my current spinpoints but nonetheless I mounted them as I had previously done, using anti vibration rubber mounts which, if there is any, should cut down on any chatter the drives make.

I also have another drive nestled inbetween to use as a data drive. These hard drives were then mounted to a fan using MM's own hard drive rack which is a handy little bit of kit as this serves to keep them running nice and cool.

w3bbo · 6 Mar 2008 at 21:43

Tubing So this is where it starts to take shape now....finally!

I originally planned to use feser dye in the loop to get a nice orange glow to the tubes but the feser I used previously didn't turn out to be the orange I was looking for, more like murky green/brown if you ask me :

It may just have been a bad batch though as other feser products I have used have been fine. So reluctant to try another bottle the solution was to use XSPC orange tubing which glows nicely under UV. I would be using two loops though which meant I really needed (or rather wanted) to distinguish between the two loops. The only other colour I could really choose was black. So here they are :

Still got a lot of work to do yet but it's nice to see a little clolour in there at last.

w3bbo · 6 Mar 2008 at 21:53

I like the look of the fat tubing as thin tubing just looks 'wimpy' imo. But as we all know a Tiger has stripes so I used some primo coils to get the look I was after :