new build 2.0

[Psi*]

Yes. I am hoping that that 990X is real beasty.

I ordered the electronics today. I am planning to get the WC worked out ASAP. I am experienced with this stuff, but I forgot to order a bottom T to help draining the system for maintenance. I don't have it in the current system and am at the point of wanting to flush the system.

The water thru the reservoir looks very clear & clean (no "goobers"). The tubing as I mentioned earlier has a yellow brown tinge. But I buy the cheap stuff so replacing it is no big deal. I am very focused on performance & being able to just see the status of the system is important. As Kougar mentioned earlier, maybe the tinge is just the Water Wetter's red dye. And, I know that I poured too much in the current system. I put in about 1/3 the bottle where a teaspoon would have been more appropriate. I may wait a while this time before/if I add it. The only additive is a fungicide to distilled water.

I am very careful to ensure that the only metal in the loop is copper ... in the block & radiator with nickel plated 1/2" fittings. My 1st 2 systems ran for >6 years with the little to no maintenance of adding distilled water. That was mostly because of ignorance than a clearer need of some maintenance ... live & learn!!

 

[Psi*]

LOL Newegg

The parts ordered last Friday, and early enough in the day to be shipped before end of day on Friday, still have not arrived. Erst while, the main electronics ordered Monday this week ~noon, arrived yesterday!!

The plan was to have the WC parts in hand & could scope things out a bit before the electronics arrived. So now I am drooling over the i7-990X AND the 24 GB RAM ... ooh, it would be so easy to throw those sticks in the current i7-920 machine.

Maybe I should consider painting the beige box? Sigh ...

 

[Psi*]

After simple metal work to plumb the tubing thru the back of the case, finding screws the correct length is the biggest PITA.

The screws that come with the uber German fans are ~5 mm too long to attach the fans as is to the radiator ... they will screw into the radiator's fins. Why even bother supplying screws without a means to compensate or at least offer some solution?

I am also considering a push pull with the fans on this radiator. All screws are too long with a dribble of threading on the end or too short.

Visits to HomeDepot ... all I can say is that would be a great place to start a hardware store. The sq footage is there, but everything is trashed. I am not talking about just the metric hardware either. No selection & plenty of empty bags that "had" parts ... f-n thieving customers!! Been doing, or want to do some floor tiling in the house. I need 40 boxes of some 3x6 stuff. In about 10 stores in the NYC metro area including most of Connecticut I find 9 boxes.
HD ... "It is a very popular tile."
ME ... "Well, buy 10,000 more from Thailand!"
Why is it that no 1 store has enough to do anything with?????

Went thru the same thing with venetian blinds at Lowes a few months ago. They have all of this great in store inventory ... ehhhh! NOT! It was all returned & hacked up crap. Ended up just ordering thru the store. Stuff arrives 2 days later for only 2X over what I was planning to pay for 12 windows. On the other hand, 1 of my better decisions was to pay an extra $100 for 1 of their guys to install.

Tangent over.

The WC-ed i7 990X is delayed because of what should only be $5 worth of screws ... and that is rounding up to the nearest $5.

The moral of this post, if you are considering something a little different as in "more & more", give extra thought to M4.00 screws. GET A SELECTION of various lengths and a mean of cutting them to the proper length (which is pretty easy to do .. getting the screws is the challenge). M4.00 is I think the standard thread on radiators.

Ok. Another thought or rant. Why shouldn't radiators have slotted holes instead of threaded? In other words, slide the head of the "screw" under the tabs of the radiator so that the screw points out instead of into the radiator???? This way screws impinging on the radiator and possibly puncturing would be a thing of the past. I am thinking about modifying this Black Ice GTX with a Dremel ... time to pause & consider options.

 

[Rob Williams]

SB makes 1366 obsolete if you're overclocking. A $220 chip (2500K) can match a $1,000 last gen i7 chip in gaming and overclocks to around 4.6-4.8 with air. Under water I have read about 5.2 but the voltage is out of this world.

Are those STABLE overclocks, though? By stable, I'm not talking about the PC not crashing over the course of a Sandra benchmark... I mean stable enough to handle 3ds Max renders, large compiles, hardcore computation, et cetera. I admit I haven't overclocked SB yet, but 4.6 or 4.8GHz -stable- seems awful drool-worthy.

I have decided to build an i7-990x /w Asus P6X58D Premium /w 24 GB RAM ... maybe Patriot Viper & haven't decided what brand of RAM just yet. I will make that order next week.

Nice purchase! Looking forward to seeing your overclock and generally what you think of the processor. Would be nice to see all twelve threads there being used to their full extent.

I am re-using another case (beige one identical to the other machine I built a little over a year ago)

Is there a reason you are so dedicated to these old boxes? For that kind of money you are spending, a sweet looking chassis wouldn't tack on too much more of a premium ;-) You might quite literally be one of the absolute few on earth who has a system as powerful as that in a beige box

The parts ordered last Friday, and early enough in the day to be shipped before end of day on Friday, still have not arrived. Erst while, the main electronics ordered Monday this week ~noon, arrived yesterday!!

Am I imagining things, or didn't you have almost a near-identical problem with shipping on your last build?

Ok. Another thought or rant. Why shouldn't radiators have slotted holes instead of threaded? In other words, slide the head of the "screw" under the tabs of the radiator so that the screw points out instead of into the radiator???? This way screws impinging on the radiator and possibly puncturing would be a thing of the past. I am thinking about modifying this Black Ice GTX with a Dremel ... time to pause & consider options.

I am glad I wasn't in the room with you as you wrote this post Seriously though, I can relate to the overall frustration. I've come literally close to throwing computer equipment out the window :-/

 

[Psi*]

Is there a reason you are so dedicated to these old boxes? For that kind of money you are spending, a sweet looking chassis wouldn't tack on too much more of a premium ;-) You might quite literally be one of the absolute few on earth who has a system as powerful as that in a beige box

Ha! I guess they are getting a little embarrassing. Maybe it is a comfort thing as in I know where I can put things in those boxes. Also, I really like Lian li cases & that adds ~$300.

Am I imagining things, or didn't you have almost a near-identical problem with shipping on your last build?

I think you are reading things too closely! So maybe .. I ordered the m/b from Amazon as 'egg was out at the time of order. Always scary, I might have to use something different. OMG

I am glad I wasn't in the room with you as you wrote this post Seriously though, I can relate to the overall frustration. I've come literally close to throwing computer equipment out the window :-/

Crazy ... I was just trying to emphasize to ppl in about 500 words or so, to spend the time & find some possibly appropriate hardware online as cheap insurance to being able to complete the job a little easier.

 

[Psi*]

1st fill of water in the loop & detect a leak at one of the fittings on the radiator. Naturally the immediate thought is a leak in the radiator. Calming down 1 sec later It is realized that fitting is not snugged up very well. This fill gets emptied anyway as it is intended to clean the system.

At least the fans are blowing the right direction

Some foam rubberseal (something Homedepot actually had in stock) around both sides of the radiator took up extra screw length, seals the air gaps, & quiets things some.

I probably used less than 3' of tubing this time. Much much less than on the i7-920 system but with tighter bends.

 

[Psi*]

The system actually had 4 leaky fittings. I didn't tighten anything very well this time. When building the i7-920, there were no leaky fittings & all of the fittings & tubing are identical.

I also used Teflon plumber's tape but only went around once with a slight overlap. On the other machine I put 2 full wraps around. The tape is too wide so slicing the tape down the middle length wise is necessary with a razor blade.

The leaks have been a combination of loose fittings & the tubing not tight enough. I use Ty-wraps to snug the tubing down over the barbs. You have to really pull the Ty-wraps to tighten enough.

 

[Kougar]

That's exactly why some watercoolers swear by compression fittings. They may be more expensive and cumbersome due to the larger size, but of the few I've used none ever leaked. Admittedly I never changed over to using strictly compression fittings myself, but they are supposed to be the most secure option as far as fitting types go. Even if a tube doesn't align perfectly it won't cause an issue like it would with clamp/snap on fittings.

 

[Psi*]

This the 4th WC system I have built. Include in there maintenance & tubing replacement over the years. So not sure why I am having any problems with this one other than distraction or someone slipped some stupid pills in my cocktails

I have always wanted one of those Ty Wrap guns. The real things are very expensive tho. I have seen a some for $60 or $70 recently. Which compared to the compression fittings is not such a bad deal & there is a chance that I just might use it for something else.

 

[Psi*]

Note to self, don't be so tight as to not notice that you have a CD drive ... not a DVD drive which is necessary to load the new W7 OS. Of course having the old XP OS "CD" still in that CD reader I would normally just load it (who knew?). I do have new W7, I guess I'll just borrow the DVD drive from the i7-920 to move on for now. Buy the DVD drive Monday AM!!!!

So I borrowed the HDD from the i7-920 to prove everything out including reflowing the indigo extreme. At stock parameters this new i7-990X system barely gets over ambient with all cores AND hyperthreaded cores maxed out running Lynx and a few other burners. After ~30 minutes, the OS complains that it needs to be Genuine! WTF MS. Says I have 3 days to do so.

Tomorrow I'll steal the DVD drive from the i7-920 & finish setting up the new box. I'll also cart the i7-920 outside & blow out the dust with an air compressor. Considering that the "new" box has had a LGA775 (Intel Bad Ax) in it with a Noctua HSF that is totally full of dust I am remembering why I like WC. With WC the dust is a little easier to get at & out. With the air cooled Noctua, the fans (push/pull) have to be removed and really the heatsink needs to be removed to clean. Not so bad, but getting the fans back on is a real bear.

It is almost like the dust is different in the WC radiators versus air cooled heat sinks. I think the dust in the air cooled heat sinks is stickier than in the radiators! Using a tooth brush still leaves some junk. But maybe I am just trying to justify the WC effort.

 

[Psi*]

HDD is DOA

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD4500HLHX from Newegg. I read the more recent reviews of the drive & apparently read errors are the killer. After installing W7 & doing 69 MS updates twice because of system hangs, I downloaded WD's HDD diagnostic tool. It reports several read errors & start errors.

I decided to get this Western Digital Caviar Black WD1502FAEX 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive ... it has a 5 yr warranty. Free shipping also although I can't wait any longer. I'll talk to 'egg tomorrow about this.

 

[Psi*]

So I have a 1.5 TB HDD, so what? Grief.

Well the other 1 TB HDD is a Hitachi & is pretty slow. I guess it is time to investigate Rob's recommendation of Diskeeper 11.

 

[Tharic-Nar]

I have the 1TB version of that WD black drive with the warranty, it's a fast drive but it does suffer from AHCI problems and can cause boot failures and hangs. I had to put the drive into RAID mode in order to get Win 7 installed on it, this then kills support for Win XP without that annoying floppy diskette for extended driver support, not to mention WD's switch to 4k sectors.

Now that I have a new system with UEFI, no problems at all. So just saying, try switching the disk controller over from AHCI to IDE or RAID and see if that helps.

 

[Psi*]

My "Grief" comment is from the thought of how long it would take to defrag or back it up. I am running in IDE. I guess I won't care to hit the "compressed" option under Windows for the drive.

 

[Psi*]

it is working ...

... really well.

At stock, the CPU seems to barely rise 15 deg F ... 20 deg F is idle. BUT I am still getting gathering myself & updating burn in & related programs. So stay tuned.

 

[Rob Williams]

I'll respond later on this (apologies for being slack), but I do want to ask a simple question...

PICTURES?!

 

[Psi*]

Hmmm ... called me out. I thought I might get away with "blogging". Ok, I'll work on the pics.

 

[Rob Williams]

Hmmm ... called me out. I thought I might get away with "blogging". Ok, I'll work on the pics.

Haha, I can't help it! You can't tease a guy about putting high-end hardware into a beige chassis and not give some pics

 

[Psi*]

pix

This pictures are taken with my Samsung focus Windows phone. It is ok but takes more adjusting (& patience) than a digital SLR to get reasonable shots.

Anyway, I decided to run the fans push-pull. I did some minor experimenting with the air flow thru the radiator with one pair of fans versus the other & both enabled resulted in substantially improved air flow. This is the older fan mounted inside the case ... "120mm mechatronic fans, these are 25mm thick, is rated at 55 cfm @ 1500 rpm - with a noise rating of 25 dBA". The air flow of the big dudes on the outside is 65 cfm & with the larger blades undoubtedly move much more air thru the radiator. My goal is let those be controlled auto-magically based on thermal load.

 

[Rob Williams]

You definitely made some good use of the available space inside that chassis, that's for sure. Robust water-cooling setup and still a ton of room for airflow... nice!

I keep telling myself that I need to be less lazy and get hooked up with a WCing setup after seeing setups like these...