Building a workstation with water cooling.
- Thread starter Fasttrak
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Space Cowboy
The 47 Ronin
very nice!!! NVME is so dope. Mine only goes 3300/1800 but still fast!
MISTAKES WERE MADE!!!
MONEY WAS SPENT, ITEMS WERE SHIPPED!!!
MONEY WAS SPENT, ITEMS WERE SHIPPED!!!
After receiving the NVME and the MX 300 SSD, I spent a good amount of time with both of them, far more than I ever cared too...
The one gripe I had, of my own doing, was I bought a ver. 1.0 of a motherboard, always a good chance they get it more right on ver. 1.02 or higher. Sadly, my very early x79 chipset would not initialize either drive from boot. I read enough white pages this last week to write a fucking dissertation on UEFI BIOS settings, SATA protocols and my Asus R4E. In the end I threw in the towel as I didn't just spend that kind of money on hard drives to not utilize them properly.
Intel / AMD
This was a pretty tough decision, AMD has finally put out a product that produces good numbers even with some ugly thermals and not much headroom for OC. The trouble is, they came to the party with the same damn thinking Intel did and walked in touting the same crappy PCIE lane count as the 115X series from Intel. A low cost implementation of an interconnect to CPU being used as the gambling chip between HEDT and everyone else. So effin stupid. Stop pushing Crossfire\SLI while at the same time using the primary interconnect for that and the best storage solutions out there, NVME, as the excuse for the crazy price points.
I kind of remember why I stopped upgrading every year or two, the reality is that once they capped the mhz ceiling, the next generation CPU will be mere low double digit increases every cycle. Too bad we are relying on coders for efficient use of all those cores, at this rate it will be decades before the gaming industry catches up.
In the end the AMD just could not do what I need, Threadripper most likely with all it's PCIE lanes but far too much everywhere else for me. Currently I use all 40 lanes on the system I am upgrading, two graphics cards in X16 and 2 hardware instrument sound connects each at 4X. The new system will get a new card that replaces both of the old ones so I get back 4 lanes yippee, I should get a rebate from Intel...
In the end I went with an Intel 6th Gen i7 6850 and an Asus Rampage Extreme V V10 with 32 gigs Corsair Dominator 3,000mhz. This setup should serve me a long time so long as I don't fry it all to the ground with the addition of water. This iteration of X99 is an extremely mature platform on like their fifth build. This is a good time to jump into the x99 platform as prices are going down with the release of the i9's, got a good deal on both the 6850 and R5V10, ram prices still suck. This sucker will be getting a mono-block for full motherboard cooling.
I currently have about four RMA's going out for water blocks and ram for the old board, I have to wait for Performance PC's to receive and give the credit before ordering the mono-block, either that or lose 20% restock fee (shameful practice for retailers...).
It is probably going to be a week or two before I can dig into setting this all up, the RMA's are going to kill me waiting on them to credit the items back for store credit.
I am pretty surprised no one called me out on that screen shot!
Had I posted that on Redit, I would of been called a hoax or hacks. That is a screen shot of my system with the two Samsung 940 Pro's bench marking a single drive. Samsung uses some odd caching algorithm that messes with Crystal Disk, gives some pretty funny returns for performance. I wish I could get my hard drives to perform at that level, at nearly 6 gb\sec read and 5 gb\sec writes. My 960 Pro is right in line with what your NVME is puting out currently. It was just nice to have a tiny motherboard mounted, no cables just a tiny screw, hard drive that kicked ass in performance and the 2tb for a game folder allowed me to remove a ton of stuff out of my old case.
What system was that last water cooled one built around? Thought it was dual 980's and the four core i7.
Hunter
The 47 Ronin
Nah, I am running:
5820k @ 4.8ghz WCooled
Titan X Maxwell almost over the cliff overclocked
same WC loop2x Intel 730 raid 0
Space Cowboy
The 47 Ronin
There are some models that are still faster than the speeds that I get if I recall correctly but I did not see the increase in performance vs price as worth it. Especially when I was already paying $.50 per GB. Cant wait to add another NVME once the price goes down though! Perhaps even put them in raid 0.
The EVO is actually a tad faster than the Pro, it just doesn't have the same life span or warranty. The only thing I could see needing to add storage wise is another MX300 2TB and that is a ways down the road.
I finally got the case this last week along with the motherboard, CPU and RAM. Built it up with all the radiators in place loaded with fans using a temporary Noctua NH-U14S. Windows 10 is interesting and not as bad as I was fearing, I'll get used to the split Start Button\Windows Home key. Everything seems nice and snappy with the interface, at least as good as Windows 7 was for me. The improved compatibility was nice as many of this boards hardware was quick to initialize. I still have days of downloading and installing to get the system back to where it was before, being able to just port over the \Steam library should made this a ton easier.
Caselabs is surely a unique case, price point dictates it to be a top tier design and build quality that is off the charts. I can easily say that this case is the closest toleranced case I have ever built in. If you have ever worked with small assemblies that are highly precisely built, you'll appreciate how much of a bugger finally steps in an assembly can be just getting everything trued up. Every screw hole is exactly placed, counter sunk holes with the heads of the bolts exactly flush, amazing attention to detail. With the case design I chose, it is pretty easy to work in if not laid out the best for external visuals of the final layout. I can see doing quite a few builds into this case, very versatile. I was not ready for how big the case is, one thing to see pictures on the web and see the dimensions, it is a pretty big case. I feel like I have my first official server in my own home.. The bonus is, with the three 360 full copper radiators, a fairly heavy, high grade aluminum case and all assorted gear and this thing with no water or reservoirs is coming in at nearly 50 lbs
. I think I am going to need a custom pedestal to sit this thing on.At this point I have two of the retailers items shipped back and just waiting on an RMA from Performance PC's. They have the waterblocks and fittings so I need to wait on that to get all the gear shipped and ready for stage 2, the swap to water from air. The trouble is, having used over the counter fan extensions and the supplied cables from Seasonic, I am seriously thinking of just buying the headers, connectors and wire along with some sheathing and doing my own custom cables. The only costly part is the crimper and it also happens to be the single most important part for high quality and safe custom cables. With the case layout I am using, I do not need these very long leads as most PSU come with, nearly double the length I require. Pricing out a few of the bigger named custom cable shops I can damn near buy a complete kit with four colors for sheathing, a top quality crimper and enough wire to do ten PSU's..... Decisions, decisions...
A quick benchmark to see the difference, almost doubled Fire Strike Extreme numbers, not too shabby.
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