[Build Log] Joshndroid's - 99 Black

[Joshndroid]

Here is my build log thread for what I’m calling - 99 Black

Everyone has such cool project names so I figured I would name mine something as well

Background

While this PC will be nothing special in the x99 space, it is something that will be fun to document along the way as I order, receive parts and eventually build.

I am a new comer to the x99 space. While to be honest I was actually going to go x99 a while back when building my full system (wow, almost a year ago now). It was price that scared me away, especially for my first real desktop PC build.

Now that I am reaching the limits of speed/power my current I7-4790K can produce I thought it was time to step it up. I originally was holding out for Broadwell-e. I have been following the leaks for some time. I was hoping that on the lower enthusiast tier we would be receiving the 8 core glory, but leak after leak have swayed my thought on that we will only see a 6core/12 thread variant. While I know a leak is a leak and not a release, even just going by relative prices I am going to be better to build now and upgrade once skylake-e rolls around, with the build doing plenty fine until then.

Purpose

This PC will be primarily for the purpose of running Linux, building android and other development type stuff. I will have a graphics card in it (a GTX 960 Wind force harvested from my overkill media pc that just sucks too much power for the video playback), but it will not be for gaming. Most likely will be using it for some photo editing, small video, type stuff. I plan to keep my GTX970 within my ‘Joshndroid’ NZXT Noctis 450 red build, as it is colour matched red and because for the gaming I’m going, 1080p, it is not going to need x99 power.

Parts

I have a list of parts that will be going within the build. They will be as the name suggests, black. From what I can gather it will be very black, apart from a few logos and stickers (which may be removed).

Colour Codes

Green – Purchased/Awaiting shipping

Blue – Already Own

Red – Unsure/open to suggestions

Case – NZXT S340 Black

Motherboard – MSI x99A SLI Plus (black)

CPU – i7 5820K

Ram – Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2800Mhz Quad Channel 16Gb

GPU – GTX 960 Wind force (Gigabyte)

Storage – Samsung 950 Pro 512Gb NVME drive (Primary Build Drive)

- Crucial 256Gb BX100 (Secondary Build Drive, also not black either hidden or painted black)

- WD 1Tb (Unsure maybe Swap &/or Small Windows Partition)

PSU – EVGA 80+ Gold something (probably harvest my G2 750w or use my Corsair CX650, till I can afford another good PSU)

Lighting – NZXT Hue+ ??

Fans - Probably coolermaster jetflos

I will be throwing up some pictures/doing updates as stuff arrives.

[Amazingasian]

You might want 2TB+ for the videos you'll be editing.  Also, get the EVGA G2.  It's a very good PSU.

[Joshndroid]

So I now have my CPU ordered and can hopefully pick it up tomorrow. All my ordered parts are schedules to arrive as well. Will need to harvest a couple components to get it all built from other pc (which will be replaced with new pieces once cash flow is resumed lol)

[Joshndroid]

Build Update and Benchmarks
Well finally I have all the components and have built the machine. I had to do a bit of harvesting to get all the good components into the system that I wanted. Initially, I went and pulled out the corsair CS550m powersupply from my media PC. Initial rationale was that I had spent a fair wack of my coin in the last week or so, and wanted atleast a ‘half-decent’ power supply in there. So I set to work pulling the power supply from the media PC and replaced it back with the thermaltake powersupply that came with the case. That took a dam long time to do.


I also set about taking the DeepCool 240mm Maelstorm AIO from this PC as well. I initially wanted to use my left over Corsair H100i that has been just collecting dust, ever since I picked up a Thermaltake Ultimate 3.0 360mm for my rig and was initially trying to attach it to my 970 with the Corsair AIO mounting bracket (complete piece of crap BTW). However, as much as I tried to look I could not find the mounting hardware for the 2011-v3 socket. I did have the hardware for the Maelstorm for the x99 system so I took that out as well.
 
 
I then finally starting building the PC





 
I had ended up having a few beers during that afternoon building and as you can see i forgot to take a couple of progress shots.... :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:
 
I then ended up buying an RMi850W power supply to put into my now gaming PC. That meant I needed to get the EVGA 750W G2 power supply from this machine and move it over to the new one as well as now take out the Corsair PSU from the machine. While the RMi850 is a fantastic power supply, as it receives a 9.9 score on jonnyguru, the wattage is unnecessary for the x99 PC and would be better suited to my gaming rig considering it has a couple more drives & that I wish to go SLI in the future. I really should have thought that one through and just left it all, but I didn’t. I ended up wasting almost a full day taking out PSU’s, swapping them back over and re-routing all the cables and then trying to debug the RMi in the gaming rig (as I tried to use some braided cables instead of the ribbon cables for the sata, but the plug setup was different, causing nil post.
 
On completing I took it outside and grabbed a few happy snaps





I then got everything installed and got my Win10 done on a 7200rpm WD Black 2.5 inch drive. While I do like to have a windows install on my PC’s for firmware and other aspects I really did not need it to be on a SSD or anything like that as this PC is mainly for linux so I kept the speed for that aspect.
I initially was unable to use the M.2 sata drive port as on the 1.8 firmware bios with the SLI PLUS did not register the included drive as bootable. A quick update in the bios firmware to 1.9 and that sorted that issue out.

I then set about getting a stable overclock within windows. I used Intel burn in test (IBT) and AIDA64 as my main testing. I also ran Real bench as well which was good to assess instability without causing lockups and reboots. I tried very hard to get a stable 4.5Ghz on the core. I was pushing the chip to 1.3+V on the core. I didn’t necessarily like the temps I was seeing 80 degrees C or more as well as was suffering from some instability when pushing for long periods in IBT and Realbench. I settled on 4.4Ghz with 1.260v on the core. I was very stable at this. I then set about installing Linux. I booted up into Ubuntu Mate (I have used Lubuntu, Ubuntu, Debian in the past). At the moment I like the look of Ubuntu Mate, so I went with that. Initially I tried 15.10. I set everything up, android build environment, all my folders, yada yada. I then set about trying to build. I would then receive kernel errors, kernel oops with the latest kernel. I then tried to bump up the voltage to the voltage I have now. This did not solve my issue. I tried installing the latest mainline kernel for Ubuntu. This sort-of solved my issue, but now I would still get kernel oops for the old kernel. I then set about deleting/purging all the old kernel files to just follow mainline kernel. I then would still get the errors for the kernel (which would also show that the kernel was no longer installed, WTF??? Lol). I tried different methods, different linux versions then. I settled on Ubuntu Mate 14.04 LTS (my usual go to). I wasn’t getting the errors relating to kernel oops with the overclock popping up all the time. I then set about tracking the mainline kernel once again to see if there was any difference. Still no errors so I was good to go.

Now I further tried to play with some bios settings to keep the thing stable;
I set the CPU from dynamic to Fixed – this solved the ramping of the CPU within Linux to full overclocked state.
I have set about now, running some benchmarks and to get some numbers for the system.  Room Temp was around 32 degrees C.

First here is some stats from CPU-Z validated

Here is the PC at idle from HW monitor


Here is the PC at load with AIDA64 with auto fan control

Here is PC at load with AIDA64 on Manual Fans 100%

Here is the noise of the fans, testing using android smart tools
Ambient Room

Fans Auto 35cm Away

Fans Auto on top fan grill

Fans 100% 35cm Away

Fans 100% on top fan grill

Here is the scores for 3D Mark tests – I purchased it during the steam winter sale for $5 =]
Note – the graphics are just a GTX960 Windforce so don’t expect them to be awesome.

Linux
Here is the idle temps and load (pic of idle screen)

Here is the PC building times for 64bit cyanogenmod based rom. (out folder size & and pic of completion)

Here is the PC building times for 32bit cyanogenmod based rom. (out folder size & pic of completion)