Rise of the triad, The 2014 Area 51

[AlienALX]

But the problem is the watertemp. My D5 specs max 60c.
And my GPU is about 5-7c above watertemp with liquid metal.

So i would guess that the water is quite hot i you hit 86c, and it can kill your pump over time.

I've discovered the problem. If you max out the power target and temp it shoves it full of volts. Yeah, I know what you are saying about the pump. 65c apparently. However I have now fixed it by dropping the power target and temp down to 75c. I still get 1875 clocks and the temps do not exceed 60 (core temp) but mostly sit in the low 50s.

TBH I did not really want to OC the card. I just wanted it to shut up

I need to make a new radiator cover as it's laughably too small. Other than that though? all done

 

[Bartacus]

While I love the style of that case, the lack of rad space would kill my soul. No room for a decent 240 in there I presume?

 

[Permafrost]

nice work dude

 

[AlienALX]

While I love the style of that case, the lack of rad space would kill my soul. No room for a decent 240 in there I presume?

Yup there is and I could have gone with a 240. Look down from the 120, loads of room. Not sure the Alienware fan bracket could take all that weight, though.

 

[Bartacus]

Yup there is and I could have gone with a 240. Look down from the 120, loads of room. Not sure the Alienware fan bracket could take all that weight, though.

That's what I thought looking at your pics, but I figured there was a reason you weren't. I saw your post about GPU temps in another thread. You need to mock up a bracket or something. You have the skills, and that beautiful hardware deserves some better cooling. Such a lovely GPU block!

 

[AlienALX]

That's what I thought looking at your pics, but I figured there was a reason you weren't. I saw your post about GPU temps in another thread. You need to mock up a bracket or something. You have the skills, and that beautiful hardware deserves some better cooling. Such a lovely GPU block!

It's fine now I have lowered the power target and temp. Stays in the 50s. I only really wanted rid of the noise. Let's face it, it's total overkill stock

 

[Eddie long]

looks really good

 

[AlienALX]

Cheers Eddie !

 

[AlienALX]

Well, it doesn't seem to matter how many times you put that crack pipe (water cooling) down it always calls you back eventually. I am not happy with my GPU temps at all. If I load it up 100% with something like mining or a virus (deliberately to see what it was doing) my card reaches 88c. On water.. I should have taken heed of the review BT did with the same water block I have that used a double rad. Thing is, I can fit one too. It will just hang down further is all.

So that is the plan. Also ordered new fans (Akasa have taken over Enermax's fan division it seems) and gaskets etc. Oh, and a couple of AC goodies as well

The rad is exactly the same width, so it should all just bolt in without me having to change a single hose. We shall see lol.....

 

[AlienALX]

OK so I decided to do the strip out and drain before I leave. Apologies for the potato pics. There is no light at all today, so I had to use the dreaded flash.

The reason I spent nearly two weeks designing this system was to make it easy to service. And I was correct, it literally took ten minutes to complete. I taped a coffee filter into a jug and went to work.

Two molex discon, one hose and.

And part of the reason why the temps were not too good on a 120. Barely any coolant in the system even when it's full.

And then it was all put down in a safe place.

And put the coolant back. Not bad for oo, about six months?

Wish I hadn't ordered another one now but ho hum, what can you do?

 

[AlienALX]

OK so under the orders of Gareth I have indeed ordered one of these.

Mostly because I don't like hot things. I also ordered a bunch of 3 pin extensions for the fans to the Poweradjust, as well as a nice black Molex extension.

I will be making some sort of board to mount them both on (the Poweradjust and Splitty).

 

[AlienALX]

Well I have been thinking and I realised that whenever you see a heavily modded rig you usually never hear of it again. I don't strip mine I use them and keep them up to date, so hey, even if it's boring and the pics are crap it's something

I got home today and more stuff had arrived. Xbone receiver was here as were the two GLI I bought to stop hum on both of my sound cards/amps.

Ignore the Akasa thing, that is for another rig lol.

They are awesome ! Still lots of stuff to arrive but I think some is coming Weds.. Any way I decided to pretty much do a full teardown.

It's pretty filthy tbh. Thing is I had it all apart about 7 months back and cleaned the front end then. Plus I do look after it and keep it clean as best I can without tearing it down.

I bought this thing for £11. Hoping it's even semi decent. Not under any illusions though, most of this will need to be done by hand with a paint brush.

And what I have removed..

Now you would think after nearly two years that the PSU would be absolutely atrocious?

It's actually not that bad. There is no filter either, so gawd knows. Maybe it's me being a bit of a clean freak in general with housework.

 

[juandon]

that's crazy clean after 2yrs

 

[AlienALX]

that's crazy clean after 2yrs

There's practically nothing inside it either tbh. I don't get it, because the surrounding case is filthy. Maybe the fan doesn't spin up much?

Yeah very strange that.. Will know more once I get the vacuum thing and take it apart

 

[AlienALX]

Inside was rotten, but not as bad as I thought it would be.

Gave the two halves a bloody good clean.

Then removed the warranty void sticker and put it all back together. Much better.

 

[juandon]

did you use the new vac or was it the trusty brush

 

[AlienALX]

did you use the new vac or was it the trusty brush

The new vac is junk mate. If I could throw it back at them I would. Sadly I can't so sending it back will be the thing. I have an Oreck canister vac that was under the stairs. It can lift a bowling ball, thing is savage. So I just used an AS brush and then held the tip of the vacuum about 2in away. So as soon as I dislodged any crap it just went straight into the hoover.

So I took apart the intake assembly a little while ago. I was going to remove the nose cone I spent days making because I glued it to the fan. However, I decided to very carefully remove it (because the fans I was using before were £20 each) and put it back to work. I'm sooo glad I did. The LEDs inside the fan all reflect off of the polished and lacquered surface and it looks saweeeeet.

 

[juandon]

shame about the vac but that fan looks awesome.

 

[AlienALX]

Morning update.

Last night turned into a bit of a nightmare. First I noticed that the shroud was sitting odd so I pushed on it. *CRACK*. Uh oh..... Took it out and sure enough I had cracked the cathode in two. However amazingly it still worked. Took it off and wrapped selotape around it and it's fine. Thankfully I didn't crack the actual cathode.

So I fitted it back together and the nose cone was dead FFS. So out it all came again. Realised the 12v-3v board I had used had gotten rather hot making the wires brittle. All four had snapped off. So I had to crack out the soldering iron at 1am (bear in mind I had been working since about 11am) and fix that.

So now it's mostly back together inside I figure I will drop in my Quadro and just use the rig until the water goes back in. Then I realised I had lost the M.2 screw. So I grabbed a NVME - PCIE sled I bought. Screw wouldn't fit the MSI spacer thing. I also dropped it, because it didn't fit, and lost it. So I grabbed a M.2 - SATA 2.5" chassis. Dropped that screw too, though did find it. It seems MSI use a different screw size to every one else. It is less than 1mm. In the end out of sheer desperation I remembered that I had a 1080Ti cooler. None of those would fit either, but I did finally have a stroke of luck. When I removed the spacer from the board I realised that one of the GPU screws fitted the back part of the hole. So I removed the spacer from the M.2 enclosure, put the screw through the drive and then the spacer, then taped it on with masking tape. Finally after about two hours it worked. I forgot there was no way for me to boot the rig without it fitted.

Then I started the rig and it was saying no OS found and shutting down after a few seconds. Turns out I needed to go into bios, dig deep in the menus and find the M.2.

IIRC it was 2 AM before I finally just walked into the bedroom and collapsed.

I am waiting for supplies now and deliveries. So won't be doing much of anything today. Plus my back is killing me from leaning over the rig for 13 hours.

Photos of cheevos. Gotta say, it looks like it's new.

Also, thank god for 100 ISO. Finally my pics don't look as drab as the day surrounding them.

 

[juandon]

sounds like you were having fun last night, glad to see it up n running albeit not completed