Ehsteve

Benchmark: Fire Strike CPU: i7 4790k @ 4.4GHz GPU: Fury X x2CF GPU Core: 1120MHz GPU Memory: 500MHz Score: 20486 Graphics Score: 33306 3DMark Link: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8013174 Benchmark: Fire Strike Ultra CPU: i7 4790k @ 4.4GHz GPU: Fury X x2CF GPU Core: 1120MHz GPU Memory: 500MHz Score: 7493 Graphics Score: 8046 3DMark Link: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/7938896

And the taxpayer yet again has the foot the bill for the government's inability to keep their own house in order, so we're forking out for extended support without any real benefit. There's no cost saving here, in fact it's just a stopgap before we have to pay for an upgrade. Now a reminder that they want to *raise* the GST another 5% in the near future and lower the theshold for GST on imports. It's stuff like this that just shows that they're not responsible enough with taxpayer money they're receiving right now, let alone the increase they are proposing.

Well, it's been a hellish few days trying to get progress done, but to surmize: - Needed a new bottle of isopropyl alcohol, was given surgical spirits (unusable due to castor oil content), had to send it back and search myself, which delayed fitting the GPU waterblocks another couple of days - Issues demounting the heatsink from the 980 ti. Of the 20 screws required to be removed (4 large GPU screws and 16 regular screws) one board will need to have 2 drilled out due to manufacturing tollerances having the screw so misaligned (touching one side of the mounting hole in the PCB) and tightened that it is impossible to remove. The other board will need *seven* drilled out. Every trick has been employed to coax it out without possible damaging the PCB in any way. I must have lost the lottery here when it comes to build quality. On a good note, the large heatsink screws and ones holding in the backplate were very easy to remove. This just means there's an issue with consistency (yay?). These will be drilled out by hand (not by a power tool) mind you to prevent any possible damage to the PCB, having done this kind of thing on a regular basis with miniatures it's the class of fine work I'm used to. I honestly have seen some of the worst quality from ASUS in terms of presentation. Not having the chance to actually benchmark anything yet, it is impossible to comment on the actual performance. What can be remarked on is that the box was lacklustre, with nothing but a plastic sheet holding it down over a couple of folded pieces of cardboard (no custom foam for that premium feel), that the tollerances on the screws was laughable at points, with several screws having their drives misaligned on top of being misaligned to the threading into the heatsink. The product feels rushed at best, and I can say that after this, probably won't buy an ASUS card again. Keep in mind that this is a reference GPU, and I can only hope that this was a first batch teething issue. I tested the hex-head screws on the heatsink to see if there was any kind of issue there but they came off very easily, even with one of them having the drive misaligned. Don't know what else to say. Of all the components, only the Corsair c70 Vengeance case, Phoenix Blade PCIe SSD and Seasonic PSU have really impressed in terms of presentation and quality. Waterblocks will be mounted tonight at all costs, so that the weekend is free for the actual *building* part of the build log with actual pictures.

So after some less than successful POSTing due to some faulty SATA cables (error A2/99) the cables were swapped out and eventually all components detected successfully! And today, the final piece arrived in the office: 'Tis beauty:

So a lot has happened in the meantime, well actually not that much. Motherboard is scheduled for delivery tomorrow and so begins the POST'ing. The day after, having been tabled an offer I couldn't refuse, a G.Skill Phoenix Blade 960GB PCIe SSD at a reasonable price (at a better $/GB ratio than the Intel and Kingston products currently available in Australia), shall be arriving as the boot drive (the Samsung boot drive has already moved on to a better place). That covers the PCIe 2.0 slot down the bottom and leaves just enough room to slide in a cheeky Xonar DX between the two graphics cards. The direct airflow from the push/pull over the hard drives in the front should definitely give it enough breathing space. This is the exact setup that was originally envisioned, but wasn't able to justify the cost of a PCIe SSD. That means POST'ing tomorrow, full boot and driver installation the day after and finally the assembly being done over the weekend.

The floating-style motherboard was an amazing idea and this is a great execution of that concept.

Well, lost the sun before it was time for shooting, but as they say: when the going gets tough, the tough get some cardboard boxes and an embroided tablecloth and they take pictures dammit. So sit back and tune in to Galaxy News Radio The powerhouse: Here I was, minding my own business trying to survive in the badlands, when without warning, a super mutant attacked! Before long his rampage had destroyed the whole shelter: But as abruptly as he appeared, the super mutant vanished...and all that was left to do was rebuild and try to survive another encounter in this unforgiving wilderness... The storage: Now for the good stuff (the blurry, out of focus good stuff. 2 SLI bridges in the back with either 1 or 2-3 slot spacing as I was unable to eyeball the slot spacing on the Maximus VII Formula): My apologies to EK for not including the water blocks yet, but I couldn't seem to get any good pictures to do these pieces any justice. Will get on those ASAP, they look awesome though. Now for some of the smaller details, picked up some M4 screws for the radiators. Since most radiators do not include screws to mount directly to the case here are some 35mm and 6mm black screws with a nice block-ish look to tie into the quasi-military/utility look. Depending on how the fans are mounted, either the 35mm screws (test fitted and they are perfect!) will go through the case and fan into the radiator or otherwise I can simply use the screws included with the radiator to mount the fans to the radiators then use the 6mm screws to mount the radiators directly to the case. I love the solid feel and look of Koolance's 380 CPU waterblock. It will probably be the only real 'bling' inside the case, once completed, but boy does that baby shine: The radiators (30 FPI) and pump/reservoir combo (with the RP-1250 probably the weakest choice in the build given there's now little justification for the features for the cost, but that said it came in black ): And finally the case, the Corsair c70 Vengeance Gunmetal Black. A personal favorite due to solid steel design, ample cable management space, ease of maintenance due to the latch-secured side plates and the handy...handles...for hauling it around (not that this will travel far): Now the plan of attack: - Remove the bottom Hard Drive cage, leaving the top one suspended from the optical drive bay leaving us with the 3 slots for the 2 storage SSHDs in RAID 1 and SSD for the program/boot drive. - Remove the stock fans and replace then with the Noctua Industrials, putting the top HDD cage with a push/pull configuration to draw air over the storage devices and over the motherboard and back directly into the exhaust out the back. - Install motherboard with all the good stuff, but not before installing those waterblocks on the CPU and GPUs along with fittings. - With the bottom HD cage out of the way, then mount the bottom 240mm radiator as an intake in pull configuration as well as on the top as an exhaust in either a pull or push configuration (still undecided, whatever mood takes me at the time?). Because of this, I had to select a power supply of a maximum length of 160mm or less. So that's why we've gone with the Seasonic 860w XP2 Platinum (also because you can use the CableMod kits with Seasonic power supplies). - Mount the RP-1250 in the available 5-1/4" optical drive bay. - Tube it up with clear tubing. - Set all the LEDs to only activate on use on all components. - any unstealthy elements to be dealt with either a decal of some sort or a blast with some matte black primer. However, none of this can happen until I get that motherboard and unfortunately the store has yet to even process the order for some reason (well over 3 days now), will give them a call tomorrow to see what the deal is (being the end of the financial year, they might just be busy...or sitting on their hands). Hope you enjoyed the update, and end our broadcast day with another hit from Galaxy Radio News EDIT: Welp, got in contact with the motherboard supplier and apparently they're out of stock...and were happy to keep my money floundering around waiting for me to make the first move... So given options...it's either get it from overseas before the end of the next week for a little bit extra or hold on for another 3-4 weeks (not even guaranteed to get a hold of one then). I went with the overseas options simply because I need to claw back space currently occupied by boxes which doesn't involve putting them in storage.

Don't worry, they're not STRIX cards, they're just the standard blower reference 980 ti cards from ASUS.

Far as I know the Strix is a non-reference card and would not work with the EK-FC Titan X block. You'd have to go with a universal cooler or the like. Do not hold me to that though, haven't touched that particular card before. I'm just using their reference card...mainly because it was the only one in stock at the time here in the land down under.

Thought I'd throw my hat in the ring with a little build I'd like to call the Stealth Boy. As the old rig will soon pass on to the great PCB in the sky (bubbling on the motherboard), there was a need, and an idea fuel by an unconditional love of Fallout which started many years ago on a Pentium III and whopping 512MB of RAM. The idea is to have silent, LED-less performance. So in order to achieve this we're going with effective but down-geared fans and a custom water cooling loop. So without further ado: the Stealth Boy: Case: Corsair c70 Vengeance Gunmetal Black CPU: Intel i7 4790k GPU: ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti - ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti Motherboard: Asus Maximus VII Formula RAM: Corsair 16GB (2x8) C10 Low Profile HDD: Samsung 850 PRO 128GB - Seagate 2TB SSHD Hybrid - Seagate 2TB SSHD Hybrid PSU: Seasonic 860W XP2 Platinum Fans: Noctua Industrial 2000RPM (non-PWM) x3 Water Cooling: Pump/Reservoir: Koolance RP-1250 (a failure on my part in planning, with the final build will probably not use even half of the features at best) CPU: Koolance 380I CPU Waterblock GPU: EK-FC Titan X GPU Waterblock (Black Acetal Nickel) + EK-FC Titan X GPU Backplate (Black) x2 Fittings: Koolance Black 10mm ID 16mm OD Compression Fittings (including threaded coupling Radiator: Koolance 2x120mm 30FPI Radiators x2 Tubing: PrimoFlex PrimoChill Clear 10mm ID 16mm OD Fans: Noctua Industrial 2000RPM (non-PWM) x4 PSU will be accentuated with a black CableMod sleeved cable kit. --- The stars align... All the pieces are here...except the Motherboard. Having possibly held up the build for another 3 weeks after a supplier revision, decided to source it through another store that'll have it here in the next few days. That should give enough time to dig out the lighting booth and the good camera (apologies for the quality). Will post better pictures on the morrow. I hope you enjoy the log!

Water cooling parts arrived at the doorstep today (ahead of the rest of the rig). Now I've measured out the bottom of the case, and test fitted, and actually it will impossible to bottom mount the second radiator with a PSU longer than about 160mm modular. Now given that the completed rig will not be overclocked to insanity (not touching the RAM at all, mainly just tweaking the CPU and GPU for best performance/silence balance) all the time (only if needed) I managed to get away with a Seasonic 860 Platinum which fits in that space, and has a set of CableMod Cables available. Even factoring capacitor degradation and general wear over time, an 860W should be sufficient for all but the absolute high end of overclocking. Hopefully they come out with a 1000W sometime in the future with the same low profile and options for CableMod sleeved kits, but until then this will work fine.

Okay so after a little more thought I've gone ahead and ordered the following: CPU: i7 4790k MoBo: Asus Maximus VII Formula GPU: Asus Geforce 980 Ti [reference] x2 RAM: Corsair 16GB (2x8) Vengeance Low Profile Drives: - Samsung PRO850 128GB (boot) - Seagate SSHD Hybrid 2TB x2 (storage and backup) PSU: EVGA SuperNova 1000 P2 Case: Corsair C70 Vengeance Black Still using Kolance for water cooling. Instead of going the EVGA Hydro Copper (due to a couple of factors such as supply to Australia [extremely limited] and the LED lighting [wanted to go for an LED-less design]) I went for the Asus Geforce and will be adding in an EK waterblock in the same black acetal block as the hydro copper. Though the hydro copper classified backplate was a work of art, I can live with the plain look from a standard EK acetal backplate. In addition this allays my concerns about testing a card with a pre-installed water block. The EVGA power source was mainly chosen because there was a fairly cheap black sleeved cable package available for their modular power supplied alongside great performance and their warranty.

Looking at rigging up a couple of EVGA Hydro Copper cards on an Asus Maximus VII Hero board, and I am wondering if anyone has any idea about the weird spacing between the first and second PCIe slots and the actual distances for using a threaded coupling between the two. Would a 1 slot or a 2-3 slot coupling be appropriate? I'm ordering from overseas [koolance fittings] (so there's a wait-time issue if I get it wrong) and not wanting to have a coupling rusting a box somewhere never getting used. Your help is greatly appreciated in advance.

Hrm, EVGA does have the 10 year warranty for a couple of bucks cheaper but the PSU is larger plus there's the gaudy bright red cables. Or I could spend some more to get the Corsair HX1000i. Honestly it's a die-toss to see which one ends up making the cut. After that there's still the question about the GPU threaded coupling (due to the staggered construction of the PCIe slots on the Asus Maximus VII Hero). I'm wanting to get this right because I'm having to purchase the pieces from America to Australia and the time/money makes it a rather annoying matter if I get it wrong. Could just get both a 1 slot and a 2-3 slot fitting, but spares are only useful if...well there's a potential use for them, and the unused piece would probably end up rusting in a box. Also regarding the EVGA hydro coppers, is it possible to test the components without having to construct the water cooling loop early? I've done the 'test with fanblock, remove fanblock, install cooling block' dance before, but never with one with a preinstalled cooling block. The EVGA cards just look so damn good.

So I've be squirreling away funds for quite some time now, and reckon that now is the time to move ahead with a build I've had in mind for a while now, made even more imperative with the annoucement of Fallout 4. It's not that money's no object here or there's a strict budget, it's more what I would consider a reasonable outlay for the kind of performance expected. Suggestions are more than welcome, mainly because I have enough room to bump it up to 2011-3 (MoBo, CPU, RAM), but haven't felt compelled to fork out the extra $1,500 or so to upgrade from 1150. It will be overclocked within reason, but the idea is to have solid and silent performance. So without further ado: the building plan: CPU: Intel i7 4970K MoBo: Asus Maximus VII Hero GPU: EVGA Geforce GTX 980 Ti Hydro Copper x2 SLI (release imminent) RAM: Corsair 16GB (2x8) Vengeance Low Profile Drives: - Samsung PRO850 128GB (boot) - Seagate SSHD Hybrid 2TB x2 (storage and backup) PSU: CoolMaster V850 (could upgrade to a V1000, but at the moment the 850 seems to be sufficient for power usage) Sound: Creative Soundblaster Z Network: Asus PCI-e AC68 Case: Corsair C70 Vengeance Black Case will be watercooled using: Koolance RP-1250 pump reservoir combo Koolance compression fitting w/ black finish Koolance CPU water block Koolance 240mm 30FPI radiator x2 (installed on top [exhaust] and bottom [intake] of case) EVGA's pre-installed EK water block PrimoChill PrimoFlex clear tubing (10mmx16mm) Replacing all stock case fans [x3] and radiator fans [x4] with Noctua Industrials (non-PWM [3-pin] for radiators, PWM [4-pin] for case). The reason I'm going for the pre-installed cooling block on the CPU is mainly because it actually reduces the cost of the water cooling without impacting quality and removes an additional point of failure in the build process (installing the block personally), also the overall design is just beautiful. So there are a few questions just to address some concerns I have: - When testing components with a pre-installed water block (in this case the graphics cards) will I have to build the water loop just to test if the components are functioning or should it be a short enough process that just seeing if the components aren't DOA won't damage them as they do not have a fan block to cool them (even though they're not running benchmarks in this state). - If the water loop doesn't have to be built to test the graphics cards, then should I build the CPU fan, test the component, uninstall the fan block, then install the water block when it comes time to finally fit the tested component in the case. - With the Maximus VII Hero, it looks like the spacing between the top and middle PCI-e slot is about double the normal spacing on a motherboard. I have not come across this before so I am convinced that a standard 1-slot threaded coupling for the SLI graphics cards will be long enough to bridge the gap (and instead require the adjustable 2-3 slot coupling). Can anyone confirm this? So any suggestions or comments are again very much appreciated.