Air Config Done, Introduction b4 I poor on the H2O (updated)

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

Xigmatek Elysium Black

CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX1200

Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z with EK-FB ASUS Max4 Extreme full cover block

Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge

Noctua NH-D14 -- now EK Supreme HF

EVGA 03G-P3-1584-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 3072MB x2 in SLI - now 3x

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866

OCZ Vertex 3 Series – MAX IOPS Edition VTX3MI-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB moved it into the older system, now using the WD Caviar Black 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB

SAMSUNG T27A750 Black 27" 5ms 3D LED BackLight LCD Monitor w/DTV Tuner - loud buzzing after 2 weeks, returned, replaced with Acer HN274H

Logitech G19 Black 104 Normal Keys USB Wired Standard Gaming Keyboard

Logitech G5 Gaming Mouse

Western Digital 1TB My Book Live Home Network Drive

other additions:

EK-FC 580 GTX+ water blocks and back plates x3

EK-FC Bridge Triple Parallel

EK-D5 Dual TOP G1/4

EK-Multioption X2 RES 250

So here we go, some pictures of the progress as it happened. Some photos are blurry but I'm a builder not a god-darned photographer so they stay in hah!

Sizing up enemy cables, in need of sleeving / heatshrinking

Now we begin to see some goodies!!

a Noctua in the face!

The GTX 570 says "Hello, Wintel."

Jus dwarfed an e-atx board!!

Feel the power!

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

Standby, in the coming week or so, this will all be converted to a water cooling setup for the cpu, and the 2 gpus. It will include 120x3 rad in the roof, and a 120x2 rad in the 5.25" bay compartment. There will be 2 pumps running in serial with a nice mid-size reservoir tube along the back wall. Expect some suttle lighting, dark barbs, and maybe blood red coolant!

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

Been awhile since I updated this build log. Here's some more recent photos. It's not done yet. I decided to go with all black tubing, so ignore the clear tubing. It's there for reference. I still haven't decided exactly how I want to run my lines and that'll mostly come down to aesthetics as I am running 2 D5s in serial and shouldn't have any flow concerns. If imitation is a form of flattery, then TTL and lazyman get big props for their inspiration.

 

[Azurite]

Well done. Looks very nice

 

[Solidarity]

It looked so empty with the air set up. At least the watercooling makes it look more full.

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

It looked so empty with the air set up. At least the watercooling makes it look more full.

On another forum, we joked about the possible dangers if a small child were to wander inside the case...

Thanks. I finally figured out what I want to use my modder's mesh for, more on that later, and need to decide on the final positioning of the dual pumps and whether or not I want to cut holes in the floor to sink the pump cylinders down into to stay out of sight.

 

[yassarikhan786]

Looking very nice

.

 

[computer/noob]

looks very nice, definitely making me want to get an Elysium over a TJ-07 just because of the extra space. still deciding though.....but how are you holding the front rad in the drive bays, is it sitting there at the moment or is it on a rad mount?

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

looks very nice, definitely making me want to get an Elysium over a TJ-07 just because of the extra space. still deciding though.....but how are you holding the front rad in the drive bays, is it sitting there at the moment or is it on a rad mount?

Right now its just sitting there. I picked up the rad mount. It's going to be close with that attached between the rad and the ssd, hdd, and blu-ray burner. I still have to take everything out anyway so I haven't decided yet exactly. If I don't use the mount, I'll put foam pads on the floor and use small pieces of tubing to support its left/right orientation toward the top of the rad.

Edit: The Elysium is designed around a larger multi-cpu board, so there's the big opening for the 2nd cpu backplate, and the cable holes/grommets are further away from the standard and e-atx boards. The cables end up taking up a lot more space due to that.

 

[badtaylorx]

you know what would look KILLER behind that 2nd cpu hole???

one of those red corsair ssd's......

looks great tho!!!

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

Floor cut, pump cylinders recessed...

Here's a peak at the foam. It's 4 layers of foam sheet glued together and cut using a piece of the dual pump as a template. Another single sheet of foam will finish the look and fold over the edges to hide the layers and clean up the corners. This will sit between the pump and steel floor. The pump cylinders are recessed below the floor, where the cut was made and trimmed in u-channel for additional sturdiness and sound dampening. The other bonus of course is that the pumps' dials are completely accessible from underneath if for some reason I need to up the pumps for their default setting of '2'.

The camera doesn't give a proper representation of the color and I'm color blind, and due a lack of what's available, I'm sure I'll end up with several shades of red, lol... Won't bother me

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

It's arguable whether its necessary or not, but it's an opportunity to include detail, color, and some visual interest. Here's a shot of it. I'll probably re-do it to get cleaner cuts, but I like it so far.

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

Time for leak testing. Tweaked that foam insulation around the pumps. Ideas about lighting are still swimming around in my head. I think maybe a red ccfl bar in the 5.25" bay to illuminate the reservoir. The red led fans should take care of the rest. I'll have to wait til its ready for full power to the 12 PWM fans and pumps. I have to sort some things with the fans so the rad in the bay you can't see only has 3 fans atm, not going into detail about what happened there. It could be another week to see the correct fans on that rad. Oh I found much better u-channel so those pumps are in really snug and the case window mod will look much better.

 

[jimmyakakev]

I presume you'll be putting the sleeved cables back in after leak testing! ..following this one for sure...looks great dude, keep the updates coming

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

Sorry, no. I scrapped the extensions for now. I won't be using them. After squeezing in 6 extensions for graphics, 24-pin extension for the mobo, and 8-pin extension for the cpu, there was just too much stress on the connections. I could make sure no pins were pulling out of the connectors, but once that case lid goes on, I no longer have any way to tell other than, the hard way. So they lost my confidence and it was a very tight squeeze. The 3rd graphics put it over the top stress-wise.

At a later time, I want to purchase the better quality bitfenix alchemy cables. I had used the modright cables and the quality isn't comparable to the bitfenix. I really wished I had gotten them in there, but better to be safe than sorry.

I'm going to glue a red foam sheet to back case lid to also reduce the risk of a short and it will show through in a very subtle way through the mobo tray cut-outs.

I wish I had all my fans. I feel like booting up today with 1 or 2 gpu's disabled thanks to that handy feature on the motherboard. I guess it wouldn't hurt to check idle temps with everything. Maybe its the two pumps working in serial, but I didn't have any air bubbles after 10 minutes. Its sooo quiet, until the fans come on of course.

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

Also, I didn't originally want 3 graphics cards. When putting on the water blocks and backplates, I got pissed off at the water block, got impatient, stripped a few screws on the block, got more pissed, and broke a R33 chip completely off the 580. At that moment I figured I just ate the cost of that card, and ordered a replacement right away, and would attempt to RMA it and see if it was a complete loss, repair cost, or what. Well, I sent photos of the damage and a detailed explanation, and EVGA accepted the RMA, and once they received the defective 580, the turn-around was about one day before they shipped its replacement, no charge at all. That's how I ended up with 3 gpus, lol.... newb move on my part.

 

[ShortAlieN]

Dang. Well other than forking out for a third card... things are looking up.

 

[jimmyakakev]

gotta love EVGA

Would you not want to sleeve them yourself? using mdpc-x cable sleeving of course

gonna be an uber machine with 3 580s haha

 

[jimmyakakev]

just noticed the sneaky remote control camera you got there haha

 

[clifton.kennedy@gmail.com]

Haha well some of the build photos did wind up on my facebook and a few ladies made comments. I couldn't tell if they were for me or the pc, but I'll take 'em just the same.

The performance of the 3 580s is a bit underwhelming depending on the application. So far, Skyrim looks 300% better with 1 580 than 3 580s. I'm looking into tweaks to sharpen the shadows and fix a lot of sli glitches that appear on water surfaces.

So far I have the cpu at 4.6ghz, 1.33v and the 580s at 850 core, 2100 mem, 1.05v. I let Heavenly run for 30 minutes to warm up and bench, and temps on the gpus top out at 45-48c.

Prime95, 8 threads, small ffts, gets the cpu into the 50s. Combined stressing of cpu/gpu results in the same temp ranges. I'd think the cpu would be cooler than the 580s but it never is. Maybe something is amiss there. I can't remember what TIM I used there.

At different intervals throughout the build, I ran out of this TIM or that TIM, and its been being assembled since early October so my memory is slipping.

One rad is only on push atm til the correct fans arrive. 3 more fans won't make a diff when the other's doing push/pull now but we'll see.

off to test sw:tor