X58 Dual Titan Upgrade Madness

[coolbho3k]

I love Linus Tech Tips' YouTube channel and I wanted to share my newly upgraded PC. I just finished completing an upgrade on my system. The greatest changes were the two Titans (upgraded from 1.5 GB 580s), the case switch from Antec 1200 to Corsair Vengeance C70, and upgrade of CPU cooler from Corsair H70 to NZXT Kraken X60.  I opted not to upgrade the CPU and motherboard because the new cooler allowed me to push a 4.5 GHz overclock rather than the 4.2 GHz I was running before.

 

Now this is a combination of a "dream PC" a few years ago and a "dream PC" today. And it runs perfectly. The X58 platform still lives on  :D

 

Meet "Odin"

Core components:

CPU: Core i7-980X @ 4520 MHz (1.4 Vcore)

RAM 24GB (6x4GB) Patriot 2000EL @ 1966 MHz  9-11-9-27

GPU: 2x EVGA GTX Titan Superclocked (modded reference BIOS with reference clocks, +125 core/+300 mem OC)

Storage: 240 GB OCZ RevoDrive X2 (Windows boot), 512 GB Vertex 4 (Ubuntu Linux boot), 2x1TB WD Black RAID0 (storage)

Mobo: Rampage III Extreme

 

Other goodies:

Cooling: NZXT Kraken X60 + 2x NF-A14 FLX, 2x SP120 high performance, 2x AF120 silent, 1x AF140

PSU: Corsair AX1200

Case: Corsair Vengeance C70

Sound: ASUS Xonar Essence STX

Optical: Some Sony Blu-Ray writer

 

Game on  :ph34r:

 

Before the case upgrade. Couldn't find any good shots with the 580s installed. The Antec 1200 made cable management really hard compared to my new case.

 

After case upgrade. With my newfound GPU power, I wanted to push my CPU even further. My 980X seems to be a fairly good chip, as it could run 4.2 GHz at a flat 1.3 volts. It needed another 0.1 volts for 4.5 GHz, though. With my H70, it was stable but it was burning up (over 100C during LinX) at my 4.5 GHz settings. Even after I upgraded the stock fans on my H70 to SP120s, it was still bad (SP120 upgrade happened a bit before the above picture was taken). The H70 served me well over two years, but it's time to upgrade my closed loop cooler to something bigger and more modern.

 

Done. I chose the NZXT Kraken X60 because it was cheaper than the H110 at the retailer I bought it from. I also added an NZXT IU01 so I can plug in both the Kraken header and the C70's front panel USB (the Rampage III Extreme only has one USB header...). I also wanted to put a USB WiFi card on it (no more PCIe slots left, since plugging in one more will drop one of my Titans to PCIe 2.0 x8!), but I discovered that antenna reception everywhere inside the C70 was atrocious (being almost all metal), so I ended up not doing that. I also moved both SP120s that were on my H70s to the HDD cage in push/pull configuration. Swapped the sound card and RevoDrive for cable management reasons.

[ixi_your_face]

That's uhh. Can you sponsor my next build? Please? ;_;

[Theo]

Awwww yeahhh dual titans! 

[Nit3Rid3R]

Those cables are really clustered in there. 

[MzCatieB]

i find my antec 1200 has decent wire management, nice build love the setup

[dxbpc]

X58 still rocks! I am still using mine 4 years and running. Your Titans looks awesome! Great rig!

[coolbho3k]

X58 still rocks! I am still using mine 4 years and running. Your Titans looks awesome! Great rig!

Thanks :D

 

i find my antec 1200 has decent wire management, nice build love the setup

I could never get it to look clean, especially compared to my new case. Look at that pic. :(

[aDoBo]

nice rig!...my R3E died on me recently :( ...didn't even get to OC...Was hoping on building toward that standard (just never got round to it) B)  :blink: .

Nice to see people still moving forward with their x58s...

[zxcvbnmmssdh]

Do you have money coming out of your ears? :P (if so, can you send me some of it for mine :P ) Great Build

[Giancarlo124]

Nice build. The c70 is by far my favorite case.

[alpenwasser]

I miss X58, that was is an awesome platform (or LGA1366 in general, since I'm rocking

a 5520 chipset with some Xeons)! :wub:

Ah well, I suppose it's a good thing CPU performance hasn't gone up too much when it comes

to raw computing power in recent years. Makes 1366 still quite competitive in practice for

most usage scenarios.