P180 build - Tuniq, HR05, Opty... etc *56K*

L31mr0d

Pictures from my recent P180 build... all in all its been over a month getting the parts together, i've chopped and changed a lot of things in the process, the mobo got replaced with the DFI in my sig, went from using the stock nb cooler to the HR05-sli to the HR05, got a dominator fan for the RAM, replaced DVD drive with sata DVD-RAM drive, went from using 2x250GB Caviars to 1x74GB Raptor to now 2x36GB Raptors in RAID 0... and things are still changing. I just want to get to a point where I can put the side door back on and know it won't have to come back off for at least a week

anyway, pics as promised:

The guinness is purely for size comparison, I don't drink the black stuff all the time... honest :rolleyes:





The reflection is the plastic wrap used to protect the paint job, the sides are as reflective as the top of the case.







*drool*

L31mr0d

here are the 3 drives in the lower HDD cage



This is the upper HDD cage with the 12cm Scythe Sflex fan attached



View of the front panel with DVD-RW, Zalman fan control and SB Fatal1ty sound I/O



Just to show how easy it is to remove the front bay, just press on the metal tabs either side of the bay and pull it out, no screwdrivers needed



This is just to show that the OCZ Xstream 700w PSU will fit in the P180, some people where saying it would be a tight fit



Close up shot of the Dominator fan over my mushkin ram



The trio of cooling here, the Tuniq and HR05 are both lapped and put in place with coollabs liquid pro



The mainboard in the case, there is about half an inch of clearance between the Tuniq and the side panel.



Everything installed now. Keeping with my 7900GT for the moment until I get HS for the 7900GTXs



This is where all the mess went. I removed the toolbox from behind the upper HDD cage and used that space to store any extra length on the cables.

Zonko

That is some giant cooling lad.

L31mr0d

lol... I don't think people can actually fathom how large the Tuniq is until you see it first hand... I should of taken a picture of it next to my old Zalman 9500, it made it look as small as the stock Heatsink The NB cooler is one of the largest you can get also

The benefit of the Tuniq and this mobo is that I can set it to leave the fan off until the CPU gets to 40'c, and then set the fan to go on full at 49'c. So the majority of the time when i'm on the net or just idling the fan is always off as the heatsink alone is good enough to keep the temps below 40'c on idle. Makes for a much more silent PC, with the added noise reduction the P180 gives.

Endurance Man

Why did u make the system silent with the fanless CPU and Northbridge, and then stick those noisy little ram coolers on which do feck all .

L31mr0d

lol... the CPU cooler isn't fanless, it has a 120mm fan in the middle of it. The RAM fans are more for the PWM then the RAM. When you don't have the fan blowing down onto the CPU heatsink, the PWM heatsinks don't get a lot of air circulated over them, the RAM fans turn on and blow down onto the mobo and RAM when the PWM gets to 50'c. So they only come on when i'm gaming or benching.

There are 5x120mm system fans, the 120mm CPU fan, a 92mm fan in the front of the bottom HDD cage, and the fan on the graphics card... this system is far from fanless. I just have them all on fan controls or controlled by the mobo, so when idling the system is near inaudible

awhir

Endurance Man wrote:

Why did u make the system silent with the fanless CPU and Northbridge, and then stick those noisy little ram coolers on which do feck all .

fanless CPU???

wa its got 1 feckin noisy fan in it.

Endurance Man

Doh, didnt even notice those 120mm. Still though, after a few months of collecting dust and wearing on their bearings those little ram fans are gonna sound like mini vacuum cleaners. I would rather have the 120mm running at lower speeds as it will move more air and make less noise.

L31mr0d

Do you know nothing about the P180? Its got washable dust filters on the intakes. Also these are pretty much the best ram fans you can get, they are meant for the Corsair Dominator RAM. I can honestly say at full rpm I can barely hear them at all. Plus its very rare that my PWM gets up to 50'c, with all the other 12cm fans working.

Either way, i'm going to leave it in for a month or so and monitor temps. Then after that i'll take it out. If it makes no difference with it being gone, i'll leave it out.

awhir

man you paid nearly 30e for them little fans over the ram you could of paid 12-20e and got theAntec Spot Cool which would of probly gave ya a larger raduis of cooling and better:rolleyes:

grr i wana show of my case its sooo cool you can take out apart nearly anything in it so easy to work in

L31mr0d

I paid €10 for it actually the antec would of taken up more space also blocking the Tuniq airflow path

awhir

10e were cool.sorry there is 1 on ocuk for 30e and thought it was the same.

L31mr0d

Komplett is also selling it for €20.

Just looked up the specs of that Antec fan... 33dB at full rpm, ouch thats loud From reviews the Dominator fan was shown to only change the system noise levels by 3dB.

Anti

Nice looking build very nice. Make sure you register yourself over at dfi street and post it there. I know there is a mod for your nb to add a fan to it to cool it more.

Nice and tidy

L31mr0d

thanks. I'm already registered over there. The DFI forums was one of the deciding reasons why I went with getting a DFI mobo. I can usually get any question answered in detail in less than an hour.

Yeah they have a pretty long thread over there about the HR05. It turns out now that i'm going to have to change over to the HR05-sli, as I just got a 7900GTX, and even with my Zalman VF900 on it, it won't fit in the first PCIex slot with the HR05 Didn't realise the 7900GTX was so long. Luckily I sold a HR05-sli to a guy on here who isn't going to use it so he's selling it back to me. Will post pictures when I get the new one installed with the 7900GTX.

Here is a pic I took with the 2x7900GTX's installed, i've already sold one of them on to a friend. As you can see, NO room for the HR05

awhir

cool bad look on the heatsink....

were ya get the 2 17900gtxs

L31mr0d

same place I got the Dominator fan for €10 *taps nose suggestively*

Like I said i've replaced the stock HS on the 7900GTX with a Zalman, and i'll be installing the HR05-sli, which should work perfect. Should have pics this evening.

awhir

and were did you get the dominator fan for 10e ???

Anti

back of a lorry

gline

whats the purpose of this thread? lol

hopeful

gline wrote:

whats the purpose of this thread? lol

Originally i assumed it was L31mr0d pimping his latest creation...no bad thing IMHO....although it has deteriorated into a discussion of RAM cooling.

Personally I feel all the photos should be edited to eliminate that hideous bed spread and rather nasty rug

L31mr0d

gline wrote:

whats the purpose of this thread? lol

what's the purpose of that comment? .... lol

I personally find it helpful when i'm looking up information on a case or component to see peoples first hand experience with it, and see what it looks like, find out how easy it was to build in and what it can accommodate. I wasn't going to post any pictures here first but a few people had mentioned they where interested in the P180 or the Tuniq so why not... and before you say this belongs in the b&u section, I plan to post benchs and screenshots here as I overclock it.

hopeful wrote:

Originally i assumed it was L31mr0d pimping his latest creation...no bad thing IMHO....although it has deteriorated into a discussion of RAM cooling.

Personally I feel all the photos should be edited to eliminate that hideous bed spread and rather nasty rug

Agreed It's not my choice but the missus likes it.... I suppose it is better to deteriorate this thread into a discussion about rugs and bed covers rather than RAM cooling

Pokes

Why have you got the zalman controller in upside down ?

L31mr0d

Pokes wrote:

Why have you got the zalman controller in upside down ?

rofl... you should really get a prize for noticing that. Glad to see someone is actually looking at the pics :rolleyes: Its been turned the right way up since, I noticed it was the wrong way up when I went to plug in the fans. The P180 makes it great for pulling in and out bay devices though, it uses a kind of latch system istead of screws.

Pokes

Thought i was going mad , had to look at it a few times Yeah screwless cases are the job.I couldnt afford an antec so i got a chieftec CH-03 instead.

Col_Loki

Im due an upgrade myself, overlooked the P180 until now..... hmm might be back in the running.

Great work btw, alot of thought went into your build..... some tasty choices

zappb

Hi L31...nice nice nice, glad to see it finally came together! Very professional looking build - I'm looking forward to seeing how far you can push it!

To bring this back on topic...the ram coolers look pretty good imho - so personally I would keep them in there anyway for cosmetic reasons.

Let me know when you want to sell it on because you'll be upgrading it again soon (2-3 weeks)?

L31mr0d

Thanks Zappb, but I won't be selling it anytime soon, i'll only sell it once it gets noisy... which could be 2 years I'll be leaving my system as is for about 6 months now as i'm going on a few holidays in the next few months which will take priority. Plus once I get my (or another stepping ) Opty 165 to 3Ghz I think i'll have pretty much reached the usuable life of skt939. Can't really get much better than that on this socket. Once a game just won't load on my rig then i'll upgrade.

Anyway heres some more pics of the build:

Picture of the whole rig and cable management:


I replaced the HR05 with the HR05-sli (funny name as because of it I wont' be able to go sli ) because I couldn't fit my 7900GTX in, even with the VF900 on it



Heres a pic to show you what I mean, the core on teh 7900GTX is further down the board then the 7900GT, the HR05-sli is the same width as the HR05 but out from the NB, so the zalman VF900 can pass behind it.



Picture of the NB cooler in place



The method I used to secure it, I found the spring loaded clips supplied where too loose for my liking so I replaced them with some 3mmx30mm nuts and bolts, I used 2 plastic washers on the underside of the board to stop the bolt head from touching it.

Richard Dower

What SATA optical drive is that?..model #.

L31mr0d

Funny you should mention that, I just updated the firmware on it yesterday to allow me to use this utility that sets it in either quiet mode or full performance mode. Got it from OCuk but they don't stock this model anymore.

It's the TSST SH-S183A

hopeful

L31mr0d wrote:

Funny you should mention that, I just updated the firmware on it yesterday to allow me to use this utility that sets it in either quiet mode or full performance mode. Got it from OCuk but they don't stock this model anymore.

It's the TSST SH-S183A

I have the same one...must look into the firmware upgrade when i get a chance.

L31mr0d

Ok so here's a new development.... I was trying to install NFS: Carbon on one of my drives and it kept crapping out midway through, checked for scratchs... there was none *scratched head* it was also crashing at random points in the middle, never on the same particular file so I knew it wasn't a corrupt file on the CD. I couldn't put my finger onto it until I was installing and I had speedfan open. The HDD i was installing onto was running at 58'c :eek: I quickly stopped installation, opened the door and popped open the lower dust filter cover. lo and behold the thing was matted in dust (man my room must be dusty) I took off the dust filter, left the door open and tried to install again, this time it went all the way through without incident and the HDD temp never topped 48'c (a 10'c drop!!!).

After cleaning out the dust filter and closing the door i'm idling around 4'c lower than I was before, the dust build up really was hampering the airflow in the lower chamber, causing the temps in my HDDs to spike. I've set a reminder in my mobile now to clean out the filters every saturday morning. This really is something every P180 owner should be doing regularly, at least once a week... it also went to show me how much dust these filters are actually stopping from getting into my PC.

hopeful

58c is a little toasty....I assume that was one of your WD Raptors? Do they run hot? I get worried if any of my drives get near 40c but then none of mine are 10,000rpm monsters! I managed to cook a Seagate when my wife moved the tumble drier next to my rig....it got to 60c before it started throwing major disc errors. Might be worth running a scan on your drives if they got to 58c perhaps?

You are right about cleaning the dust filters on the P180....I do mine once a week and it makes a definite difference to both drive and system temps.

You should think about watercooling the raptors...be interesting to see what results you would get. On my current setup I can't get my drives to go above 33 c

L31mr0d

Ok here are some picture updates to the rig, still haven't gotten around to overclocking this baby yet. Maybe next week? I'm finally at a point where its just about finished. But having Tomb Raider: legend, NFS:Carbon and SC:Rogue Agent on the go at the same time isn't helping things :rolleyes:

First pic, this is to show people that it is not possible, without some serious modding of the fan to fit a 12cm infront of the bottom HDD cage. There are also rivets on the inside which would be pressing against the fan. The only option is to get a 9cm or 10cm fan and try and fit it, for now i'll leave it empty.



next, if you can make it out, this is a picture behind my Zalman fan controller which I finally set up today. The wiring is as good as I could get it with the space I had to work in. I basically just shoved all the excess wire in behind the controller and pull tied it.



I also attempted to see if I could increase airflow in the lower chamber as i'll only be using one 12cm Sflex fan now (68cfm) I used to have my spare power cables shoved underneath the PSU (I think you can see this in previous pictures) I've re-routed these now out of the bottom chamber.



These extra powersupply cables are now shoved in the redundant floppy bay. It makes them easier to get at and clears up the lower chamber



Another pic of the wiring



here it is all reassembled, I also took the oppotunity to move the soundcard down 1 PCI slot to allow for more airflow between the GFX card and NB.



This is the fan controller in action. Man those LEDs are bright, I finally apprecaite the P180's door now. Also when my fans are turned down low the LEDs tend to flicker, this would of been annoying had it not been for the door blocking them off. The only time the door will be open will be when i'm gaming and then the fans will be up high anyway which does away with the flickering LEDs. I've labeled each knob in the picture to show you what controls what. While the system is idling, I have everything on low and the last 2 switchs turned off. The system is a lot more quiet now that the mobo isn't ramping up and down the rpms with temperature fluctuations.



Here is a breakdown of the fan setup for my system. Fans "Middle #1" and "Middle #2" are powered off the mobo fan headers and are both on full all the time.



Comments appreciated

hopeful

Thats a nice build in a P180....so hard to get the wiring neat on them.

I'd show you mine except it looks so bad

awhir

will throw some pics up of mine soon.

Alkers

Do both the rear and top fans blow outwards? What direction does the CPU fan blow? Just wondering.

L31mr0d

The rear and top fans are exhausts, the cpu fan blows towards teh rear exhaust. When I have the system silent, the top exhaust is turned off as well as the RAM cooler.

I'm going to do some temperature testing maybe today to see what the effect of each fans rpm has on the system.

Anti

I had the same problem with my hr-05 sli, It was in the way of the second gfx card. So to get around it i mounted mine 180˚ the other way, But looking at your setup this might not work. As your tuniq is in the way.

With mine i have about 2mm between the nb and cpu coolers.

L31mr0d

yeah I don't think i'll ever be going SLI anyway. With the performance gains and upcoming redundancy of DX9 it would be pointless to waste more money on another DX9 card when 1 DX10 would be more powerfull. ATM with the 7900GTX I can run everything i've tried on it on high with decent framerates.

The orientation of the HR05sli is pretty much the only one it will work in in my system, believe me I considered every other option, I wanted to mount it so that it faced the middle fan but the 7900GTX is too long and the PCI power connector would get in the way.

How did you mount the HR05sli? Did you use the push pins or use some nuts and bolts like in my previous pictures?

Anti

I mounted mine witht he sping clips that came with them, I also found there was too much play in it, and that the base owuld slide around on it. So i just used longer springs. And all is fine now. I considered using the screw and bolt method, but was worried about breaking something.

KamiKazi

holy sh*t, that cpu cooler is huge!!

hope it fits into a 900

Anti

barely does. the one in my other case dosent fit properly. As the side of the case wont go back on.

L31mr0d

believe me, however big you think it is, its bigger. It dwarfed my original 9500 and is probably 4 times the size of the stock amd heatsink. I think I was just lucky that it fit perfectly in my system and doesn't block any of the ram or pcie slots. It doesn't allow for much room though when trying to work behind the 5" bay slots or reconnecting fan headers... thats when the ol needlenose pliers come in usefull

Anti

Aye, its a complete monster.

awhir

its a mameth.

Anti

mammoth

awhir

whata nice p180

Anti

Wow that must have been such a hard job to do, 1 hdd and dvd drive. He has tellent.....


Yes im being sarcastic.


Get him to add in another dvd driver. 3 more hdds, and a xfi. And also a graphics card that requires a power source.

awhir

im just sayin its nice.

Anti

Yes it is nice. I dont se what he used a dremel on though !