Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 Mid Range Build

Hello again everyone.

Today I'm going to write a bit about a system that I initially built back in March 2012 for my sister.

My dad decided that he wanted to build my sister a new, faster computer so she could play more modern games at higher detail settings.

We already had 3 Radeon 4890s and 1 4870 laying around not being used, so we decided to use at least 2 of the 4890s, and try to get the third one running as well.

We picked up a AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition processor for $100, The ram is 8GB of G skill sniper 1600Mhz, The original power supply was a TX850, Motherboard Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7.

We also had a couple of Cooler master HAF 932 cases from my dad's old system and my old system, so we used one of those. The hard drives and optical drive and card reader were left over from old systems.

Here is a picture of some of the hardware.



Once we got all the stff together I got started building it up. The first time I built it I did a very quick job with the cables, because I was planning on going back later on and doing a very good job with them one day when I felt like tinkering.



Here are a few shots from the original build.

IMG_1119 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1121 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


First I installed the 2 Sapphire 4890s and those ran fine, but my dad though since there was another 4890 around, we might as well try and put that in too. He decided to get a bigger psi, since the 4890s are quite power hungry cards. The AX1200W was on sale for $100 off at the time, so it was almost the same type of price as something less powerful. In the end I wasn't able to get the 3 cards working in Crossfire mode (the option for enabling crossfire just didn't show up with 3 cards in) so I had to go back to using just the 2 cards. My dad decided to keep the AX1200 since it was so well priced, in case he ever wanted to use it later on for himself or something else.


IMG_1122 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


To give you an idea how messy things got as I was swapping cards in and out and running power cords for 3 cards temporarily.

IMG_1123 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_1123 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



Here is what it looked like with the 3 cards in, unfortunately I was never able to get it to enable crossfire with the 3 cards, even with the latest drivers, checking crossfire bridges, reseating the cards, etc.


IMG_1131 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


So this is how it ended up, with the 2 Sapphire 4890s, because they match, but also because the Sapphire ones were a bit faster than the XFX one. I believe the XFX one was always a bit slower than it should have been, probably a lemon.

IMG_1132 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

So this is very messy, but as I said I was leaving it for later to do the cable tiding.







Earlier today I took her computer upstairs and spent maybe an hour doing the cables. Here are some pictures from that.

Here is another "before" picture that I took today just before I started tiding

IMG_0844 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



After.

IMG_0858 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0857 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0856 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0854 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0853 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0852 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0851 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0850 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0849 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0848 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0847 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Good cable management, although why have the optical drive half-way down? That 1200W PSU is way overkill for that system and will be very inefficient.
I like what you've done with the PCI-E cables

reeper250 said:

Good cable management, although why have the optical drive half-way down? That 1200W PSU is way overkill for that system and will be very inefficient.
I like what you've done with the PCI-E cables

Click to expand...

Thanks. the optical bay just ended up there, originally there was 2 (just because one of the optical bay slot covers was misplaced) but I found one later and took out the top drive. It is quite a tall case and it is on a desk so having it in the very top slot when you're sitting down you have to reach up quite a bit to put a disk in, especially for my sister because she is quite short. So I just left it a couple slots down.

I know the 1200w is massive overkill. I talked about it in the original post.

"First I installed the 2 Sapphire 4890s and those ran fine, but my dad though since there was another 4890 around, we might as well try and put that in too. He decided to get a bigger psi, since the 4890s are quite power hungry cards. The AX1200W was on sale for $100 off at the time, so it was almost the same type of price as something less powerful. In the end I wasn't able to get the 3 cards working in Crossfire mode (the option for enabling crossfire just didn't show up with 3 cards in) so I had to go back to using just the 2 cards. My dad decided to keep the AX1200 since it was so well priced, in case he ever wanted to use it later on for himself or something else."

According to the Newegg power supply thing (and I dont know how accurate that is) but for 3 4890s the 1200W would have been almost right.


Thanks--I got that idea from Tom in his Cooler master Koolance Cosmos build. It was a bit more bulky in this case because of those power regulator things on the ends of the ax1200 cables that the other models don't have, but I think it still turned out quite nice and I am a fan od going nice little loops so I got to do a couple nice loops at the end of each card.

$100 for the AX1200, wow, very nice! Coolermaster's Advanced PSU calc reads 886W with three 4890's and 714W with two 4890's (with the system at 100% load with the CPU overclocked at 4GHz).

Have you thought about painting the case interior black and installing some LED strips?

reeper250 said:

$100 for the AX1200, wow, very nice! Coolermaster's Advanced PSU calc reads 886W with three 4890's and 714W with two 4890's (with the system at 100% load with the CPU overclocked at 4GHz).

Have you thought about painting the case interior black and installing some LED strips?

Click to expand...

Well, it was 100 off the original price so i guess that would be $229 instal of $329 or something like that. I would have kept the original TX850 if it was me but I wasn't the one buying the parts in this case.

The computer is for my sister so she doesn't want me messing around with it too much more at this point. I would probably just buy a another case vs painting the interior of an old one because I dont really like the look of the HAD cases.

As for LEDs I dont really like LEDs in general (white is ok in some cases) but I dont really like colors because it tends to make everything look monotone inside the case and there isn't really any one color I like enough to want all my hardware looking one colour. I also don't like red--I just left that fan in since it's the one that comes with the case. It's not too offensive since it's not too bright but I find LED strips to be way too bright for my liking.

Nice job. It scares me how close the NH-D14 is to that card

MrWizard said:

Nice job. It scares me how close the NH-D14 is to that card

Click to expand...

thanks. it's at least 12mm away from the card. it may look closer because of the angle of the pictures.

Wow! Yet another good Build from you Andre!

-The Orange One

The Orange One said:

Wow! Yet another good Build from you Andre!

-The Orange One

Click to expand...

Thank you again!

Here is a small video I made of the system: http://youtu.be/iKPXriHD_Tw?hd=1

Nicely done

Another good Vid mate!

hello again everyone,
i have an update on the 990FX build that my sister currently uses.
because i recently upgraded to a 7950 in my personal system, that means my old 6950 goes to my sister for her system.
so this is just a small update with some pictures from the installation process.


NOTE: And just another reminder , Yes i know the power supply is massive overkill, and no it was not intended for this build, it was just something my dad picked up because it was on sale for an extremely attractive price.



Thsee are the previous cards that are being replaced, Dual Sapphire 4890's in crossfire. The benchmarks for these were pretty good but they just could not handle newer games at all, the performance in newer games was very poor.

One of these had the cooler swapped with a cooler from an XFX 4870, that is why one of them doesn't have a sticker on the fan. I actually like the look without the sticker better there is just something more minimal and clean looking about it.


IMG_1438 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_1437 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Here is my old Gigabyte 6950 that is replacing the 4890's


IMG_1427 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1429 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1430 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Last shot with the 4890's in.


IMG_1436 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


cables before.

IMG_1439 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_1440 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_1441 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr




IMG_1442 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr




IMG_1443 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_1371 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_1444 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Cables after.

IMG_1446 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr




This time I went for a more function over appearance approach, the cables aren't quite as tidy as before, but I wanted to set it up a little differently this time. I connected the USB media card reader at the front of the case, connected all the case fans to the motherboard so they will be auto controlled, and even connected things that will not likely get used like the esata at the front and the 1394 at the front just so that everything is connected just in case they are ever needed, and it also saves me having to bundle the unused cables up and store them somewhere. I also tried the make the motherboard tray area a little tidier than before, but nothing too fussy, just making sure most things are zipped to cable anchor points to keep everything safely in place.

You din't actually show a pic with the card installed. But looks nice.

Thank you for following this log everyone. This system is no longer. All of the AMD kit was sold and replaced with my old 1st gen i7 stuff. I will have a new log documenting the new build shortly.