Cool! More vids! Looking forward to it. ^_^
Andre's Z77 Personal Rig
- Thread starter andrevautour
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Cool! More vids! Looking forward to it. ^_^
andrevautour
New member
um well the intel coolers are really bad (the round ones) i would never use one but i just tried it for 1 day out of curiosity and it was unusable pretty much it can't even keep an x58 chip within 20'C of the intel spec for temperatures.
the amd coolers ive never used one, we had that amd chip for about 8 months i guess but we always had a nh-d14 on it so i dont know how the amd cooler works, but i can see the size of the fan on it
there are loads more videos that i have filmed i just need to now flood the uploads too much because i also have some old ones i want to get up first then start uploading the new ones at a normal normal pace like 1 per day or so
um well the intel coolers are really bad (the round ones) i would never use one but i just tried it for 1 day out of curiosity and it was unusable pretty much it can't even keep an x58 chip within 20'C of the intel spec for temperatures.
the amd coolers ive never used one, we had that amd chip for about 8 months i guess but we always had a nh-d14 on it so i dont know how the amd cooler works, but i can see the size of the fan on it
there are loads more videos that i have filmed i just need to now flood the uploads too much because i also have some old ones i want to get up first then start uploading the new ones at a normal normal pace like 1 per day or so
Yeah, spare some bandwidth
Well an NH-D14 is a great cooler and I think, maybe one of the most popular air coolers. it is absolutely huge... I think one of those will definitely stick out of my case :lol: . It's huge! I've seen a Noctua heatsink that was pretty impressive aswell... the NH-L12 I beliv, really thin and low profile and quiet, Tom actually reviewed it and he was impressed with it too. They do a really good, propper Job! And I simply love the fan color! I have seen many that don't, anyway that could be controversial but the quality and the performance isn't.
andrevautour
New member
Yeah, spare some bandwidth
Well an NH-D14 is a great cooler and I think, maybe one of the most popular air coolers. it is absolutely huge... I think one of those will definitely stick out of my case :lol: . It's huge! I've seen a Noctua heatsink that was pretty impressive aswell... the NH-L12 I beliv, really thin and low profile and quiet, Tom actually reviewed it and he was impressed with it too. They do a really good, propper Job! And I simply love the fan color! I have seen many that don't, anyway that could be controversial but the quality and the performance isn't.
i've used a couple nh-l12's in builds. one was an htpc build with an i5 that was sitting on a home theater rack that was quite closed and with the stock intel cooler it was overheating and blue screening. once i installed the noctua nh-l12 the cpu never went above 55'C during encoding video and there was never any trouble with it since its been running for months now.
but for something like a 2011 that puts out a lot of heat i dont think it can handle that very well but it's perfect for i5's and stuff like that.
the d14 is massive yeah and its way overkill for a 965 but we had one spare here at the time so i just thew it in there. now my sister is still using that d14 but its on the 920 now so that puts out way more heat and its being used more now.
i love the d14 that i've been using for a while now but i also would like more space around the cpu and id like to use taller memory like that hyperx predator so i might switch to an enclosed water thing just for those reasons but for now i havent really seen one yet that has impressed me massively so ill have to keep looking
andrevautour
New member
Here is my NH-D14 passive performance video.
Note: this was after only 7 or 8 minutes of prime 95 running. it did get to about 82-85'c on each core after 20+ minutes of running prime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1jcjSf3o6U
Note #2: All of my videos recorded recently are in 1080p, so if you want to see it higher quality you can see it on youtube in 1080p if you want.
Note: this was after only 7 or 8 minutes of prime 95 running. it did get to about 82-85'c on each core after 20+ minutes of running prime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1jcjSf3o6U
Note #2: All of my videos recorded recently are in 1080p, so if you want to see it higher quality you can see it on youtube in 1080p if you want.
Yeah I agree, the L12 aren't made for OC'ed 2011 CPU's but it's none the less a good performer at the size ( pretty thin, only one fan ). You can run the D14 passively without a problem ( seen a couple of guys using it like that and it worked fine ).
I just started prime for a few minutes just to show you how hot my CPU gets and how fast my fan spins when Prime95-ing.
There it is, It barely goes over 50C but that thing spins like crazy. After I took the picture it actually went about 5949RPM... close to 6000!!That is insanely fast from a fan that small.. but in that speed lies all the cooling performance, and if one is willing to ignore the noise, it would be quite pleased with it.
( I 'm not a big fan of that kind of noise at all :lol: )Yeah, I just watched your vid, and I think that is quite amazing that the temps don't go higher than 80C on a 3770K with no fans running. That cooler is a beast! Also I noticed your "Package" values being under 70W... Mine shows 105W in HWMonitor.
I am not surprised that the D14's fans are quiet... it doesn't use them so much, it can cool the CPU on its own, that's fantastic... I wonder how much is a D14 around these parts?!
andrevautour
New member
Yeah I agree, the L12 aren't made for OC'ed 2011 CPU's but it's none the less a good performer at the size ( pretty thin, only one fan ). You can run the D14 passively without a problem ( seen a couple of guys using it like that and it worked fine ).
I just started prime for a few minutes just to show you how hot my CPU gets and how fast my fan spins when Prime95-ing.
There it is, It barely goes over 50C but that thing spins like crazy. After I took the picture it actually went about 5949RPM... close to 6000!!That is insanely fast from a fan that small.. but in that speed lies all the cooling performance, and if one is willing to ignore the noise, it would be quite pleased with it.
Yeah, I just watched your vid, and I think that is quite amazing that the temps don't go higher than 80C on a 3770K with no fans running. That cooler is a beast! Also I noticed your "Package" values being under 70W... Mine shows 105W in HWMonitor.
I am not surprised that the D14's fans are quiet... it doesn't use them so much, it can cool the CPU on its own, that's fantastic... I wonder how much is a D14 around these parts?!
oh yes i agree they are amazing for a low profile smallish cooler. the difference between the intel stock cooler for i5 and the L12 was about 40'C in the shelf scenario i was talking about
yeah the temps for amd cpus is generally lower i think the max temp they provide in the spec is 60 or so (but i might be wrong) i also noticed with the 965 it never really went above 50'c
the fans on the h14 are the same as the case fans from noctua so they are rated at 800rpm for low noise mode and 1200 for full speed. i always run them both at 800rpm and its practically silent at that speed and the cores never go above 60'c with the fans on silent mode
the regular price for a d14 is between $90 and $95 but you can get them for a bit less now. we have a couple of them here and i think they were between $80 and $85 each
http://www.amazon.com/Noctua-Heatpi...ie=UTF8&qid=1357512629&sr=8-1&keywords=nh+d14
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=47090
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Hmm.. that's not very expensive but not very cheap... I couldn't afford one anyway, but they are really cool and I like the looks of them. They look like powerful turbines and they also look like they would be very loud but they are not even close to being noticed.
I don't know why Phenoms never went high in temps and was very unstable at temps that for Intel would seem mid to high. Today's AMD CPU's can get pretty hot, and if I were on a tight budget i would really consider buying one ( FX-6300 most likely ).
Now I am going to try to Play BF3 and check disk usage, and see if the disk is the cause of the stuttering and hopefully take a screenshot and show you.
I don't know why Phenoms never went high in temps and was very unstable at temps that for Intel would seem mid to high. Today's AMD CPU's can get pretty hot, and if I were on a tight budget i would really consider buying one ( FX-6300 most likely ).
Now I am going to try to Play BF3 and check disk usage, and see if the disk is the cause of the stuttering and hopefully take a screenshot and show you.
andrevautour
New member
Lighting, part 2
Okay here is another lighting and fan setup update.
So there was a few things I had to consider when i was adding in the lighting. Obviously the main thing is the route that light string will go and positioning it so it lights up everything evenly, and the second was i wanted to find a tidy way to run the power cable from the light controller and fans.
The LED controller has 2 cables coming from it, one is the LED string which has an LED about 4 or 5 inches in and the other is the power.
I was removing the fan controller and running all the fans from the motherboard, so I had to find a clean way to run those fan cables as well.
I also had a bunch of unused cables that were very heavily integrated into the "cable management" which had gotten very sloppy and messy over the 6 or 7 weeks that this has been running.
So I want to completely redo the cable management too, but I haven't gotten to that yet.
For the fan setup I gathered a bunch of extensions, Y splitter cables and low noise adapters from my case fan boxes
The original plan for the fan cable and the LED power cable was to go through this opening where the power supply is and then put the power supply in place and leave it like that. this is a good idea in terms of being as tidy as possible, but more on the downside of that in a bit.
The Noctua fan extensions are quite a bit larger than the actual fan cables inside so its a big 'baggy'. I wasn't massively into the look of it routed like this
you can see how much space there is in there (but it turns out it's actually a good thing) more on that later too.
So what i did at first was take off the sleeving from the extensive and route it that way
I didn't really like the look of this either, and it didn't work because the fan cable got pinched and got cut.
it does work doing this if both cables are sleeved, but the cables are tight and i didn't want to have them like that for long term
here is a look at the cables along the top the way it was when the fan controller was instillation. there are lots of fan controller related cables that are going to be removed plus the left over cables will be hidden better and tidied up.
i moved the excess usb3 bundle further in towards the front, so you can't see it from the inside like you could before
this was version 1
i had it going up along the back of the motherboard and into the roof area
in the first version i zip tied the led cable here to the pci slot cover, then i reused this trick again in the second version
Originally i had the cable around the back of the motherboard tray along the bottom, this was just because i wanted to see how it looked with the bottom area as sort of a dark area. i liked this effect but in the end i decided on the more traditional method is just going all the way around the edges of the case on all 4 sides on the window side of the case, because that proved to prove the most even and consistent lighting throughout the case with the one string i had.
this method provided good lighting in the right side of the roof area around the memory and motherboard, but did not light up the cooler very well on the door side. i found that positioning it correctly on the other side provided equally as good light on the memory and motherboard while also lighting up the looking and the door side of the case better.
This is the way i have the cpu and top fan cables routed now, without the sleeving on the fan extension and low noise adapter. it is more minimal this way , but i think looking back at the pictures where i had it running with the sleeving on that i might go back to that method
does anyone know why the SATA power cables are done in such a way that if you start it at the bottom you can to turn the sata connect upside down each time to get it right right way?? it's only if you start the cable at the top drive that each of them is the right way up without rotating it. I couldn't quite reach the top drive to do it that way here and I imagine that may be the case with other setups, so I wonder why they have them so that you have to start with the cable at the top? it also seems like it would be tidier to have the cable at the bottom too.
So here's how it looked after version 1 with the lights installed
Then briefly I had the cable still running along the motherboard side, but along the door side along the bottom and front edge
I quite liked the look of the led running along the motherboard and right side of the top, so I may even get another string of leds and run it on that side along with the string i have one on the left side
This also illuminated the back ports through tthe IO shield gaps, but so does the leds on the other side just as much so not that big of deal.
You can see how the top of the D14 is very dark
the area where i cut for the front fans also provided some light into thefrotn mesh area, unintentionally.
still not perfect cable management at the top but it's alright
I took this one by accident but i like it
Okay a couple final shots of this before I move on to how I actually ended up running the lights
Edit: I've actually thought of a slightly different way of running it so that I can have it on the left side lighting everything evenly, but it won't have the one visible led coming out from the PCI slot controller because it will be routed slightly differently in that location only.
I will have more pictures once I actually do it this way.
I decided to take the safe route when running the power for the LED's and the fan cable because I didn't want them getting pinched between the power supply, even though it did look a little bit neater. This is how it ended up looking.
Okay here is another lighting and fan setup update.
So there was a few things I had to consider when i was adding in the lighting. Obviously the main thing is the route that light string will go and positioning it so it lights up everything evenly, and the second was i wanted to find a tidy way to run the power cable from the light controller and fans.
The LED controller has 2 cables coming from it, one is the LED string which has an LED about 4 or 5 inches in and the other is the power.
I was removing the fan controller and running all the fans from the motherboard, so I had to find a clean way to run those fan cables as well.
I also had a bunch of unused cables that were very heavily integrated into the "cable management" which had gotten very sloppy and messy over the 6 or 7 weeks that this has been running.
So I want to completely redo the cable management too, but I haven't gotten to that yet.
For the fan setup I gathered a bunch of extensions, Y splitter cables and low noise adapters from my case fan boxes
The original plan for the fan cable and the LED power cable was to go through this opening where the power supply is and then put the power supply in place and leave it like that. this is a good idea in terms of being as tidy as possible, but more on the downside of that in a bit.
The Noctua fan extensions are quite a bit larger than the actual fan cables inside so its a big 'baggy'. I wasn't massively into the look of it routed like this
you can see how much space there is in there (but it turns out it's actually a good thing) more on that later too.
So what i did at first was take off the sleeving from the extensive and route it that way
I didn't really like the look of this either, and it didn't work because the fan cable got pinched and got cut.
it does work doing this if both cables are sleeved, but the cables are tight and i didn't want to have them like that for long term
here is a look at the cables along the top the way it was when the fan controller was instillation. there are lots of fan controller related cables that are going to be removed plus the left over cables will be hidden better and tidied up.
i moved the excess usb3 bundle further in towards the front, so you can't see it from the inside like you could before
this was version 1
i had it going up along the back of the motherboard and into the roof area
in the first version i zip tied the led cable here to the pci slot cover, then i reused this trick again in the second version
Originally i had the cable around the back of the motherboard tray along the bottom, this was just because i wanted to see how it looked with the bottom area as sort of a dark area. i liked this effect but in the end i decided on the more traditional method is just going all the way around the edges of the case on all 4 sides on the window side of the case, because that proved to prove the most even and consistent lighting throughout the case with the one string i had.
this method provided good lighting in the right side of the roof area around the memory and motherboard, but did not light up the cooler very well on the door side. i found that positioning it correctly on the other side provided equally as good light on the memory and motherboard while also lighting up the looking and the door side of the case better.
This is the way i have the cpu and top fan cables routed now, without the sleeving on the fan extension and low noise adapter. it is more minimal this way , but i think looking back at the pictures where i had it running with the sleeving on that i might go back to that method
does anyone know why the SATA power cables are done in such a way that if you start it at the bottom you can to turn the sata connect upside down each time to get it right right way?? it's only if you start the cable at the top drive that each of them is the right way up without rotating it. I couldn't quite reach the top drive to do it that way here and I imagine that may be the case with other setups, so I wonder why they have them so that you have to start with the cable at the top? it also seems like it would be tidier to have the cable at the bottom too.
So here's how it looked after version 1 with the lights installed
Then briefly I had the cable still running along the motherboard side, but along the door side along the bottom and front edge
I quite liked the look of the led running along the motherboard and right side of the top, so I may even get another string of leds and run it on that side along with the string i have one on the left side
This also illuminated the back ports through tthe IO shield gaps, but so does the leds on the other side just as much so not that big of deal.
You can see how the top of the D14 is very dark
the area where i cut for the front fans also provided some light into thefrotn mesh area, unintentionally.
still not perfect cable management at the top but it's alright
I took this one by accident but i like it
Okay a couple final shots of this before I move on to how I actually ended up running the lights
Edit: I've actually thought of a slightly different way of running it so that I can have it on the left side lighting everything evenly, but it won't have the one visible led coming out from the PCI slot controller because it will be routed slightly differently in that location only.
I will have more pictures once I actually do it this way.
I decided to take the safe route when running the power for the LED's and the fan cable because I didn't want them getting pinched between the power supply, even though it did look a little bit neater. This is how it ended up looking.
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I really really love the look of this
I think it looks better as it is without the the side panel.
Um... I like it because in this picture you can't see the lighting directly and most of the light is directed towards the hardware, and that's how i think it should be... I see light coming out trough the case's mesh and though all those holes and I don't like that... I have 4 CPU Phase LED's on my motherboard and they are this annoying blue and it comes out trough the back even through my PSU's exhaust mesh and I don' like that very much, it just does not feel right. In your case, I believe that there is a way to hide them in such a way that light can't be seen directly trough the window or without the side panel just like in the pic , ( I love the way that light shines off the hardware, it looks gorgeous ) . I'd make it in such a way that the light seems to be coming from nowhere like the heavens have opened if you catch my drift. But that's just me... I know you're not going to keep the LED strip like that and change it some other way eventually
Anyway I think it looks really good and it's coming along nicely, you seem really proud of your rig. Great work brother!
I think it looks better as it is without the the side panel.
Um... I like it because in this picture you can't see the lighting directly and most of the light is directed towards the hardware, and that's how i think it should be... I see light coming out trough the case's mesh and though all those holes and I don't like that... I have 4 CPU Phase LED's on my motherboard and they are this annoying blue and it comes out trough the back even through my PSU's exhaust mesh and I don' like that very much, it just does not feel right. In your case, I believe that there is a way to hide them in such a way that light can't be seen directly trough the window or without the side panel just like in the pic , ( I love the way that light shines off the hardware, it looks gorgeous ) . I'd make it in such a way that the light seems to be coming from nowhere like the heavens have opened if you catch my drift. But that's just me... I know you're not going to keep the LED strip like that and change it some other way eventually
Anyway I think it looks really good and it's coming along nicely, you seem really proud of your rig. Great work brother!
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andrevautour
New member
I really really love the look of this
I think it looks better as it is without the the side panel.
Um... I like it because in this picture you can't see the lighting directly and most of the light is directed towards the hardware, and that's how i think it should be... I see light coming out trough the case's mesh and though all those holes and I don't like that... I have 4 CPU Phase LED's on my motherboard and they are this annoying blue and it comes out trough the back even through my PSU's exhaust mesh and I don' like that very much, it just does not feel right. In your case, I believe that there is a way to hide them in such a way that light can't be seen directly trough the window or without the side panel just like in the pic , ( I love the way that light shines off the hardware, it looks gorgeous ) . I'd make it in such a way that the light seems to be coming from nowhere like the heavens have opened if you catch my drift. But that's just me... I know you're not going to keep the LED strip like that and change it some other way eventually
Anyway I think it looks really good and it's coming along nicely, you seem really proud of your rig. Great work brother!
the way it is in these pictures you can see the leds through the top mesh but the way i have it now no led's are visible with the door on -- door off it doesnt really matter because the door is always on but it looks similar to how it does in the picture it looks good with the door off ( i would order one of those all acrylic side panels if they made them for 650d but they only make them for 600t) because i htink it looks better with the door off to be honest you get a way better view of all the hardware. that is another thing i dont like about the cases the latches are at the top which is nice for putting the door on and off but it makes the window way smaller and i dont like that i would go for a more traditional door on a hinge at the front if the window was much larger.. theres not much you can do about light coming out of the top mesh because if there is light in the case it will come through there but there are no directly visible leds that you can see through the top mesh anymore.
i will have pictures of how the final layout looks because im still tweaking it but there will be no leds visible through the top or the side window just light directed at the hardware.
also it will be off most of the time after a while but i kind of do like how itlooks with the light on to be honest.
this motherboard has i believe 16 power phase leds and they come on when it's started up or woken from sleep. i have been asking for a bios update to keep them turned off but i dont know if they have fixed it yet. there was a new version of control center released the other day but i havent checked if it fixed the problem or not
I'm really glad you chose these lights and not some crazy eye hurting color like the blue phase LED's on the motherboard. It looks really cool.
What I meant when I said that I am not a fan of the light going out trough the mesh was that I don't like it going directly trough it ( exposed light ) compared to hidden LED's ( meaning you could see the LED's directly trough the mesh from outside the case ). It does look good anyway, nice job.
What I meant when I said that I am not a fan of the light going out trough the mesh was that I don't like it going directly trough it ( exposed light ) compared to hidden LED's ( meaning you could see the LED's directly trough the mesh from outside the case ). It does look good anyway, nice job.
andrevautour
New member
i will have some new pictures tomorrow, but you won't be able to see any leds directly when i am finished with it. i was just showing some various pictures of the different stages because i've had it setup a few different ways now
I saw the LED's trough the mesh in some of the pictures, and I was thinking " hmm he's not gonna leave them like that , is he? " cause I know you like things done properly and you're not going to leave things as they are, was just sharing my personal opinion and how I would like to have it... at the same time I didn't know exactly how you wanted it to turn out so I assumed that, it is finished for now ( it's bad to assume, I know ). In the end, I really like the idea ( I sound like a broken record ) and I am looking forward for new pics and better results.
Good luck!
andrevautour
New member
New video and update coming tomorrow // I'm finished uploading my old videos, so now I will start making and uploading new videos at a regular pace. Also, here is a fun old one of what my computer used to looked like when it was built up in a ragged old HAF 832.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7SvNjLrFb8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7SvNjLrFb8
Good video man. The older vid was also cool, that was your old rig, huh? The case was big, or it seemed big, and I like the ventilation it had trough the top and the side window even if it kinda sacrificed looks a bit. Is that the 6950 you were comparing your actual one with? That thing's long, but it looks good though. I heard those things got pretty hot, I bet that 3 fan cooler is way quieter than my "turbine". I see you only had 2 noctua fans... I wonder how bigger Noctuas would look like in a case like that .
The cable management in that was outstanding. I don't know why but it seems that you had a lot less cables compared to this one as well, but very good work on the cables.
What was the motherboard cause it looked very cool with those greenish-mustard looking colors on the heatsinks?
Looking forward for your updates, pics and videos
The cable management in that was outstanding. I don't know why but it seems that you had a lot less cables compared to this one as well, but very good work on the cables.
What was the motherboard cause it looked very cool with those greenish-mustard looking colors on the heatsinks?
Looking forward for your updates, pics and videos
