The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

If you mean pirated version, the game was cracked the day it was released with good success.

 

Well...I wouldnt have put it that way but...:O

 

Is that the flame symbol from Speedfan in your sig?

 

As a matter a fact. I thought I would spice up the sig a little! Thats not some form of infringement is it. If so, I shall have to find a new flame!

 

OM7 and Sam

well it looks like we are trying start a small HAF club

 

I see nothing wrong with that The HAF is nothing short of amazing!!!
Sam, if you have the money, and the painting skills? LOL BUY IT! But then, I believe your several steps ahead of me in the computer realm! So im sure you have something in mind

 

OM7

if you were telling sam to buy it he already has. see below.

 

He wont regret it. Atleast in its performance. The looks may be a different story. Myself I love its Gothic appeal LOL. Though I think i'll give the front fan an ultraviolet look

I love speedfan alot. I will not insult them by steeling their flame. I found a new one, and sized it appropriately!

 

Hey guys, omegaman and sam. I never come over here - but just this one time ......

MY NEW LAPTOP
I'm on my new laptop from Microcenter. Unbelievable value - $275 for a refurbished laptop that sold originally for $1900. No Vista bloatware - XP Professional just like on all my desktops, and 1.6 ghz - fast enough for my business applications and internet surfing.

SAM'S NEW HAF
Anyway, on the laptop, I just upgraded it to IE7 with tabs, but I don't have my bookmarks and I can't find the official graphics card thread - well it's late and I'm tired (and freezing in the house - not in my toasty warm heated trailer-office, lol). But I see that here on the builder thread - or is this the overclocking thread - you guys are talking cases - and Sam is looking at a HAF, but is DEAD BROKE, having gone through two months of dual 4870x2 hell.

The dead broke part is kind of funny, but the 4870x2 hell is not - tremendous tenacity trying to get the thing to run stable. Maddening frustration!

MY NEW SPEDO!!
Anyway, this post is about the case trade I just made today at Microcenter. I took my Antec 1200 back and traded for a Thermaltake Spedo. Don't laugh! - it's the only case they had at the Tustin store, other than the Antec 900 2, that had more than 7 expansion slots, and I was 35 days into my 1200 case and when I read the receipt for the first time last night I saw that they don't allow exchanges after 30 days.

So I told myself, after staying up doing research following Sam's earthshaking news, that I would just have to sell the thing on ebay. But I took a chance this afternoon - dressed up a bit - and the guy was sympathetic when I told him I had to do a case trade.

And then when I went back inside later to look around, I told them that I had been looking for a while at their refurbished Dell 610s, except that the specs show no wireless. The one salesman there said - "Oh it's got it for sure" - and they dug deeper past the public specs and came up with a G built-in wireless card.

And now I'm as broke as Sam!! And eating peanut butter and jelly - that was my grocery money, hahaha.

Anyway, Sam, after that shocking news yesterday about your temporary retreat from dual 4870x2, I went around the web until 4:00 this morning, and found only a couple of people who were running it stable. From what I could tell, it seemed that every one of them was on the Rampage II Extreme x58 (also several dual 295s on the same mobo) - and in one case where the guy posted pictures it is obvious that he was running the second sapphire in the 7th slot (which is 8x by the way, not 16x, I read the manual to be sure.) (Speaking of that picture - all of a sudden I am seeing A LOT of copper - LOOK AT IT - where the hell did all that goddamn copper come from? There is so much copper there it is waking me up!! The Rampage Extreme II x58 Motherboard has muted, cool, stylish, blue and gray, race car, Republic of Gamers ROG colors. Right? But just look at all those sinks that crazy canuck plastered all over the board! WTF!!! I guess he wasn't taking any chances on chipset overheating!! So I guess I'll have to do the same damn thing lol. Also, I see he's using Patriot memory - I better do the same.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

I HAD been happily thinking about the Asus P6T Deluxe, beautiful solid $300 board, $100 cheaper. But nothing succeeds like success. Virtually all of the dual 4870x2 stable systems that I came across were using that Rampage Extreme board. So the more I thought about it, after the frustration you went through, Sam, the more I started telling myself I had to get a case that would let me use slot 7 of that motherboard, if that's the only way to make those damn 4870x2 cards run stable!

On my former Antec 1200 case, putting a card in slot 7, there'd be some holes that would have to be drilled, otherwise the Radeon is trying to exhale through solid metal! I wasn't put off by the idea of doing some drilling, but it looked like it would really be ugly - the slots are set back into the case a bit - I didn't think it would turn out as well as some of the case drilling fan mods I have done.

(I think they really messed up on that 1200 - on the little 900 version 2 - they DO have the 8 expansion slots! I was also tempted to buy that, but researching it on newegg a guy said that to get to one of the front fan filters, you had to remove both side panels, and one of the hard drive bays - about 20 screws. To hell with that!)

The spedo design talk really plays up your compartmentalization ideas, Sam. Also the only spedo they had was not the advanced version with the huge 230mm fans, it was the basic version with the 120/140mm fans, so I was interested in seeing you say, Sam, a couple posts up, that you would just as soon work with 120mm fans rather than those 200/230mm monsters. It's funny but I started telling myself the same thing - does one really need those giant fans - is it really just more of a marketing gimmick than anything else, epeen as the late shaff would say? "Look at this big ol f**king fan!" LOL

Anyway, that's where I am with the new build - I have a Spedo case that can take a Rampage and I can run a second 4870x2 card in slot 7 for stability (even if I lose some scaling). I can add fans all I want and tune the airflow for the graphics compartment, and for the cpu compartment.

I told the guy at Microcenter about the 8x limitation of slot 7. He agreed with me - "Sure, run the second card in slot 7, then after you make sure the system is stable - you can play for hours with no crashes, then one day slip the card in slot 5 for full 16x bandwidth, and see if the crysis benchmark shows better numbers."

If, as suspected, the 8x is a bottleneck and the numbers really improve with the cards right next to each other in slots 3 and 5, then, since probably not even the arctic coolers would work with no spacing at all, that might mean a water cooling gpu solution.

Which is interesting, because over at Microcenter, I wandered by a big aisle end-cap labelled DD Den - and there was large big box with a "4870x2" on it, a nice waterblock - reminded me of permanently banned Shaffaaf, and of our old friend Waymon. The nice guy who saw me handling that 4870x2 waterblock box, and who asked if he could help me, turned out to know even less about watercooling than I do, lol, but he was helpful at taking me over to the system department and getting me sold on this laptop, hahaha.

Well, good night you guys - I'll be back over on the graphics thread tomorrow or the next day Sam - see you Omegaman (and Russ and Greeny.)

Rich

 

harvrdguy,

I can't say I much care for all that continuous copper like that. It looks cool, but the best thing I've found yet is these from Enzotech! They will do a much better job, believe me! The others look pretty, but they have so little sticking up into any airflow, that they run hotter!

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/memandvidcar.html
Made of Pure Forged Copper, with all round edges, there's very little decrease in airflow through them. Check out that link and you will see what I mean.

BTW, did you notice in your pic the cooler to the R of the CPU cooler? I don't think I've ever seen a memory cooler so big in my life! LOL!! It's larger than some CPU coolers! ROFL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

The heatsinks on the Rampage and Rampage II are beef. The Maximus II I'm grabbing off Shaff (I got hold of him eventually) isn't quite so large in the middle, but has more heatsink in other places, hopefully enough to do the job. Even if it doesn't, Thermalright stuff works with the M2F where it wouldn't with the DS5. though I say works, it's still not ideal, one of the MOSFET sets requires a modification to the HR-09, and the PCIe chip normally covered by the slab of an SB cooler isn't touched, but hey, I'll figure that out later. We'll see if the stock cooling works first. If all else, it's big enough to attach a fan in various places.
So you say there are people using Quad CF in a board where the second slot runs at 8x? Interesting. I will have to let you know how the dual X2s perform with an 8x pair. I couldn't say how much the performance changes.
The big fans, with the exception of the Antec Big Boy, are all gimmicks. They all either spin at a pointlessly low speed, such that a 140mm fan would do the job just as well and just as quietly, or they're flawed in design, much like the HAF fans, with their 230mm frame and 190mm blades. At 700rpm, that means they put out a lot less air than a big boy, and more importantly, less than a pair of quiet 120s, let alone four. I'll try them out as the overall airflow and pressure will probably be better with a single 230mm fan at low noise, but when you turn the speed up a bit on a block of 120s, I'm fairly certain the big fan will be flattened.


Russ, I think that's a Thermalright HR-05 and it's awesome. Mind you, 'biggest memory cooler I've ever seen' is what I get just for having Dominators, so there's not much of a precedent in that field...

 

Sam

did Shaff build his new computer a couple months back. can i ask why is he now parting it out? Is he going to build a i7 build or something?

 

Basically, he came to his senses after the novelty wore off, he has a really expensive PC for no good reason, and wants more portability, so he's going to go for a laptop instead.

 

Its a shame laptops are not as customizable as towers. Perhaps building one custom, has been figured to be more expensive than buying one built by, HP, Dell, $ony, Etc. Beats me! LOL

 

sam

o ok i understand now.

 

Russ - thanks for the link about the Enzotech sinks - they look very nice. So the idea would be to get the tallest that will fit under the ultra 120, right?

Sam, is "beef" good or bad? Lol. (I like beef and I think you mean good - but not being a limie I have to ask lol) If you meant good, then do you still like the idea of spreading around as many Enzotechs as will fit, or do you like some other type of cooler - maybe something in a low profile thermalright.

If you meant bad, then for sure - what mods should be made?

Back to the memory cooling that Russ took note of, here is a cool picture of the HR-07 Duo, designed to allow closer spacing of the coolers for up to 4 DIMMs in a row, unlike the HR-07 original two-radiator design where the memory modules had to be one space apart.



Sam, with Shaff's Maximus board, does this mean you are still in the dual 4870x2 business - I hope so!!

Yes indeed, the Rampage II Extreme slot 7 cannot provide 16x - it's either 8x or 1x. You can set the bios for 5 at 16x, and 7 at 1x, or the other setting is 5 and 7 both at 8x. So those dudes, like that "crazy" sink-happy Canadian, were only getting 8x bandwidth for their second 4870x2, and I would bet the dual 295 guys are running it the same way - slots 3 and 7.

For dual pci-e 16x they would have to be running their boards right up next to each other in slots 3 and 5 - I don't see how even the standard turbine designs could work well with zero spacing between the cards.

So on the Maximus you'll be running two at 8x - well hell if they run stable, that's the important thing, and let's just see how much it all matters in performance - after all the PCI-E 2.0 standard doubled it up over 1.0 - so maybe there won't be as much of the bottleneck as we're expecting.

But with that board and the HAF, it will be nice to see you get some stable run-time and hopefully no more BSODs for a change!! I guess we'll see what you put together when the HAF arrives in a couple days.

Rich

 

Beef ~ Beefcake ~ Big-ass ~ Bad-ass. If that makes any sense!
The problem, if they're like the heatsinks on the Maximus II is that the stock thermal paste is appalling. Still, even when I forgot to turn on my side fan at all when playing an hour of Left 4 Dead (I only noticed when I tried to work out why the fans on the X2s had gone all the way up to 100%) it didn't cause me any stability problems having a 70ºC Northbridge and 75ºC Southbridge (I kind of like being able to monitor that one)
As nice as the HR-07 memory coolers are, they're a bit unnecessary really, Dominator RAM from Corsair barely runs warm to the touch.

The HAF should arrive tomorrow, but ultimately, it now seems more a case of convenience than necessity. The dual X2s and Ultra-120 really are a bit of a squish in the NZXT case, but having changed the board, the system works even when i'm an idiot and forget to plug in the most hard-working case fan in the system. With Catalyst version 9.2 the powerplay bug has returned, so the X2s get stuck at 750mhz rather than 500 at the desktop. Apart ftom wasting power this also means more heat, and no more silence at idle as the fan speed rise a bit. I'm hoping that the HAF's cooler ambient temperature will mean I can get away with the normal 27% fan speed even with said bug, and hope it goes away in 9.3.
AS you'll see in the Graphics thread, amazingly, there doesn't look to be any performance impact at all of running 8x, and I agree, I think that's all down to the PCI express 2.0 technology. I'm certain I'd have had issues with 8x of PCIe 1.1 bandwidth.

 

That is absolutely smashing, Sam as I'm taking notice of on the graphics thread, where I'm finishing my post reply with a bit of info on my new spedo - hey speaking of beefcake - there you go: "my new spedo" hahahaha!

You can settle for a bit of an overclock energy-using bug in 2d as long as it's STABLE!!!

Congratulations!!

Good old shaff turned out to be useful even if he did finally tick off ddt to the point of terminality! Haha. (Tell him to pop by the graphics thread - Karen - err Binkie - won't expel him! She's nice!)

Rich

 

harvrdguy,

I guess! I wouldn't have a problem on mine because they are far enough to the rear of the computer. Besides, I have the heatpipe coolers on the DS4H and the new UD4H so I don't need them. The heatpipe coolers work better on the UD4H than they did on the DS4H, by a small amount, and nothing gets very warm while running Occt!

I'm even more curious to see what happens to the temps when I turn off the On board graphics and install an MSI 9500-GT, one of the good ones with 512MB, 128 bit, 1600MHz GDDR3 memory. HDMI, DVI, DMI/VGA adapter and DX-10! I got a good deal on it, under $50 with tax and Free Shipping! Oh, it also comes with free Far Cry 2!

Unlike most onboard graphics, these can be completely turned off, and the PCI-E 2.0 16x slot selected in the setup as the default video port! It's much more video card than I've ever owned before, so I should be happy with it. Who knows, it may even help improve my overclock as there should be less heat from the NorthBridge. it should up my 3DMark from the overclocked 7600-GT's 3997! besides, I only today realized I was gong to need it anyway as the people who write our custom AutoCad software sent me a letter advising me to upgrade the video Card! LOL!! Since I ordered the card without even thinking about my Air Turbine work, I was fortunate that the GDDR3 versions of the 9500-GT were on the list, as was the ATi 4650 Sam recommended. I do get lucky once in a while! LOL!!

Anyway, it's good to hear from you. Don't be such a stranger!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Just shows what a difference running a dual core CPU, basic graphics, and no memory controller does. That and the AMD chipsets being more power efficient. Then again with higher speed fans I'd expect you to save the degrees you lose from having a warm climate.

Thanks for the congrats Rich. You should stick around in this thread too, it's very informative when we aren't bickering...