My Central Heating

[Diablo]

Here is my rig. Its not water cooled as it needs moving around too much (down motorways).

Some of you may disagree with the brand of case (deal with it):

In the second photo, you can see the external DVD writer for the Pico ITX unit.

As you can see, I like having a full computer:

On the top is the FDD, then the accesory drawer, then the fan controller, then a blu-ray burner, dvd burner and Pico ITX PC (great for those times when a small PC is required...less heating up and less noise).

Accesories - mainly thermal paste, a DVI-VGA connector, a cleaning cloth G9 Weights, a few cables and screws:

I have a large PSU for future upgrades:

An old motherboard gave itself up for the greater good to keep my PC looking good and secure:

I flash my bios and use dos quite a bit hence:

Minor cooling is necessary:

Inside is a bit of a rats nest due to cables being a bit short to go neatly:

 

[°TheMadDutchDude°]

Nice rig though..

What ever happened to cable management?

 

[Zoot]

That's one hell of a high end rig you got there!

Just curious what kind of northbridge temperatures do you see the fact that you're not using watercooling with the fusion block?

Another question... What do you think of the Asus Xonar? I'm kind of shopping for a new sound card from my X-Fi on account of Creatives non-existant Linux support...

 

[TonyG]

You dont need central heating if you switch that on.Does the national grid dim when it does.

 

[Diablo]

Cable management: Well that is OK, its just that the modular PSU cables are very thick, and won't quite reach round the motherboard tray without taking the graphics chips out...everything else is due to short cables or the fact temperature probes need rerouting every so often.

I think my northbridge temps are about 49C (according to Asus Probe and the Bios), on 1.38V (ish) the maximum I ever saw was 70C after I had it on 1.52V, a heavy overclock and a 2 hour stress test of folding, mem test and GPU folding. The heatsink was about 60C internally (I have a temp probe in there)

The Xonar (I have the D2X PCIe) is very good in terms of sound. The drivers have been known to be flaky (with BF2 it crahses to desktop). Generally I think its well worth it, but I don't know what the linux drivers are like. The xonar is a bit too long (its sort of 3 year old GPU length) but has got some good software, some good quality components + relays. Occasionally one channel drops off for .5s or less and then rejoins. (That could be due to the crap speakers in my monitor tho). The only bad point is the floppy disk power connector, that I had to get a molex to floppy thing (not expensive but not included) and that has a tendency of losing connection if you are readjusting neon or cables in the case.

I haven't seen the latest electricity bill, but the pico ITX was bought to reduce power, by being on when I need only internet or itunes.

 

[°TheMadDutchDude°]

Okay, no problem LOL I would have done a better job of it to be honest, why not drill some holes in your case so that you can route all the cables nicely?

 

[Diablo]

Part of the thing is that that is just a bad angle, the cables are all clumped together like that. I might drill some holes, but it depends if I have time (I'm off to Uni in October so for that time I won't have an electric drill or the time for doing that). I might decide to water cool it in a few months, depends if I really need to, full set up looks to be about £600-£700 with two loops, full motherboard nb/sb/mofset blocks, CPU and two GPU cooling. I was thinking of doing what Langer (Prometheus project) on his Pico ITX.

I might also do a sort of all cables, but the number of fans and electics in there is crazy (15 fans) so it will take some time. What doesn't help is that I'm working. At work I have very little to do, so spend a lot of time here, but I can't be at home tweaking my rig.

 

[Zoot]

The Xonar (I have the D2X PCIe) is very good in terms of sound. The drivers have been known to be flaky (with BF2 it crahses to desktop). Generally I think its well worth it, but I don't know what the linux drivers are like. The xonar is a bit too long (its sort of 3 year old GPU length) but has got some good software, some good quality components + relays. Occasionally one channel drops off for .5s or less and then rejoins. (That could be due to the crap speakers in my monitor tho).

Ah thanks for the info, I've eying the Xonar lately, any reviews seem to say it's a solid sound card.

 

[Diablo]

Makes a huge difference in terms of sound clarity from onboard sound even on £50 speakers. Makes my £280 Shures (se530PTH) actually worth it with lossless sound.

 

[D-Cyph3r]

Hardware like thats deserves not to be overshadowed by poor cable management.

Considering you haven't got to worry about draining a waterloop or anything i'd take everything out the case and start over, you potentially have an amazing machine there, half hour with a dremel will take it to another level.

 

[BloomerzUK]

Lovely rig mate, but give it some time and give the poor thing some cable management

 

[Diablo]

I'm gonna try to do that this afternoon

 

[Diablo]

Absolute nightmare to rewirte and some cabling issues still remain. Graphics chips refused to work afterwards due to some kind of driver based issue, only solution was to use an old 7800GTX and tinker.

Anyhow here is the rewiring:

 

[gotmaxpower]

Theres definitely a noticeable improvement. I'll give you props for that as I can understand how hard it can be to route a case full of cables, especially on that spec.

Nice job.

 

[Diablo]

Cheers, as I say it was a nightmare, but most of it straightened out, just that top bit is a little bit of a mess, but that's because a lot of things round the back need power. I am pleased I did it as it looks quite nice now. (I moved the neon so that more of the window/motherboard is lit in a red glow). Wrecked quite a fe hours tho because of the little problems with the graphics boards. My old Pc wasn't too happy about being unplugged for hours and has decided to lose its Cmos data (no overclock on it at least, being my mum's pc now).

 

[Zoot]

Good job.

Cable management is always a nightmare, I generally just get annoyed and slap the cables in anyway they'll fit.

Were it not for the 5 year warranty on my Corsair TX750 I would have cut up pretty much all the connections and re-soldered them myself...

 

[Diablo]

I like the braiding on the thermaltake toughpower I've got, but the things which connect to them are invariably less good and look tangled or need to be dasiy chained. Thanks for all the kind words.

 

[PP Mguire]

You have such an awesome machine. Im happy to see you decided to take some time for the nightmare of cable management. Im exceptionaly good with cables and managing them but your stuff would give me even a run for my money. Kudos mate

 

[Diablo]

Thanks, really glad I did it. Might leave it alone for a bit and concentrate on the using it now. Considering what a pain it is (the graphics cards decided they would prefer to be potatoes not graphics cards until I messed around with drivers using an old card) I'm still glad I did it.

I know it could be a little better, but the air flow is now much better and the temps are all down a good 2-3C which is an added bonus to it looking nice.

 

[EverydayDiesel]

nice case but next time resize the pics please