Annual PC Upgrade - 2009

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Markyip1

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 12, 2007
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Hey everyone,

After several weeks of planning and buying parts, the time has finally come to build! (It's been such a busy summer that this is only the third weekend I've been home since May, and thus the first I actually have time to do this.) Over the next two days I'll be putting together my i7 rig, which will consist of the following awe-inspiring parts:

The Base Hardware:

- CPU: Core i7 920 D0 (Batch # 3901A238,) bought from MicroCenter in Paterson, NJ for $200.
- Motherboard: EVGA X58 Classified (E761,) also bought from MicroCenter in Paterson, NJ after price-matching NewEgg.
- RAM: 12 Gigs OCZ Platinum 1600mhz CAS-7 DDR3 (2x 6GB Packs) bought from Amazon
- Video Card: ATI Raedon 4870 X2 (MSI Overclocked Edition) from current rig, bought a year ago and still fighting strong.
- Sound Card: PCI SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum with Front Bay (now going into its fifth! rig)
- PSU: Corsair 1000HX 1000 Watt PSU, from current rig
- Main HD: Seagate 1TB Drive (7200.11,) from current rig
- Photo Storage Array: 3x 500 TB WD SE-16 drives in non-boot RAID-5 array
- Optical Drives: LG Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Combo (DVD Writer,) LG Blu-Ray RE Writer (from current rig)
- Case: The fantastic Cooler Master Cosmos S (from current rig)
- Monitor: Dell 2407 WS, 1920x1200, bought in 2006 and still the best upgrade purchased in the last three years
- Speakers: Logitech Z-5500 5.1 THX, bought several years ago
- OS: Windows 7 x68 Ultimate RTM, downloaded hot off the presses from MSDN around 2PM EDT on 8/6/09

The Cooling Hardware:

-Radiator: Swiftech MCR-320 Quiet Power (top mounted) from current rig
-Pump: Laing DDC 3-2 from current rig
-Res: XSPC Res-Top for Laing DDC 3-2, bought from Jab-Tech
-Pump-Res Mounting: (UN)Design Bracket System bought from Petras
-CPU Block: HeatKiller 3.0 Copper 1366 with backplate, bought from Performance-PCs
-Tubing: MasterKleer 7/16 ID
-Barbs: D-Tek High Flow 1/2 ID with Worm Clamps
-Fans: 8x Combination of regular and blue-LED Yate Loon D12SM-12 fans, plus stock Cosmos S fans

The External Stuff:

-External HDs: 1 very old Maxtor 250GB USB2 Drive, 1 slightly less old Maxtor 300GB USB2 Drive, 1 more recently purchased 750GB Seagate drive USB2/Firewire/ESATA drive
-Keyboard / Mouse: Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop V2 6000, bought a long time ago
-Tablet: Wacom Intous 3 (6x8) Tablet, one of the best computer peripherals I've ever bought

I'll be sure to post updates and pics of the build as I go along. I'm hoping to get a 4-4.2 ghz OC on the 920, but if it's a good chip I'll see if I can push it further. I've seen some 4.5ghz WC rigs with the Classified (although I'd imagine just for benching purposes,) but that would be quite an achievement. Wish me luck :)

Oh, and for completeness...

The Discarded from Current Rig (and soon to be sold) Stuff:

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 (L737B) CPU, a champion overclocker that benched stable at 4ghz on the down-right bizarre MSI P7N Diamond 780i board
-ASUS P5Q Deluxe MoBo, by far the most stable and enjoyable motherboard I've used with a Core 2 chip (mostly because all my other boards were nForce.)
-8 Gig (4 x 2GB) OCZ RAM (2N800SR4GK)
-A Swiftech MCRES-MICRO v1 Res
-A D-Tek FuZion V1 CPU block with quad nozzle, now thoroughly cleaned with Trader Joe's Organic Ketchup
 
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Hey everyone,

I'm now in the middle of bleeding / leak testing my water loop, so I thought it would be an opportune time to post an update with some pictures. Seeing that this is the third WC loop I've built in the last two years, and that I use 7/16'' ID tubing with worm drives, I'm not too concerned about leaks -- a few hours to bleed and leak test should be enough to finish up and boot. I'll keep towels over barbs for a day or two in case a smaller leak forms, but so far it's looking good.



The main components of my new upgrade.



And some new water-cooling components as well.



All together now...



A parting shot of the Q6600 / P5Q Deluxe system. Note that it's running the stock air cooler atm. One reason for prompting an upgrade is that I punctured my radiator a few weeks ago trying to clean it.



Mounting the DDC 3.2 on top of a case fan using (UN) Design brackets. This new setup provides some distinct advantages to my old loop in that a) the pump is now properly suspended from the case floor and b) the tubing length between the pump and cpu block can be reduced considerably. The biggest advantage, however, comes from replacing the MCRES-MICRO with the XSPC Res Top. This cuts out an entire tubing section and simplifies the wc setup. The quality of the XSPC Res is top notch.



Bleeding the loop... All that's left is to hook up cabling and we're good to go!
 
Good news! System's on and it looks like everything is working. At stock, the HeatKiller is keeping the CPU between 30 and 40c (difference between idle and load.) Considering that my stock i7 920 at work idles in the mid 40s and loads in the 60s, I'd say I'm pleased.

My RAID 5 array was picked up by the new system w/o issue (which was to be expected since both boards use the same SouthBridge) and has booted Windows 7 on my 1TB boot drive (not yet reformatted.)

Next steps are to
a) clean up my work area
b) apply some wire-management in the case (now that everything is confirmed to be working)
c) reformat the 1TB for a proper OS install
 
This rig is shaping up to be a real winner. I did a trial, shot-in-the-dark OC run last night @ 4.2ghz just to see if it could make it there w/o issue and to get a sense of how capable the chip and board are. It was the most effortless 4ghz+ OC I've ever done. It was five minutes in the BIOS to set a 200Bclk, Uncore multiplier to 16X, and the memory to stock speed, voltage, and timings (1600mhz, CAS 7 @ 1.65v, 2:8 Divisor.) I set vCore to 1.4, which is probably more than it needs at that OC (it's a D0 chip,) but since this was a trial I was happy to just ballpark a number and see what happened.

The rig booted up perfectly on the first try, and temps were in the high 30s at idle, high 60s/low 70s at load. That's still cooler than my stock-speed / stock-cooled i7 920 C0 at work. The system didn't break a sweat with OCCT and an hour of Prime95 smallFFTs, so I'd say this trial shake-down was a success. With my Q6600, it was a real effort to break a sub 10-second time with SuperPi 1M. Now it can be done willy nilly in 5 minutes. Best of all, with a good 25-30C to T-Junction at a sub-optimal 4.2ghz @ 1.4v, it appears that there is still quite a bit of OC headroom to uncover. Not bad at all :)

Oh, and I almost forgot. This was all with 12GB of RAM :)
 
Wow, check out that blanket! :p

Markyip1 said:
This rig is shaping up to be a real winner. I did a trial, shot-in-the-dark OC run last night @ 4.2ghz just to see if it could make it there w/o issue and to get a sense of how capable the chip and board are. It was the most effortless 4ghz+ OC I've ever done. It was five minutes in the BIOS to set a 200Bclk, Uncore multiplier to 16X, and the memory to stock speed, voltage, and timings (1600mhz, CAS 7 @ 1.65v, 2:8 Divisor.) I set vCore to 1.4, which is probably more than it needs at that OC (it's a D0 chip,) but since this was a trial I was happy to just ballpark a number and see what happened.

The rig booted up perfectly on the first try, and temps were in the high 30s at idle, high 60s/low 70s at load. That's still cooler than my stock-speed / stock-cooled i7 920 C0 at work. The system didn't break a sweat with OCCT and an hour of Prime95 smallFFTs, so I'd say this trial shake-down was a success. With my Q6600, it was a real effort to break a sub 10-second time with SuperPi 1M. Now it can be done willy nilly in 5 minutes. Best of all, with a good 25-30C to T-Junction at a sub-optimal 4.2ghz @ 1.4v, it appears that there is still quite a bit of OC headroom to uncover. Not bad at all :)

Oh, and I almost forgot. This was all with 12GB of RAM :)
Click to expand...

niiiiiiiice!!!!! Thanks for the shotgun procedure... I still havent built mine yet. :( so busy. Well, I built the C0 I had, but then someone bought it off me before I had time to play with it, lol.
 
Great rig, but it is a shame that sound quality is such an afterthought in this build. You should have gone with one of the Auzentech cards and a quality pair of headphones. Audio is like 50% of the experience.
 
Audio quality has not been an afterthought with this or any of my computers. (Although keeping things in check, I don't hook up my rigs to Hi-Fi systems costing thousands.)

Funny though -- the one issue I had in building my new rig was with my aging PCI Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum. I was determined to keep it for as long as possible because it came with the original X-Fi front panel, which was far more useful than the current front panel as it had full width audio jacks for my 32 year old (but still going extremely strong) Sennheiser HD-420 head phones, and it had midi-ports (which were more useful when I actually had a keyboard.) Still, this original X-Fi front panel was supported by a very massive floppy ribbon cable, which I was hoping to get rid of one day. Well, it turns out that my X-Fi "gave up the ghost" as I moved it into this new build. I'm not the least surprised, as it's gotten a bit beat up over the years.

Anyway, here are pictures of the final build. I apologize for the week long delay, but I was awaiting one final component to come in from Newegg (a fan controller to turn off the top three blue-led D12SM Yate Loons at night, which are noticeably noisier and brighter than the two blue-led D12SL Yate Loons they replaced.) Also, notice that the X-Fi has been replaced by an Auzentech Forte, which I purchased from Microcenter after I saw (or heard) my current card go belly up. Is there that much of a difference in quality between the X-Fi Platinum and the Forte? Not really... but I like that it's PCI-Express and while I miss the front panel, I'm happy to get rid of that stupid cable.



 
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Haha that is the cable management. I didn't show you what's behind the motherboard :D
 
awe, no blanket cameo appearance? :p lol

eh, decent enough cable management. ;) That EPS connector cant go behind the mobo?
 
Unfortunately not. The closet cable pass-through slot is behind the radiator, and even if it weren't I think it'd have a hard time making it.
 
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