The Behemoth

[BinaryShadow]

My parts have arrived, time to start building this!

[Luke Jackson]

Looking forward to seeing the outcome, fill us in at each stage  

[BinaryShadow]

The Fractal Design S2 in gunmetal, just trying to decide if I want to front or top mount the cooler, if its in the front I wont need to exhaust out of the top which might be nice. I guess I'll wait and see if there's any clearance issues with top mounting as then I may have no choice anyway.

[BinaryShadow]

Wow I was not expecting to run into problems this early.

 

This EZ_PLUG molex connector on the edge of the Asus Zenith Extreme board is a bit of an issue.

 

I guess my options are cut the case or change the board or case  

[airdeano]

10 hours ago, BinaryShadow said:

This EZ_PLUG molex connector on the edge of the Asus Zenith Extreme board is a bit of an issue.

unless you are planning to run more than two GPU cards, hooking that connector up is futile. not needed

[BinaryShadow]

5 hours ago, airdeano said:

unless you are planning to run more than two GPU cards, hooking that connector up is futile. not needed

Thanks, I have seen this elsewhere to, I have dual GPUs in my future plan but no more so I guess i'll leave it disconnected and see how it goes.

[BinaryShadow]

Last night while waiting to decide about the case issue I decided to put things together to test:

 

 

When I saw these CPUs being mounted it looked/sounded very easy, I found screwing the retention clip down to be a bit fiddly, the first screw wouldn't start easily so I was getting a bit worried but managed to get them all done up (with the supplied torque limiting tool) in the end.

 

 

Cooler on, its going to fun trying to manage all the rgb and fan wiring in the case!

 

 

As I slotted the GPU in I realised I cant actually reach the clip to release it again, that will be fiddly later.

 

Switched on and booted to BIOS first go (was expecting issues).

[paddy-stone]

Any chance of a component list and/or a PCPP list?

 

With the lower molex connector BTW you could get a SATA to molex extension and fit the connector in before installing the board I think.

[BinaryShadow]

21 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

Any chance of a component list and/or a PCPP list?

 

With the lower molex connector BTW you could get a SATA to molex extension and fit the connector in before installing the board I think.

AMD Threadripper 2 2950X CPU
ASUS X399 ZENITH EXTREME Motherboard

Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360 RGB TR4 Edition All In One Liquid CPU Cooler
4x Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO Black 32GB 3466 MHz DDR4 Dual Channel Memory Kits
Fractal Design Define S2 Gunmetal Tempered Glass case
EVGA SuperNOVA 1200W 80+ Platinum PSU
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB BLACK EDITION GPU
Samsung 970 PRO 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD Boot Drive
3x Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD for mass storage possibly in some kind of RAID

 

The board is too close to the case for a plug even if connected before installation but thanks for the suggestion.

 

After the first boot with just the single pair of DIMMs in I loaded the memory settings with DOCP and it wouldn't boot, tried again but with the DDR speed lowered to 3400MHz and it booted, once I had installed the rest of the RAM (128Gb total) I couldn't get it to boot above 3000MHz, I have read that that higher speeds can be a problem on 128Gb.

 

RGB!!

 

I need to get an OS installed so I can see how everything is running, CPU temp in BIOS is 35-45C.

[BinaryShadow]

Just for those who are interested, I used 2 lines of thermal paste on the CPU to try and cover the areas over the dies, I also selected this cooler as it is specific to TR4 and the cooling plate covers the whole IHS

[paddy-stone]

31 minutes ago, BinaryShadow said:

Just for those who are interested, I used 2 lines of thermal paste on the CPU to try and cover the areas over the dies, I also selected this cooler as it is specific to TR4 and the cooling plate covers the whole IHS

I normally do a test  with the TIM application and see where it covered when the cooler is mounted properly, take it apart again to see where the coverage was, and then re-mount or add more TIM if needed.

[BinaryShadow]

6 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

I normally do a test  with the TIM application and see where it covered when the cooler is mounted properly, take it apart again to see where the coverage was, and then re-mount or add more TIM if needed.

Good plan, I will have to order some TIM as I'm being impatient and trying to build this with only what was supplied with the CM AIO cooler which doesn't look like enough to complete more than one application.

[BinaryShadow]

Finally got an OS installed (long story, tried windows 10 LTSB but the GeForce drivers wouldn't install so had to download the latest Win 10 pro build).

Quick CPU test in Aida64 idle around 35-45C at 100% load 54C for 10mins, may have crept up some more but the fans on the cooler barely increased. When idle the temp jumps around a lot and when I stopped the test it fell 10C instantly, seems odd that it changes so quickly and by so much when idle, is that normal?

Default CPU settings in BIOS, CPU sat ~4GHz during the test.

RAM still configured at 3000 and appears ok, installed all the OS and software no issues

Cinebench R15 gave me a score of 3169

I want to run some more benchmarks I have Heaven downloading and hope to get 3dmark.

 

I'm rather hoping I can push the CPU speed up a fair bit.

[mxk]

Looks great man! I'm eager to see the finished product!

[BinaryShadow]

Iv ordered some Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (amazon prime should be here tomorrow), I'm concerned I haven't done a great job with the paste application and after setting the performance enhancer to lvl 1 in the bios the CPU temp jumped to 65C almost immediately with a run in cinebench, I may be overcautious here (not the cheapest hardware after all) but it feels like the heat isn't getting into the cooler as well as it could and I'd like to get up to lvl 3 if I can.

[BinaryShadow]

Pulled the cooler off this morning:

 

 

Didn't reach all the corners with my initial application and it looks like it may have even been a bit too much oddly, opinions?

 

I also noticed that cooling plate isn't polished its more of a brushed finish, I thought these generally worked better when polished?

[BinaryShadow]

Finally putting it all together

 

the eATX board covers quite a lot of the access for cables to pass behind the tray

Its a shame as it means the power cabling will be on show.

In the end the cooler could only fit in one place:

Got everything cabled up as neatly as possible

 

And finally:

 

 

Can probably see only 1 of the 3 SATA SSDs is mounted, I need to work out a way to get them in and neatly. Going forward I think I'll be getting custom cables from cablemod and possibly replacing the case fans with RGB items, I may even add an LED strip.

 

Not sure what colour scheme to go with, any suggestions? Tempted to go with an orange against the black/gunmetal.

 

Phase 2 - Possibly later in the year I want to add a 2nd GPU and do a custom loop possibly hardline with CPU and GPU blocks.

[BinaryShadow]

Couple of pics of my workstation.

 

I have added some coolermaster 140mm RGB fans front a rear, set the RGB to orange breathing and have a rainfall effect on the RAM.

 

 

The screen is a Dell U3415W 34" 3440 x 1440 60 Hz, I think it will probably suck at gaming but I'm not about to replace it given the cost.

I have an ancient Logitech wireless keyboard and Darkfield mouse, I really want to replace these (the keyboard for sure as the backlight has died) any recommendations?

[BinaryShadow]

Some more parts arrived today to continue my build

 

 

Yep 2x full cover GPU blocks and a CPU block, will be ordering a 2nd GPU and Nvlink bridge soon and then the rest of the bits to complete a custom hardline loop

[SharkGTX]

Good! SLI is a life)

[mxk]

8 hours ago, SharkGTX said:

Good! SLI is a life)

kinda not really

[SharkGTX]

in 90+% games this is SLI via nVidia inspector!

not always native, but its 10-30 min to force it working)

[mxk]

1 minute ago, SharkGTX said:

in 90+% games this is SLI via nVidia inspector!

not always native, but its 10-30 min to force it working)

not much support though and it uses a lot of power but I guess

[SharkGTX]

25 minutes ago, fantasia. said:

not much support though and it uses a lot of power but I guess

almost 90%+ support with nVidia Inspector sowtware and straght hands.

Uses a lot of power? ahahaha) who cares about it?))))

[mxk]

1 hour ago, SharkGTX said:

almost 90%+ support with nVidia Inspector sowtware and straght hands.

Uses a lot of power? ahahaha) who cares about it?))))

people do care about power consumption haha! :))))))