The long expected rig arrived

[monkey7]

... but I'm currently too tired to write a good build log. The HD4850 has its cooling replaced with a Scythe Musashi, the i7 920 is under a Noctua U12P Se1366.

GPU is already overclocked to the limits of CCC, 700MHz core and about a 30MHz increase on memory too. Really too tired to do anything about it. Running at about 60C in a FurMark Xtreme burn test, both fans at the lowest settings.

CPU is stress testing (prime95 blend) at the moment. Running 46/47C on core 1-2, and 47/48C on core 3-4. And the fan controller hasn't even started revving up those sweet Noctua fans.

Will probably post pictures tomorrow, but I'm quite busy then with a family party.

 

[FarFarAway]

Oooh cool mate, can't wait to see some pics

Have a good party

 

[monkey7]

Thanks, I had ^^

Transferring files to my rig now, I estimate the first will be online in an hour I still have to install photoshop CS3 though

 

[monkey7]

The parts

For some reason my wireless gave up on me, so I had to conquer my brother's computer. Anyway, the first part of the build log.

Sorry for the quite poor pictures, they were all taken with artificial light somewhere between 20.00 and ... 02.45

The parts arrived at around 10.30 in the morning when I was at work... Frustrating, because I knew they would arrive that morning. When I got home there were two boxes waiting for me; one from Azerty (hardware etailer) and one from HighFlow (also known here, dutch cooling specialised etailer).

After taking the boxes up, the first thing I did was opening the Azerty box, revealing a lot of protective packaging:

First package I took out was a yellow ... thing. Opening it revealed my SpinPoint F1 640GB:

Seeing the next thing really pleased me; my Core i7 920

And the information sticker in a closeup:

After that, stuffed between some other boxes, the RAM:

Now the heaviest parts... Power supply (CM real power m700) and the UD5 motherboard

Now on the graphics side of the things, a Sapphire HD4850 'custom' cooled, which I expect to get a bit noisy:

Next to be opened was the HighFlow box. It was a fair bit bigger than the Azerty box, and enough packaging was included for the contents to survive world war III.

... And some free uhh... Ads

And my Noctua U12P SE1366 edition

As I mentioned before, I expected the GPU cooler to get quite noisy. Well, here's the solution: a Scythe Musashi VGA cooler

And some thermal goop

As I was unpacking the items I collected all of them on my bed. When both boxes were empty, they were all sitting nicely together

All of that should go in this, a CoolerMaster HAF 932, also recently reviewed on OC3D:

That's it for now, I now have to go back to my own rig in order to prepare pics of the actual building ^^

 

[Rastalovich]

Great pics of new stuff !

There's nothing like that boxed-new-gear feeling.

 

[monkey7]

Okay, got the next set of pictures all cropped and corrected

First thing to be built into the case was the PSU, without any modular cables attached to it. This was so easy I even forgot to take pictures of it...

After that I unpacked the motherboard. Sorry about the bad quality picture, the tripod must have moved somehow.

This motherboard of course needed a CPU cooler mounted onto it in order to be inserted into the case. And in order to attach your CPU cooler you need.. Right. The CPU itself.

I was quite suprised this pic actually got the text readable, as the camera was about 1 meter from the object and had about 10 seconds of 'sluitertijd', meaning the camera took 10 seconds to take the picture.

Ready to recieve CPU ^-^

Sadly my attempt to photograph the CPU in the socket failed miserably; the image was seriously blurred and focused on the wrong point.

Now I started unpacking the cooler. When opening the box I found two boxes inside it. The first box contained the cooler itself with one of the uglyashell but much appreciated Noctua fans:

And the other contained another fan and all the accessoires:

My guess is Noctua just took their normal U12P package and then redesigned the outer box and adding an accessoires box.

After fiddling with and swearing at those **** fan wires and the noctua mounting system (wasn't that bad, I'm just a bad manual reader), the cooler was mounted on the mobo

I don't have a picture of the mobo inside the case, as I forgot to resize it and I'm not going to upload 6MB with my crappy connection ^^

With the motherboard in the case, I found it time to install those sweet 6GB's of ddr3

Next to build in was the HDD. This was done using the kind of clips Cooler Master uses in the HAF 932.

In clip

And in case

That's a serious amount of front panel cables right there...:

But first I installed the graphics card:

After wrestling with the cables for a serious while, I had some result:

Front actually looks quite good You just should not look at the back:

After having to put some effort into closing the 'back' sidepanel (cables didn't really want to move), I found out the cable of the side 230mm fan was just a bit too short to be connected with the panel lying on the floor. Well, every problem has a solution:

After putting the left side panel back on and a quick prayer, I fired her up

 

[Rastalovich]

I'm amazed those caps on the mobo don`t get in the way of the Noctua.

Probably think of centralizing the harddrive(s) with the fan. It's not a big deal, but it`ll help.

 

[monkey7]

Hmm yeah you're right

*waves his cable management goodbye* ^^

Will post pics of GPU custom cooling and overclocking this evening

 

[monkey7]

Harddrive has been moved to the middle of the fan

After turning on the machine I was immediately disturbed by the noise it was producing. Stopping the fans one by one (the Noctua ones were hard to stop btw), the main noisemaker turned out to be the GPU cooler. This cooler did keep the GPU quite chilly by the way, just 64C under FurMark Xtreme burn while the core was clocked to 700MHz.

So, 'luckily' I had ordered the Noctua CPU cooler together with the Scythe Musashi cooler

Just taken out of the box:

The victim of this replacement:

And after removing four screws:

Preparing to clean the core of the ... goop Sapphire has used:

That core look shiney when the heatshink is removed :yumyum: Actually looks a lot better than the Intel IHS

Now the photos will take a leap in time I have tried to fit the cooler in between, but found two things out:

1. I forgot the ram sinks

2. I mounted it the wrong friggin' way! If I wanted it to fit that way I would have needed to dremel out the PCI brackets in my case xD

At that time I was too grumpy to see the fun of it and did not take a picture. Sadly, because you guys could probably have a good laugh about it

"If the graphic card did not have any original heatsinks on the memory & regulator chips, it is not necessary to attach the chip heatsink." - Musashi VGA cooler installation guide. Screw that. It fits, it could improve performance; I put them on.

So, the TIM (MX-2) applied again, the ramsinks fitted on and the Musashi prepared to be put on.

And fitted

Fitting the whole thing in the case was quite a problem. First the cooler was too *** large to handle properly and also, the knobs of the PCI bracket fan controller could just not fit through the hole. Not a pleasant suprise when it's 02.00 or so. I took the simple approach and filed out the pci slots.

And furmark with a core clock of 700:

Keepin' her nice and cool One fan on mid power, other on low. I have recently reinstalled Vista, so the clocking will have to start over again. Maybe I've got time this evening :')

CPU overclocking

I'd like to make one statement first: overclocking the i7 chips is very, VERY easy if you just take the effort to read something about it.

I have been able to get the chip to 3.80gHz without the Turbo, but I sadly lost the screenies of SuperPI and CPU-z. SuperPI time was exactly 11.000 seconds.

The 24/7 clock I have achieved is the following:

Please note that the cpu is not loaded and turbo mode was engaged. Without turbo the CPU runs at 3.5gHz. BIOS vCore is 1.36250.

Temperatures of the Noctua U12P are just great. About 64C highest temperature under load, ambient 19-20C.

Hope you have all enjoyed the log :') If you want pics of any part for your own build or just for the heck of it, just ask.