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Build log: (\/)0n0L17(-) II & HAL 1.0

L31mr0d

Ok I'm pretty close to getting all the parts for my next 2 rigs. I've been sourcing parts and lurking in the shadows on tech forums since march, waiting for people to selll of their wares cheap.

The rest of the guts of these PC's i'm getting from hardwareversand.de. I should be ordering them in the next week or so.

I've always been a one PC man, but after a spell of problems with my last pc I realized its always handy to have a second one around for debugging, internet researching and backup.

My second PC i'm building, "HAL 1.0" serves a few purposes, its going to be my fileserver PC, a PC for gamepad oriented games (i.e. 3rd person, sports, racing..etc), my better halfs PC and a media center.

So now onto the juicy bit, the proposed specs for both:

(\/)0n0L17(-) II:
CPU QX6700 w/ Tuniq Tower 120 w/ Scythe Sflex 12cm fan*
RAM 4GB Kit Mushkin HP2-6400, CL4
Mobo eVGA 680i-A1*
GFX eVGA 8800GTX*
HDD 2x320GB SATAII RAID 0 w/ XP, Vista 64bit, ubuntu*
Sound XFI Fatal1ty w/ Sennheiser HD555's*
PSU OCZ 700w GameXstream*
Optical SATA DVD ROM 18x*
CASE Antec P180b*
Screen 19" BenQ TFT*
Mouse Logitech MX610 Left-hand*
KB Saitek Gamers Keyboard*
Cooling 5 x Scythe Sflex 12cm fans, Zalman 6 fan controller*

HAL 1.0:
CPU E6420 (or better?) w/ Zalman CNPS8000
RAM 2GB Kit Mushkin HP2-6400, CL4
Mobo Asrock 939NF6G
GFX eVGA 8800 GTX*
HDD 1 x 500GB WD SATA2 w/XP or Vista 32bit
Sound Onboard w/ Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers*
PSU Corsair 520w
Optical SATA DVD RW 18x*
CASE Lian-li PC-V300*
Screen 42" Hitachi 1080i Plasma*
M&KB Logitech Cordless Desktop S510
Cooling 2x12cm Tricool fans, 2x8cm Papst fans, Lian-li TR3 fan controller

*These items have already been bought and are waiting to be installed

There will also be 2 x Logitech Cordless Rumblepad's and a WD external 250GB HDD.

The majority of my current sig rig (i.e. raptors, cpu, ram, mobo, gfx) will be getting sold off as well so PM me if you are interested before I post them up for sale on adverts which will be in about 2 weeks.

I'd like opinions on the setup and any ideas about it. As I get more stuff I'll take more pictures and post them here. Once it is all set up I'll begin benching and posting OC results.

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L31mr0d

ok well i'm pretty much finished now. Although I still have some BIOS tweaking and overclocking to do on both machines.

Here's just a close up of those sweet copper pipes

Here was the headache that was trying to get the fan controller wired up and still not have it block any airflow.

Here is where the first thermistor went, wedged in beside the CPU cooler

Here is where the second thermistor went, in the gap at the top of the RAM sticks heatspreader

and heres where the 3rd thermistor went, down beside the fins on the 8800GTX

A shot of the rear, with the IO shield installed

... and here it is 10 minutes later :mad: I tried booting up and... nothing, no post, no fans, nothing. I had to take the whole thing apart again and eventually narrowed the problem down to the USB connector for my HTPC remote was connected backwards.

Here it is, booting up now, with the optical drive cover working and the fan control

Close up of the fan controller. Have to admit, its very simple to use and looks pretty good. You can set the max temp to all the 3 temp probes and it adjusts the fan speeds automatically depending on where the temp is. It also shows HDD activity and has alarms if the temp goes too high or the fan rpms drop off

Picture of the completed case

Picture of Vista back up and running (finally) Lavalys is reading the idle temps as around 40'c... not sure if i'm happy with this. I might remount the HSF tomorrow with less AS5 just to be sure. I'll let the machine run over night anyway just to burn it in.

conzy

Very Very Very............ Nice rig man

So much power in so little space! Its beautiful

Hendrix89

Very classy L31mr0d. Thats looks too complicated for me to accomplish! Such little space:eek:

By the way I just got my new build, with q6600, up and running and my Quad's temps arent that great for me either. Using my Tuniq I get 35-36C idle at stock, and OC'd to 3GHz with stock volts at least one of the cores hits 63C at load (prime) and idles 40C. Meaning I have pretty much hit the temp limit already:( Well close to it at least.

awhir

Hendrix89 wrote:

Very classy L31mr0d. Thats looks too complicated for me to accomplish! Such little space:eek:

By the way I just got my new build, with q6600, up and running and my Quad's temps arent that great for me either. Using my Tuniq I get 35-36C idle at stock, and OC'd to 3GHz with stock volts at least one of the cores hits 63C at load (prime) and idles 40C. Meaning I have pretty much hit the temp limit already:( Well close to it at least.

reaseat it the temps should be better.

Anti

Sweet build man, very ncie looking.

Hendrix89

awhir wrote:

reaseat it the temps should be better.

I just re-applied the AS5 (less this time) and reseated and the temps are still pretty much the same. Guess the temps are normal then. Not too happy with that. Still gonna OC as far as I can go though, bad temps or not...:rolleyes:

L31mr0d

yeah managed to pick up a can-o-air from PC world today. So i'm going to dust out the one in my HTPC later, hopefully that will lower my temps some. Also I think i'll try smudging the TIM in this time instead of putting a line of it down the middle

L31mr0d

ok well I reseated the HTPC's HSF last night. This time around I rubbed small amount of AS5 into the surface of both the HSF and IHS, then wiped off the excess with a lint free cloth (i.e. lens cleaner) the surface basically just looked dulled, but you could still see all of the copper. I've read that this method is good for filling in the tiny scratchs and holes on the surface but still maximises metal to metal contact between the heatsinks. I then applied the smallest line of AS5 in the middle of the IHS.

My idle temps are around 36'c now. Not great, but better than the ~42'c I was getting before. Plus I think the new fan controller i've put in place is also affecting the temps, as before I was able to get around 32'c idle, but that was when all the fans in the case where at full RPM's.

Still i don't know why i'm so worried about the temps. Theres no options in the BIOS to increase the FSB so I guess i'm stuck with 2.4Ghz on this E6600

I'm still looking for a cracked BIOS that allows for the FSB to be increased. If anyone knows where to get one give me a shout.

EDIT: Also I did the half hour OCCT stress test just there. My max temp was 53'c. So that's about a delta of 10'c, i'm pretty happy with that.

Note to self: In future do not perform stress tests over VNC while in work, its scary as hell when the VNC window suddenly freezes.

Anti

lolz, you network people are funny

If you want a cracked bios there are a few dudes over on diy-street that do this on request. Not sure if they charge though.

What is yoru exact board anyway, ill have a quick look.

L31mr0d

what? why are we funny?

Its a Gigabyte GA 965QM-DS2... i've done some extensive searching, not even a proper review of this board is out. Its a fairly stable board but i'd still like to at least get my CPU up to 3Ghz, i'd be happy with a load temp of 70'c on this E6600.

Anti

Just searched, and all i can find is people who have the same board saying there is no way to overclock it

L31mr0d

Ok small update... also can somebody move this to the logs section?

On an impulse I bought a 8800 GT off Gline. I wanted to free up the 8800 GTX that was in my HTPC so I could put it into my main rig. I usually game at 720p on the HTPC, and the wife tends to play either ROM's or Popcap games on it so it doesn't really need the grunt of the GTX. What appealed to me about Glines 8800 GT was that it already had a HR-03 GT installed. The GTX was noisy and I had to have the 2 intake fans running at a fairly high RPM to keep it even moderately cooled.

So I thought, I could drop the rpms of the intake fans, install the 8800 GT with the passive HR-03 and drastically reduce the noise of my HTPC.

What i'd forgotten is that I hate even opening my HTPC as it is so fiddly to work in and has more wires pull tied to the inside of the case then Anti has blurry photos on his phone.

My first problem... In my haste I hadn't bothered to measure whether or not the HR-03 would even fit properly. It wouldn't

In the below picture you can see i've cut out the bottom tray seperating the HDD rack from the rest of the case, i've also had to cut out a gap at the back to allow the HR-03 pass. I made sure not to remove any of the needed screw holes.

Next I had to remove a notch from one of the unused 5" trays

Heres a picture showing the height problem with the HR-03

The HR 03 installed

Why that notch was needed

Heres the funny part

It was only after this that I remembered I had a 1TB Hitachi drive waiting to go into my HTPC, only now, the HDD bay that I wanted to install it into was taken up by the freekin huge HR03 :mad: I also couldn't mount it in the unused 5" bay as the stupid notch that was needed meant I couldn't screw it to the side. So I ended up having to unwire the fan controller, remove it from the case and mount the 1TB drive in the space at the back of that.

Heres a shot with it all cabled up again. Notice how the 8800 GT is no longer passive

well I but it together passive and found that 8800 GT was idling at around 70'c. So I had a spare 92mm lying around so I just pull tied it to the HR03 and hooked it up to the mobo. The cool thing about it is that the fan is also made of aluminum so should aid in transfering heat from the HR03, also it only runs at around 600 rpm when the HTPC is idle as I have thermal throttling enabled.

awhir

just put the hard drive anywhere it will fit then put some of the hardrive fome it comes with(on the are touching the case) and cable tie it

or stick it it or just leave it flat on the ground.

L31mr0d

awhir wrote: »

just put the hard drive anywhere it will fit then put some of the hardrive fome it comes with(on the are touching the case) and cable tie it or stick it it or just leave it flat on the ground.

space is not something I have a luxury of in this case. I tried various other locations but none of them worked good. My only other option would be to mount it to one of the side panels but then i'd have horrible scew heads visible on the outside. I'm trying to keep the external appearance as unaltered as possible.

Anti

I resent the blurry pic comment !

awhir

Anti wrote: »

I resent the blurry pic comment !

resent ?

Just buy a camera a cannon s5 would do ya nicly

L31mr0d

Anti wrote: »

I resent the blurry pic comment !

Hey, I had a much more hilarious analogy regarding the icons on your desktop but I resorted to one about your photography skills. Plus at least I didn't slag off your sister

Anti wrote: »

You should have picked the geil black dragons. Some people have had them at 130-1400mhz. Granted the timings were as loose as Awhir's sister!

Anti

haha, fair point

L31mr0d

Anti wrote: »

haha, fair point

also Anti, your PM box is full, might consider emptying it

Anti

L31mr0d wrote: »

also Anti, your PM box is full, might consider emptying it

Done

L31mr0d

slight update. After nearly 4 weeks waiting for my PSU to arrive from OCuk :mad: I finally got it along with some heatsinks for my RAM.

I picked up a 4GB kit of Mushkin XP2-8000 off memoryc.ie a couple of weeks ago to replace my XP2-6400 stuff.

The Thermalright heatsinks I got for the RAM

Coolermaster 1kW PSU

Bottle opener and sticker that came with the PSU. A pretty sweet extra imo

Ohh... shiny

The mushkin sticks with their stock heatspreaders

The heatsinks installed

Everything in the system and hooked up

close up of the heatsinks

requiem1

nice stuff, i'm always nervous when taking off heatsinks for ram as so many people end up with the chips in their hands and i'm not one to talk but get an ol' can of air to that beautiful tuniq:D

TonyM.

are you guys doing any overclocking?
my qx6700 is running stable at 3600mhz fsb is 1800 mhz bus speed 450 x 8
i have pushed it further but it tops out at 465 mhz.

The Asus Maximus board can take anything you throw at it i only have 2gb of Corsair pc 12800 ddr3 i could really push it with better ram.

Anti

The ram isnt going to help, you are probably at the limit of that chip without thinking of dice or ln2.

L31mr0d

I'm picking up an E8500 this weekend

EDIT: I realise now you where talking to TonyM. Still, i think i'm at the limit of my QX6700, at least with this chipset. Plus I want to get something new to overclock that might finally get me beyond 4Ghz

Anti

I have a nice tasty 780i ( no bent heatpipes, or loose contact blocks, and the fan is quiet

if you want

Silenceisbliss

savage big ram heatsinks, although i love the look of the original candz red ones. ah well.

also, what the hell is woth the bottle opener! its like they know computer builders will be forced to the drink while building....legend!:pac:

L31mr0d

yeah my main PC has been out of action for yonks. Been throwing my spare cash into my home cinema setup. I really need to get back on it though. I've got a TJ07 I got off Anti sitting dorment in the corner.