Alright! Longer time than expected to actually make another post, but hey, that's alright! I ended up finishing Water FTW 1.0 the night of the 16th when I returned home. I really didn't run into any trouble at all, other than the Switech micro reservoir being a bit hard to mount, especially with properly routing the tubing... I ended up getting it done, but the tubing wasn't quite as clean as I had liked. Oh well, it was done. Anyway, here's the first phase, along with all the parts that had been received.
Above is the weekend haul. You can see here, I brought home not only a fair number of shiny fittings and water blocks, but I also have... WHAT'S THAT? 16GB OF DDR3? Oh my. Yeah, I upgraded to 16GB of DDR3, Mushkin Blacklines. All of the fittings were ordered from Dazmode/NCIX, and arrived by Friday! Service from NCIX is normally amazing, but they went above and beyond with these 3 orders to them. The only thing that didn't arrive was the package from Elwoodz, which I was initially disappointed about, but got over it awful quick. Also pictured are the 72 K Cups from Singlecup.ca, my new spot for my coffee fix. 2 boxes of dark roast, a box of medium roast, and a box of jet fuel.
Above are the pictures that I took that actually turned out okay from Water FTW 1.0. As you can see from the first one, it's a bit of a tight fit for the reservoir with the tubing. I only had one leak during the build, and it was actually the fill port of all things. The EK blocks are simply great. Amazing machining, even if the GPU blocks seem a bit rough. I guess seeing finishes like Zalman, or the base of the Supreme HF kinda spoiled me... I was happy with this, but I wanted it to look even better... So off to Dazmode. The results are posted below...
As you can see above, with the dazmode order I decided to add a lovely tube reservoir. This particular tube is the EK Multioption 150 x2 Advanced. It comes with like, 3 holes on the top, 5 on the bottom, 3 tubes for inside the reservoir to reduce cyclone formation, along with an anti cyclone attachment. I decided to go with the tubes. This really reduced the number of sharp turns, and actually shortened my tubing runs, which was my main goal. My second goal was a usable drain port. Because, holy crap, holding a full HAF 932 over a tub is NOT a fun experience. My drain port is right after the pump, and consists of a t block with a quick disconnect attached to it. The female end is attached to a length of tube, and I keep it for draining. This really does simplify things... A lot.
Picture of the drain port above. The Koolance quick disconnects are simply amazing. really nice build quality to them. You can also see here my pump mounting choice. I decided to zip tie it to the drive cage, with some neoprene from a cheap laptop case acting as a vibration dampener. I can't hear it, and I couldn't really even hear it when I was leak testing. Maybe it's just me, but the MCP355 isn't loud with proper mounting. Definitely not audible over the fans, which are pretty darn quiet as it is.
Upsettingly, I didn't quite have room for the above. This doesn't mean I won't try to fit it in at a later date, but I had to leave this wonderful single radiator out for now. I am, however, very happy with the temperatures I'm getting from this triple radiator. Sadly, the highest I can manage to push the processor with hyperthreading on, while still maintaining good temperatures, is 3.8GHz. I'm partially blaming this on the 16GB of DDR3. At 1.25v in the bios, 1.25v on the VTT, I can manage 3.8GHz, with a maximum temperature of 63 degrees in LinX. That's a 25 pass run with all memory. 4GHz required over .1v more, and shot temperatures up another 10 degrees, if not more. My happy medium is 3.8GHz, as the extra "performance" isn't really worth the heat. I'm very happy with a processor that idles around 22-24 degrees, and has an average load temperature of around 28-30. Even gaming doesn't push it all that far. The maximum temperature I have seen during gaming wasn't even close to the 63 max in LinX on the processor, and the GPU doesn't even hit 50... Oh, and by the way, the GPU idles around 28 degrees. Not complaining there. On the heatsink, it would easily hit 35-40 degrees idle, and I don't think I had ever seen it go under 70 degrees with a gaming load on it.
Oh, as for that 16GB of RAM... This is what I've been doing. ESXi 4.1 running in Workstation 7, virtualizing 3 different operating systems! I plan on doing a lot more tests with it, but I'm a little limited by the single Western Digital Black... I think, however, I can use this as an excuse to set up a raid array!
Well, that's enough for tonight... I'll definitely be back to post again. And, I'll leave this post with one more picture.
-Jon
Above is the weekend haul. You can see here, I brought home not only a fair number of shiny fittings and water blocks, but I also have... WHAT'S THAT? 16GB OF DDR3? Oh my. Yeah, I upgraded to 16GB of DDR3, Mushkin Blacklines. All of the fittings were ordered from Dazmode/NCIX, and arrived by Friday! Service from NCIX is normally amazing, but they went above and beyond with these 3 orders to them. The only thing that didn't arrive was the package from Elwoodz, which I was initially disappointed about, but got over it awful quick. Also pictured are the 72 K Cups from Singlecup.ca, my new spot for my coffee fix. 2 boxes of dark roast, a box of medium roast, and a box of jet fuel.
Above are the pictures that I took that actually turned out okay from Water FTW 1.0. As you can see from the first one, it's a bit of a tight fit for the reservoir with the tubing. I only had one leak during the build, and it was actually the fill port of all things. The EK blocks are simply great. Amazing machining, even if the GPU blocks seem a bit rough. I guess seeing finishes like Zalman, or the base of the Supreme HF kinda spoiled me... I was happy with this, but I wanted it to look even better... So off to Dazmode. The results are posted below...
As you can see above, with the dazmode order I decided to add a lovely tube reservoir. This particular tube is the EK Multioption 150 x2 Advanced. It comes with like, 3 holes on the top, 5 on the bottom, 3 tubes for inside the reservoir to reduce cyclone formation, along with an anti cyclone attachment. I decided to go with the tubes. This really reduced the number of sharp turns, and actually shortened my tubing runs, which was my main goal. My second goal was a usable drain port. Because, holy crap, holding a full HAF 932 over a tub is NOT a fun experience. My drain port is right after the pump, and consists of a t block with a quick disconnect attached to it. The female end is attached to a length of tube, and I keep it for draining. This really does simplify things... A lot.
Picture of the drain port above. The Koolance quick disconnects are simply amazing. really nice build quality to them. You can also see here my pump mounting choice. I decided to zip tie it to the drive cage, with some neoprene from a cheap laptop case acting as a vibration dampener. I can't hear it, and I couldn't really even hear it when I was leak testing. Maybe it's just me, but the MCP355 isn't loud with proper mounting. Definitely not audible over the fans, which are pretty darn quiet as it is.
Upsettingly, I didn't quite have room for the above. This doesn't mean I won't try to fit it in at a later date, but I had to leave this wonderful single radiator out for now. I am, however, very happy with the temperatures I'm getting from this triple radiator. Sadly, the highest I can manage to push the processor with hyperthreading on, while still maintaining good temperatures, is 3.8GHz. I'm partially blaming this on the 16GB of DDR3. At 1.25v in the bios, 1.25v on the VTT, I can manage 3.8GHz, with a maximum temperature of 63 degrees in LinX. That's a 25 pass run with all memory. 4GHz required over .1v more, and shot temperatures up another 10 degrees, if not more. My happy medium is 3.8GHz, as the extra "performance" isn't really worth the heat. I'm very happy with a processor that idles around 22-24 degrees, and has an average load temperature of around 28-30. Even gaming doesn't push it all that far. The maximum temperature I have seen during gaming wasn't even close to the 63 max in LinX on the processor, and the GPU doesn't even hit 50... Oh, and by the way, the GPU idles around 28 degrees. Not complaining there. On the heatsink, it would easily hit 35-40 degrees idle, and I don't think I had ever seen it go under 70 degrees with a gaming load on it.
Oh, as for that 16GB of RAM... This is what I've been doing. ESXi 4.1 running in Workstation 7, virtualizing 3 different operating systems! I plan on doing a lot more tests with it, but I'm a little limited by the single Western Digital Black... I think, however, I can use this as an excuse to set up a raid array!
Well, that's enough for tonight... I'll definitely be back to post again. And, I'll leave this post with one more picture.
-Jon
