Retiring The Black Beast

[patrickjp93]

Retiring The Black Beast

 

                At the time this machine was built, it placed in the top 5 of multiple overclocking competitions, and that was before people were caught cheating in storage benchmarks (before SSDs), using a trick where the software thought it had written a large file to a partition, but because that partition was too full or too small, it would finish early, and then the read would also take much less time. Amazing how bad programming leads to improper results... All you had to do was fill up the drive and leave a tiny partition for the software to use. 

Spec Sheet 

Case                                                 Motherboard                     CPU                                       CPU Block

Lian Li PCG70                                  Asus P5N64 WS PRO         Intel Q6600 (Kentsfield)         Swiftech

Fan Controller 1                              Fan Controller 2               GPU                                       GPU Block

Zalman 4-knob 2-switch 5.25”          Connectland 4-knob 3.25”  2x Nvidia GT 9800                 Swiftech

Power Supply 1                               Power Supply 2                Optical Drive                         Monitor

PC P&C Turbocool 1KW                   PC P&C Silencer 750W      Memorex DVD Drive              Benq 720p LCD

Memory                                           Storage

2x2GB OCZ Reaper 1333MHz         2x300GB, 4x75GB

                                                         WD Velociraptor Raid 0

 

Radiator                  Radiator Fans                                   Case Fans

Swiftech 480mm      Mad Dog, Lian Li Industrial, Sunon    Aerocool

 

Build Year

2007 Q1

 

You were a noble 4.31 GHz monster, and you lasted many a good year. The family will miss you and the games you played so well, including Diablo 2, Lords of Magic, Age of Empires, Age of Wonders, Medieval Total War, Guild Wars, and so many more. We will remember you fondly in the family videos you rendered. Dad will remember you for the many spreadsheets you loyally helped crunch. He will also remember you for the sheer pain in the butt you were to get up and running. Oh, and we forgive you for the problems with Windows XP. 

 

We searched high and low for the right fittings. At the time all the community knew was plastic barbs and compression fittings, stuff so leaky we almost gave up hope. We eventually got you your fittings your brass tacks, and nevermore did you leak. Your motor meant for a fish tank is still as good and quiet as when we bought it. Your radiator is the mark of amateur but passionate builders, hanging off the back by pipes, four threaded rods, spacers, a steel fan case for structure, and 4 screws holding the critical fan against 480x120mm^2 of good old Swiftech radiator space. You stood and you conquered when you were done. Dad toyed for days and weeks with your voltages and clocks to get you tuned just so against Prime95.

 

I will remember you for all the times I took you apart, cleaned you, prepped you for competition, and had a ton of fun doing it. You’ve had a good run, but your acrylic reservoir has finally cracked. Your main power supply is starting to fail. You’re just too loud for what we need you to do, and even if you weren’t, you’re just too slow. It’s not your fault. Intel could only build you so strong at the time little Kentsfield quad. Don’t worry though. Your pieces will go to good homes: enthusiasts, computer forensic scientists, memorabilia collectors, benchmarkers, and others. We will remember you fondly. May you someday return in another stunning piece of enthusiast silicon, your molecules rearranged for even more overclocking, even more productivity. Goodbye old friend, our first watercooled build. Good night black beast. Dream peacefully. You deserve your rest.

 

 

The tubing was clear when we built it  Some draining was done before moving the rig to this location for better camera lighting (all our house lights are yellowish incandescent, sorry ), hence the hanging reservoir. Please take note

of how the earliest watercooling builds were done, the radiator being attached at the back by threaded rod (I believe 4M). Also note the spaces which have begun to warp just a tad after almost 8 years. If you look to the mounting point,

there is a steel server fan frame there which took on more of the load to prevent warping at the time. Also, take note of the additional screws holding the 2nd fan to the radiator after the threaded rod. Those required a special set of what I call needle drivers (below). You have to slip the head through the first hole and down to connect with the screw. No 90* screwdrivers will fit in the space between!

 

The motor for the cooling is a refitted fish tank motor which has lasted all this time and is being sent to a friend for cleaning and refitting of bearings. the loop pushes water up to the radiator which then feeds to the CPU, the Northbridge chipset/memory controller, GPU 1, GPU 2, South Bridge, and then to the reservoir. Yes, we have since learned to put reservoirs above the motor. We have a nice 5.25" bay EKWB reservoir going into the new one. This was Dad's first water-cooled build, and he did an amazing job considering. In future photos you will notice all the barbs are brass and long. In those days plastic was the only material you could get for computer components, so we went with industrial/automotive tech available at the time. The threads are wrapped in Teflon before being inserted to prevent leaks. It worked like a charm and still does.

 

 

At its peak performance The Black Beast ran a 12-drive SCSI array, and before that it held 6 WD Velociraptor 300GB drives running in RAID 0. 4 of those drives became boot drives for the family over time. 4 12000 RPM 75GB drives took their place, which is why 4 drives sport Molex connectors.

 

 

Memorex, such a tiny company... they still make optical drives and USBs today, but you never see them anymore. The Zalman fan controller was great, though the old solder and clamp method to attach 2 fans to the switches on the right made for a messy dis-assembly.

 

Connectland made good stuff back in the day. I haven't seen their products in ages though. Also, FLOPPYYYYYYY DRIIIIIIVE!!!!

 

With the front panel removed and the bay shrouds taken out, we can see the mounting points for our motor, the rigged CMOS reset lever (because we didn't have buttons in those days. You had to short the circuit yourself with a wire/paperclip, or do it the better way: by engineering a switch) and the two power supplies. The 750W is up top, the 1000W below. Also, who the Hell needs an anti-static mat? Towels and tabletop: cheap and effective.

 

This is what happens when you smoke in front of your computer for years and have it run, even if you blow it out with an air compressor once in a while. Don't ever let a computer enthusiast pick up smoking...EVER!

 

sorry about some of the blurry shots. It was late at night and with a shitty LG phone camera that wouldn't focus. My old Iphone 5s took better pictures. But look at these old fan brands!

 

The Mad Dog fan here was used to cool a pair of super hot OCZ Reaper 1333 MHz DDR3, some of the first modules available, that ran at 1.8 volts even then. It should be noted this was among the first motherboards if not the first to support DDR3 RAM, and look at that color scheme! The heatsinks are so old it turns out they're brass-plated aluminum! Black and Orange...why does almost no one build with this scheme anymore?

 

All the brass barbs and the GPU water blocks on display

 

Mostly we used the above automotive stainless steel hydraulic clamps, but we had to use one of these annoying plastic ones. They come together like a puzzle from the back if you can't tell. It took me a couple minutes of toying to get it to come up from a barb.

 

Some antique stuff only the old fogies will recognize include IDE cable, in this case double-folded to go from the motherboard up to the optical drive to maintain airflow (we sometimes had an extra fan or 2 in the 5.25" bays). Remember that floppy drive from earlier? Here's the connector! Look how fragile it is!

This is the old IDE connector... Aren't you glad optical switched to SATA and ATAPI?

 

You're a real enthusiast only if you know what this does and how it works. You're not a real electrical engineer if you can't figure it out either. I was proud of myself when I developed it in 8th grade. I wasn't the first, but I figured it out.

@LinusTech @Slick One of you better know.

 

A super old 802.11a interface card, soldered onto the board with care.

 

6 ish years after we retired from the overclocking circuit. Again, don't smoke and own a high-end pc!

Bath time!

The sink 6 hours later... It's more yellow in real life...

 

Well, the surgery's done. The case lays empty and barren, all but for the front I/O media plate I still can't source a replacement for... If anyone can get a Lian Li 2x USB 3.0, Firewire (I think it's IEEE 1394 in the label), and audio, I'll buy it happily. All in all there were 82 screws inside. It took about 2 hours to dis-assemble it all and document, but I had a ton of fun. Now just to build the new one

 

It should be noted all parts in here are original. That's PC P&C for ya! Only the 1000W PSU has started to have the 12V rail degrade, only pushing 11.4 now, and we can get it refurbed for only $35! Still, the new computer is getting a semi-modular. No more bundle of useless cables shoved in a corner and held down with zip ties!

[vlkn´]

dude, change the titel. Kids are reading this too!

 

rip generic pc 2014

[patrickjp93]

dude, change the titel. Kids are reading this too!

 

rip generic pc 2014

???

[vlkn´]

???

just joking chilllllllllllll

[patrickjp93]

just joking chilllllllllllll

Spends an hour writing post, first reply has problem with carefully crafted title, gets defensive, turns out nothing's wrong, begins laughing hysterically!!!

[LukaP]

eww dat tubing goodbye PC

[vlkn´]

Spends an hour writing post, first reply has problem with carefully crafted title, gets defensive, turns out nothing's wrong, begins laughing hysterically!!!

hahahahahahahhahaha :,D 

[Tedster]

I might start crying.

 

So much awesomeness

[Gilbert]

The horror, the dust build up, It burns!

 

I'm too young to remember any of these parts but i'd take a bet that this was the one of the best of the time. (Says so in the intro) it just makes me wonder, Is my PC faster or slower?

[patrickjp93]

eww dat tubing goodbye PC

Like I said, it was clear when we bought it almost 8 years ago. The antifreeze sank in (who needs a freaking silver kill coil?!), the smoke discolored it, and general aging happened. Still, quite a load of fun. We ended up bending the threaded rods though. We could not get the back case fan off without literally cutting it off in the end. The nuts had just been on so long and the bowing made it impossible.

[LukaP]

Like I said, it was clear when we bought it almost 8 years ago. The antifreeze sank in (who needs a freaking silver kill coil?!), the smoke discolored it, and general aging happened. Still, quite a load of fun. We ended up bending the threaded rods though. We could not get the back case fan off without literally cutting it off in the end. The nuts had just been on so long and the bowing made it impossible.

and that thing? is that a slightly less ghetto PSU jumper? i just use a paper clip

[patrickjp93]

and that thing? is that a slightly less ghetto PSU jumper? i just use a paper clip

If by jumper you mean the first one starts the second once power trips the first one, then yes. I built that myself! Still works!

[LukaP]

If by jumper you mean the first one starts the second once power trips the first one, then yes. I built that myself! Still works!

oh, its a dual PSU build ooooh. *goes check the post more thouroughly(fuck spelling)* 

[patrickjp93]

oh, its a dual PSU build ooooh. *goes check the post more thouroughly(fuck spelling)* 

Yeah, the world lied when it said you could run that whole thing on 750W. Total BS! The 1000W could run the whole thing, but then we had an airflow-restricted cable run up to the board's main power port in the upper left, so we went with 2 PSUs instead.

[Norman_the_Owl]

Stuff like this is both fascinating and sad at the same time.

[patrickjp93]

Stuff like this is both fascinating and sad at the same time.

It was a bit emotional tearing down all that past work. Over the next couple days, we're going to build the new one, push the processor to its limits, dial it back, and watch it fly for the next 7 years or so.

[Norman_the_Owl]

It was a bit emotional tearing down all that past work. Over the next couple days, we're doing to build the new one, push the processor to its limits, dial it back, and watch it fly for the next 7 years or so.

New parts, or old parts in a new build?

[patrickjp93]

New parts, or old parts in a new build?

New parts. The only old things will be the floppy drive, small fan controller (because we lost the 3.25" bay covers and laziness), radiator, and the motor. All else is swapped out. I'll post specs when we get further in. We hit some snags in re-rigging the radiator due to Home Depot putting way too much paint on the ends of its threaded rod. Getting nuts onto these things was a living nightmare. Cross-threading, getting paint (lock-tite) stuck in the threads and making the screw process take forever, getting the rod to line up with the case and exhaust fan taking 5 attempts... Water-cooled builds NEVER give us this much trouble...

[MasterJV]

The Q6600 was an unlocked cpu? I've had it for year on a stock cooler and never realized the potential it had. How well did these CPUs overClock?

[patrickjp93]

The Q6600 was an unlocked cpu? I've had it for year on a stock cooler and never realized the potential it had. How well did these CPUs overClock?

Depended honestly. Some flew to the skies like my Dad's. Others you could barely budge. Back then Intel had leakier transistors that were either amazing or flops. 

 

It's much easier today to overclock. Like I said we reached 4.3 back in the hayday. We had the world record on water for a short period, and we didn't lose it by much. we've never lost the silicon lottery, so it's unfair for me to gauge the rest by our stuff. My I7 3820 ran a 4.94GHz for a while too, but now it sits at 4.5. My school desktop is the only one I haven't messed with, for obvious reasons. It's a 2600k though and those had a great reputation.

 

I guess all I can say is tweak voltages and BCLKs if you get stuck on the ratio. We have a BCLK of 77 on our Q6600 but the multiplier is sky high. 

[flibberdipper]

I like it.

[Buildmeasystem]

The Q6600 was an unlocked cpu? I've had it for year on a stock cooler and never realized the potential it had. How well did these CPUs overClock?

You may have missed out. My q6600 was a beast too. I had it running rock solid stable at 3.6Ghz on air (top over lock on hardocp at the time)

The GO stepping really improved your chances but it wasn't uncommon to get 800-1000Mhz out of them.

I managed a 50% overclock no problems.

I still use mine daily. It's my media server now.

[patrickjp93]

You may have missed out. My q6600 was a beast too. I had it running rock solid stable at 3.6Ghz on air (top over lock on hardocp at the time)

The GO stepping really improved your chances but it wasn't uncommon to get 800-1000Mhz out of them.

I managed a 50% overclock no problems.

I still use mine daily. It's my media server now.

If we kept a media server we'd probably retire it the same way. Alas, off to a friend's experimental lab it goes (for doing forensics on floppy drives and such).