Discussion
As I like to live dangerously, there is no UPS for the system, despite the fact that the two Raptor drives (where Vista and all my applications live) run in RAID0 and use Vista's full implementation of 'advanced write caching'. Basically, if there's a power cut, my system drives will undoubtedly be corrupted; however, the 500Gb Caviar HDD is a dedicated backup drive, so I should be able to do a restore from the Vista DVD pretty quickly if it becomes necessary. If all else fails, I have a Mac Mini as a 'spare computer' for if things go wrong, or I need to do something whilst the main machine is busy.
Believe it or not, it actually runs on only an 850W PSU; I'm aware that I'm running things quite close to the wire (pun not intended) in terms of its capacity, but it's a pretty well-reviewed unit from a tier-A OEM manufacturer, so it should be OK. The machine is certainly not portable, but I have a ThinkPad T42P for mobile computing, and I never go to LAN parties or anything like that, so it's not really an issue.
I've not yet run any benchmarks as I'm still chasing down a couple of software glitches within Vista & the drivers. Also, I haven't started any overclocking or proper hardware tweaking yet - everything is just set to defaults right now, even the memory speeds and timings (which are certainly not optimal). However, even in this state, the Vista performance index is 5.9 for everything apart from memory (5.5) although I anticipate this will improve once I get round to optimising the memory settings.
Unfortunately, if past experience is anything to go by, every generation of graphics card requires new waterblocks to match, so I will have to bin those when upgrading. However, all the other blocks and the chiller should be able to be re-used or adapted for use in my future machines, barring any major changes to the retention mechanisms.
In the past, I've always run AMD chips, and in my experience, they were much more temperature sensitive than the Intel Core Quad I'm using at the moment. Consequently, I would never allow anything on one of my machines to even approach 80 DegC - the highest I would be comfortable with is 40-50 under full load. However, there is no scientific basis for that, just what I would be happy to maintain a stable overclock and reasonable chip life.
During construction of my last machine (referred to in passing in my previous posts in this thread), I'm sorry to say that I did succumb to the temptation of blue cold cathode lamps and led fans - Pimp My USB - so I made a conscious decision with this one to favour performance and functionality over looks. Hence, I went for high-spec quiet fans rather than fancy ones, and restricted the case modding to purely functional changes such as the extra switches, T-line reservoir, pump mounting raft and suchlike. The only aesthetic alterations I made were the black drive bay accessories and the grilles being sprayed to match.
[k]
Believe it or not, it actually runs on only an 850W PSU; I'm aware that I'm running things quite close to the wire (pun not intended) in terms of its capacity, but it's a pretty well-reviewed unit from a tier-A OEM manufacturer, so it should be OK. The machine is certainly not portable, but I have a ThinkPad T42P for mobile computing, and I never go to LAN parties or anything like that, so it's not really an issue.
I've not yet run any benchmarks as I'm still chasing down a couple of software glitches within Vista & the drivers. Also, I haven't started any overclocking or proper hardware tweaking yet - everything is just set to defaults right now, even the memory speeds and timings (which are certainly not optimal). However, even in this state, the Vista performance index is 5.9 for everything apart from memory (5.5) although I anticipate this will improve once I get round to optimising the memory settings.
Unfortunately, if past experience is anything to go by, every generation of graphics card requires new waterblocks to match, so I will have to bin those when upgrading. However, all the other blocks and the chiller should be able to be re-used or adapted for use in my future machines, barring any major changes to the retention mechanisms.
In the past, I've always run AMD chips, and in my experience, they were much more temperature sensitive than the Intel Core Quad I'm using at the moment. Consequently, I would never allow anything on one of my machines to even approach 80 DegC - the highest I would be comfortable with is 40-50 under full load. However, there is no scientific basis for that, just what I would be happy to maintain a stable overclock and reasonable chip life.
During construction of my last machine (referred to in passing in my previous posts in this thread), I'm sorry to say that I did succumb to the temptation of blue cold cathode lamps and led fans - Pimp My USB - so I made a conscious decision with this one to favour performance and functionality over looks. Hence, I went for high-spec quiet fans rather than fancy ones, and restricted the case modding to purely functional changes such as the extra switches, T-line reservoir, pump mounting raft and suchlike. The only aesthetic alterations I made were the black drive bay accessories and the grilles being sprayed to match.
[k]
[k]arl said:
During construction of my last machine (referred to in passing in my previous posts in this thread), I'm sorry to say that I did succumb to the temptation of blue cold cathode lamps and led fans - Pimp My USB - so I made a conscious decision with this one to favour performance and functionality over looks. Hence, I went for high-spec quiet fans rather than fancy ones, and restricted the case modding to purely functional changes such as the extra switches, T-line reservoir, pump mounting raft and suchlike. The only aesthetic alterations I made were the black drive bay accessories and the grilles being sprayed to match.
[k]
We'll getting you wearing black polo-neck sweaters and blue jeans soon, mark my words.... [k]
Sounds like you're having enough aggro getting bloody Windows running on it, but if you ever get OS X running on it, I'd appreciate a screenshot of it doing something pretty meaty
Very nice indeed! 
Those are the sort of looks I want to go with with my next build, although my watercooling might not go as far as the chiller unit, lol. Anyway, good to see those components werent resided to a dusty shelf and are being done justice, greatly!
Again, very nice build
Cheers
Tom
Those are the sort of looks I want to go with with my next build, although my watercooling might not go as far as the chiller unit, lol. Anyway, good to see those components werent resided to a dusty shelf and are being done justice, greatly!
Again, very nice build
Cheers
Tom
Mr Whippy said:
Will have to keep an eye on the temps then.
I've only got the funds for one GTS, my friend was suggesting a GTX because it's not THAT much more for 30-40% gain... will the GTS be a fair bit cooler?
May still buy a GTX when I'm actually coming to the point of buying, look really impressive!
PS, what screen are you running? My 21" LCD is native 1600x1200 and apparently the FPS should be fine. Are you running a 24" screen for that much punch, or just went overkill for the sheer fun/max all settings and enjoy factor?
Dave
24" Dell. With high AA settings at native resolution, the single 8800GTX was showing the strain.I've only got the funds for one GTS, my friend was suggesting a GTX because it's not THAT much more for 30-40% gain... will the GTS be a fair bit cooler?
May still buy a GTX when I'm actually coming to the point of buying, look really impressive!
PS, what screen are you running? My 21" LCD is native 1600x1200 and apparently the FPS should be fine. Are you running a 24" screen for that much punch, or just went overkill for the sheer fun/max all settings and enjoy factor?
Dave
[k]arl said:
A few of you may remember that I posted some pics of my old watercooled PC, as well as a pile of bits that I was putting together into a new rig at the time. Well, its now finished so I though I would post some more geek porn.
[edit to add - just realised I deleted the pics of my old machine from my webspace. Sorry
]
This is the outside view of my new machine, built around the Silverstone TJ-07 case:
Here is a shot of the innards.
The spec is:
...by a heat exchanger in my garage, located directly underneath my study. The unit is an AquaMedic Titan 1500 water chiller, connected to the desktop by standard half-inch tubing passing up through the garage roof & study floorboards. You simply set the temperature you want the water to be maintained at, and let the unit do its thing automatically. You can "set & forget" any temperature between 4 and 30 degC - it's currently set at 25, and under full system load, the highest temperature I see for any of the waterblocks, including the QX6700 and the 8800GTX's is 28.
The machine is still pretty new and being 'run in' at the moment whilst I sort out some software compatibility problems, so I'm not overclocking yet. However, I'm hoping to see some good numbers when the time comes.
[k]
My system is in the black version of that case, but my radiator is internal. I'm going to add a second radiator, but have to work out where to put it.[edit to add - just realised I deleted the pics of my old machine from my webspace. Sorry
]This is the outside view of my new machine, built around the Silverstone TJ-07 case:
Here is a shot of the innards.
The spec is:
- EVGA 680i Rev D motherboard
- Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700
- 4Gb OCZ PC-8500 RAM
- dual BFG GeForce 8800GTX OC-WC in SLI
- dual WD Raptor 150Gb HDDs, 74Gb Raptor & 500Gb WD Caviar SE
- dual Samsung dual-layer DVD writers
- SoundBlaster X-Fi
- Dell 24" & 21" monitors
- Windows Vista Ultimate x64
...by a heat exchanger in my garage, located directly underneath my study. The unit is an AquaMedic Titan 1500 water chiller, connected to the desktop by standard half-inch tubing passing up through the garage roof & study floorboards. You simply set the temperature you want the water to be maintained at, and let the unit do its thing automatically. You can "set & forget" any temperature between 4 and 30 degC - it's currently set at 25, and under full system load, the highest temperature I see for any of the waterblocks, including the QX6700 and the 8800GTX's is 28.
The machine is still pretty new and being 'run in' at the moment whilst I sort out some software compatibility problems, so I'm not overclocking yet. However, I'm hoping to see some good numbers when the time comes.
[k]
Edited by [k]arl on Wednesday 8th August 21:01
cyberface said:
We'll getting you wearing black polo-neck sweaters and blue jeans soon, mark my words....
Sounds like you're having enough aggro getting bloody Windows running on it, but if you ever get OS X running on it, I'd appreciate a screenshot of it doing something pretty meaty
Vista 64 is indeed being a right pain - I'm running into quite a few driver problems and software conflicts, mostly I think due to immaturity of the 64-bit stuff generally. I think I'm going to nuke my current Vista install this weekend and reinstall to see if that helps - I'm pretty certain it's not a hardware issue.Sounds like you're having enough aggro getting bloody Windows running on it, but if you ever get OS X running on it, I'd appreciate a screenshot of it doing something pretty meaty
I'm not going to install OS X as I have my Mac Mini for that. Also, my main PC is a games machine, so obviously Windows is the only real choice at the moment.
As I said earlier in the thread, I've not loaded any benchmarking software as I've not yet tuned everything up to try for big figures. However, I'll try and post a full-res screenshot of it doing something meaty in the only game I have installed at the moment, STALKER, once I get home.
[k]
Evil Vista!
Our IT guy is running it at work to see how it progresses for possible future rollouts etc. So 'fussy', it took him about 5 clicks and menu options to just turn off a network connection to test something, and about 10 seconds to load up a command prompt window.
OK, the PC is only 1 gig of ram... only
In my view an OS is simply that, an OS. The apps are what matter for me. Until most mobo's can take 4 gig on two dimms relatively cheaply (ie, sub £200) then Vista is a bit of a resource hog from what it seems (for workstations especially) (I know I can go 4 ram sticks but then you are stuck for upgrade and it's slower if you run dual channel)
From what I've seen it looks very nice and glossy. Is that it?
Dave
Our IT guy is running it at work to see how it progresses for possible future rollouts etc. So 'fussy', it took him about 5 clicks and menu options to just turn off a network connection to test something, and about 10 seconds to load up a command prompt window.
OK, the PC is only 1 gig of ram... only
In my view an OS is simply that, an OS. The apps are what matter for me. Until most mobo's can take 4 gig on two dimms relatively cheaply (ie, sub £200) then Vista is a bit of a resource hog from what it seems (for workstations especially) (I know I can go 4 ram sticks but then you are stuck for upgrade and it's slower if you run dual channel)
From what I've seen it looks very nice and glossy. Is that it?
Dave
Edited by Mr Whippy on Thursday 9th August 15:32
[k]arl said:
cyberface said:
We'll getting you wearing black polo-neck sweaters and blue jeans soon, mark my words....
Sounds like you're having enough aggro getting bloody Windows running on it, but if you ever get OS X running on it, I'd appreciate a screenshot of it doing something pretty meaty
Vista 64 is indeed being a right pain - I'm running into quite a few driver problems and software conflicts, mostly I think due to immaturity of the 64-bit stuff generally. I think I'm going to nuke my current Vista install this weekend and reinstall to see if that helps - I'm pretty certain it's not a hardware issue.Sounds like you're having enough aggro getting bloody Windows running on it, but if you ever get OS X running on it, I'd appreciate a screenshot of it doing something pretty meaty
I'm not going to install OS X as I have my Mac Mini for that. Also, my main PC is a games machine, so obviously Windows is the only real choice at the moment.
As I said earlier in the thread, I've not loaded any benchmarking software as I've not yet tuned everything up to try for big figures. However, I'll try and post a full-res screenshot of it doing something meaty in the only game I have installed at the moment, STALKER, once I get home.
[k]
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