[Build log - Complete (2016-02-12)] Distilling another batch of Absinthe

[brandishwar]

It has been about a year since I last wrote about my wife's computer, Absinthe. In that time the system has been running smoothly without any complaints. To recap, here are the current specifications of the system:

 

Processor: AMD FX-8350
Mainboard: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
Memory: 16GB AMD Radeon Performance DDR3-1866
Graphics: XFX R9 290X 4GB "Double D"
Sound: Creative Labs SoundBlaster Z
Power supply: Corsair RM1000
Chassis: Corsair 750D
Storage: 2 x 1TB WD Black in RAID 1 (MediaSonic ProRaid HUR3-SU3S3 connected via eSATA)

 

And the system is water cooled:

 

Pump: AlphaCool VPP655 with AlphaCool HF D5 Plexi pump top
Reservoir: Bitspower Z-Tube 100mm with Z-CAP I and Z-CAP II (acrylic)
Radiators: AlphaCool XT45 360mm (top) and 240mm (front), AlphaCool ST30 240mm (bottom)
Fans: Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm and 140mm
Tubing: Type L annealed copper tubing
CPU Block: Koolance CPU-380A
Graphics card block: Aquacomputer kryographics Hawaii (acrylic glass edition) with passive backplate
Coolant: Koolance LIQ-702 clear

 

Wait, no complaints with an AMD FX processor? How is that possible?!?

 

The system is coming due for an annual cleaning and flush. This time around I'm going with a different coolant: Mayhem's X1 clear. The system will basically need to be torn down to practically nothing for cleaning as well. Getting into every nook and crevice of the 750D, flushing all the radiators and blocks, clean all the fans and everything, and largely get everything back up and running again, clean as a whistle.

 

I will also need to inspect the copper tubing and replace any that is discolored or showing signs of oxidation. Having copper doesn't get you away from that.

 

Along with that, the system is going to also be moved out from behind her monitors, where accessing it can be a chore, to a short table under her desk where it'll be a lot easier to see and access for periodic dust removal with the vacuum, especially on the bottom radiator. Again, the new coolant will be Mayhem's X1. Desert Sapphire required only 1L of coolant, and I ordered three bottles of concentrate for it. I'm likely going to be exceeding 1L for Absinthe. We'll see.

The water cooling configuration is likely not going to change this time around. We've talked previously about moving the system back into her old blue chassis and externally water-cooling it, but we've opted against it this time just to get things back up and running faster.

 

But that's not all that's happening...

 

 

Processor: Intel i7-5820k
Mainboard: Asus X99-PRO
Memory: EVGA SuperSC DDR4-3200 2x8GB
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO M.2 500GB

 

And yet to be ordered is the new CPU block, which will likely be the EK Supremacy EVO, or I might opt for something else such as the Watercool HeatKiller Pro IV, or stick with Koolance and go with the CPU-380I. We'll see. The new hardware will first be set up in a test setup to tempt my wife (yes, I love to live dangerously) and make sure everything is going to work as expected.

 

Absinthe currently has Windows 8.1 (Pro if I remember correctly), and that license will be moved to the new platform and upgraded to Windows 10. The external RAID 1 will be used for periodically backing up the system. Given she'll have an SSD this time around and we have Google Fiber, installing her games onto the new system is going to be child's play. She was practically drooling over Desert Sapphire, so this'll be a good upgrade for her with plenty of room to expand later on.

 

Why Haswell-E and X-99 over the Skylake and Z-170? In short, scalability.

 

As I've said here numerous times, my wife multitasks like nothing. She'd been doing that since first having dual monitors on an Athlon X2. That is why I went with the AMD FX-8350 when I initially built her system a little over two years ago. On the Intel side, getting that same scalability requires going with an i7 regardless of which generation you select, and it was a price premium I wasn't willing (or really able) to pay at the time. An i5 has only 4 cores, which doesn't provide the same scalability for multitasking as an i7 or FX 8-core.

 

When she had only two monitors, she probably could've gotten away with an i5. But now that she has three, an i7 would basically be required. About the only other upgrade that would've improved multitasking performance is an SSD. And single-thread performance is a non-issue when the operating system is trying to balance processes across a small number of cores. That is where the AMD FX 6-core and 8-core processors beat the Intel i5, though whether an Intel i7 matches an AMD FX 8-core is debatable given HyperThreading is not the same as physical cores.

 

So when it came to the next upgrade leap, Haswell-E was a no-brainer, as was the SSD, and I'll likely do the same or my system, Beta Orionis, depending on what AMD's next generation has to offer. The i7-5820k has six (6) physical cores plus HyperThreading expanding it out to twelve (12) parallel threads, a 50% improvement in parallel multitasking over the FX-8350.

 

And when you combine better scalability of the Haswell-E with the better per-thread performance, scaling both horizontally and vertically, overall you've got a very significant gain. But that is basically the overall philosophy of this move, coming to a newer generation processor that will also have more cores and threads for better multitasking.

[amvoith]

Followed, nice looking upgrade

[iWearKiltz]

Sounds like this is going to be interesting,

Followed. I also like your thinking behind component selection :P

[mosin40]

Followed, sounds interesting

[AlienALX]

Why would you buy a dual channel memory kit for a quad channel capable motherboard?

[brandishwar]

7 hours ago, AlienALX said:

Why would you buy a dual channel memory kit for a quad channel capable motherboard?

That's all I wanted to spend at the moment. With tax, that hardware setup in the picture comes to shy of 1000 USD, and that 2x8GB kit was less expensive than going with 4x4GB. I'm already anticipating upgrading her to 32GB, but at the moment, 16GB is plenty.

[brandishwar]

Now that we're past the introduction, let's actually get down to work, starting with a small aside on the table.

 

I said in the previous section that I wanted to move the system out from behind her monitors and onto a small table under her desk.  First my wife's desk is actually a 42" bar table. Specifically it's the Pinnadel pub table from Ashley Furniture (link to product) that we bought through Nebraska Furniture Mart for much less than what Ashley charges for it directly. Anyway, the stretcher is about 8" above the floor. So I need a table that can clear over that while still leaving adequate clearance above the chassis for air flow around the top radiator.

 

The small table was very simple: a pine plank cut from larger stock with four (4) IKEA Godmorgon legs. It took me only 15 minutes to make the table as I already had a plank of wood left over from building the Desert Sapphire cabinet. For most builds a 12"x24" board should work. Get either oak or pine as those are the two strongest commonly-sold woods with pine typically being less expensive (and stronger than oak). Shelf boards will be your friend here. But avoid MDF and particle board.

 

IKEA has other vanity legs available that are shorter and less expensive if you don't need what I acquired. Otherwise all you need is just a board large enough to hold your tower. If you are building this to support a larger chassis, buy an extra set of legs for the middle for extra support.

 

New hardware

 

Now let's get into the feature presentation, starting with the new CPU block:

 

I decided to go with the Watercool Heatkiller IV Pro, specifically the acrylic version. It's a little lower profile while retaining much of the silver from the Koolance CPU-380A currently being used. In some tests it's been shown to out-perform the EK Supremacy EVO. And it doesn't require any modification for it to perform well for LGA-2011v3 processors. In short, all around I think it's the better option.

 

So I ordered it from Performance-PCs at the same time I ordered a few other things to finish up another project. For Absinthe, thankfully this is really the only thing I needed to order since I'll be re-using everything else.

But let's get to what you're really wanting to see.

 

Testing the new hardware

 

For testing I used a spare GT620 graphics card since my wife's R9 290X was still in Absinthe when I set this up.

 

 

One thing I really like about the X99 PRO is this little guy:

 

 

But given how I have the FPIO already connected in Absinthe, this is largely unnecessary. Still a nice touch, though, and I'll use it anyway as it'll make it a lot easier to figure out the pinout for the USB plugs I currently use.

 

So with everything mounted, using a CX750M for temporarily powering this and a ThermalTake Water 2.0 Performer for the CPU, it was time to power it on so the mainboard could fail to detect the M.2 drive... Ugh... I assumed the drive was bad, so I exchanged it at Micro Center. Interestingly, I ended up getting a slight refund doing this because of a recent price drop. When I got home, I plugged in the other drive.... only to get the same result.

 

I took to the Internet to see if I could find out what the hell was going on. In searching around, I decided to look through the PDF version of the manual for any information regarding getting M.2 drives to work -- double-checking for recommended BIOS settings in case there was something non-obvious I needed to do. That's when I discovered this little gem:

 

 

That's right, the X99-PRO does not support SATA M.2 SSDs, something Micro Center's product page doesn't mention. You must use a PCI-Express based SSD in the M.2 slot. So guess who's getting a 950 Pro 512 GB...

 

That's what I get for not doing a good enough compatibility check before buying parts. But at least I could absorb the extra cost. Mostly. I know a lot of people end up pouring a lot of saved cash into builds like this without a lot of leeway for contingencies -- a consideration that seems very curiously absent in discussing builds online.

 

So it looks like Beta Orionis (β Ori.) is getting an SSD upgrade ahead of schedule. What's interesting is that the M.2 850 EVO worked without issue in the ASRock X99 Extreme4 board I used in Desert Sapphire, so I think it's reasonable to presume that another X99 board would've been able to use the 850 EVO. Oh well. While waiting for the SSD to arrive (I ordered it through Amazon), I decided to move ahead and test whatever else I could. I had a spare 120GB Patriot Torch LE SSD I could use in the mean time.

 

So that's it for now. The more immediate next step will be to test the 950 Pro when it comes in to make sure it's not DOA. Then Absinthe will be torn down completely, stripping the 750D completely naked for cleaning and parts inspection. I'll probably need to give the case a shower as well to get all the dust out of it.

[brandishwar]

The United States Postal Service certainly had a weird way of delivering a package. I live in an apartment complex, meaning that packages that cannot be put in the mailbox get held at the office. It's why I typically have packages shipped UPS or FedEx where possible and have those packages redirected to a place with better hours. On a Saturday, it means my hours are even more limited.

 

But when I saw them delivering mail, I checked the mailbox and found some mail, but no package despite it being listed as "Out for Delivery". So I checked with the apartment manager to see if the package had been left with them despite not receiving a package notice as that's happened before. No luck. Then closer to 4PM, approaching the time the apartment management office closed, I checked the listing again:

 

 

This time I had the SSD in my hands. For a while I started to worry they delivered it to the wrong apartment as I've received mail for other apartments. Thankfully no packages, but I wouldn't put it past them to do something like that.

 

 

 

So with the SSD in my hands, I installed it into the mainboard. Note to Samsung: change the label orientation on the drive. Initially the Windows 10 installer didn't want to install to it, but a quick "Load Optimized Defaults" and a few small modifications -- disabling the serial port and onboard audio -- managed to get the installer detecting it as a bootable drive.

With that out of the way, the only thing left to do was get naked.

 

Note: When using the 950 Pro, be sure to download and install the Samsung driver for that device to ensure optimal performance and stability. I actually had a hard time getting a fresh Windows 10 install to remain stable until I discovered that driver.

 

Stripping down

 

Since my wife still actively used Absinthe while I was testing the new hardware, I obviously needed to coordinate with her on making the upgrades since this was going to mean several days of downtime.

 

Saturday was spent finishing the testing on the hardware while also grabbing the water I knew I'd need to flush out all the components. I already had four gallons of distilled water before buying an additional six. Ten gallons should be plenty, and if it's not I can always grab more. I've had as much as 14 gallons stocked before -- that was ahead of building Desert Sapphire.

 

I also reinforced the pine table under her desk. The board had some flex to it and it made me uncomfortable given how much weight would be resting on it. So I took some slimmer pine boards -- 3" wide by 3/4" thick -- and made crossbeam supports going across the width of the panel underneath it, just screwed and glued in place.

 

Sunday was crunch time. After coordinating with my wife, we disconnected everything and got the case within reach. Not being able to access the system in order to keep it clean has definitely taken its toll, meaning the move to below the desk will

certainly be beneficial, not just in terms of airflow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once everything was shut down and disconnected, I first wanted to take care of the software side of things. That meant migrating her Windows 8.1 Pro license to the X99 Pro system. I had already installed Windows 8.1 Pro to the system the night before, so it was just a matter of activating it. Once activated, I upgraded the license to Windows 10 Pro, made note of software key for a fresh install, imaged the drive, and shut everything down.

 

Next came draining the loop and taking it all apart. And I took everything out of the system to get as much of the dust out as possible. I re-assembled the system by the end of Sunday as well, with the exception of the water loop. I saved assembling the loop for Monday since I knew there were going to need to be some changes.

 

 

 

Assembling the loop

 

Monday had the new water block coming for the CPU. One other thing about the Watercool block to enjoy: the instructions say the alignment of the block doesn't matter. And the mounting system for the block is very, very easy for LGA-2011 and LGA-2011v3 sockets. I mounted the block with the outlet downward as I feel that makes draining the system much easier since it means the CPU block isn't going to be a fluid trap.

 

 

Now this meant that going from the CPU back to the reservoir was going to require a new line. But I decided to try something a little different and use PETG, using a 40mm extension fitting to raise up a 90-degree fitting enough to get a straight line to a 90-degree dual-rotary fitting. I also replaced the line across the front on top of the bottom radiator with PETG as well. This was left over from the stock I ordered for building the cabinet in Desert Sapphire.

 

Now most of the rest of the copper tubing runs could be re-used. The runs going from the graphics card to the top radiator and top radiator to CPU could not due to the memory slots between the rear I/O and the CPU -- slots which aren't present on her previous Sabertooth board.

 

But the change in approach was pretty straightfoward: right-angle bend between the graphics card and top radiator, dual 90-degree bend to get from the radiator to the CPU. Only I didn't have a lot of copper left and I ended up messing up the bending trying to measure it and account for the radius in my tubing bender. So rather than buy another coil of tubing, I opted for a different approach that required overnight shipping.

 

Out with the copper, in with the PETG

 

AlphaCool and Bitspower make 90-degree fittings that are female-to-female G1/4" threaded. This allows you to screw hardline fittings into them and use those to make the 90-degree bends instead of trying to bend tubing. They can work with Type L or Type M hard copper pipe along with PETG and acrylic tube. I ordered six of the AlphaCool fittings from Performance-PCs along with more PrimoChill fittings.

 

And once they arrived, I sought to change the loop over from copper to PETG. It didn't take long, thankfully, and part of the reason is how easy PETG is to cut to length. The same tubing cutters I've used previously for soft tubing can cut cleanly through PETG without any problem. So after some careful measurements and cuts, all of the copper was replaced with PETG.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And with that, the loop was leak tested and filled with coolant. I did a clean install of Windows 10 Pro to the system and imaged the drive, then turned it over to my wife to install everything else. We still have the external enclosure, and that will be connected later to recover her other profile-related items before the drive is set up as a backup unit.

 

And the Green Fairy takes hold, the green glow of her enchanting spell that inspires this project's namesake will surely captivate my wife again, drawing her deep into its temptation. Listen closely and you can almost hear her calling out for you.

 

 

Final specifications

 

System specifications
CPU: Intel i7-5820k
Mainboard: ASUS X99-PRO/USB 3.1
RAM: 16GB DDR4 (will be upgraded to 32GB eventually)
Graphics: XFX "Double D" R9 290X
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO
Power: Corsair RM1000
Chassis: Corsair 750D with Airflow Edition front panel
Sound: Creative Labs SoundBlaster Z

 

Water loop specifications
CPU block: Watercool Heatkiller IV Pro
Graphics block: Aquacomputer kryographics Hawaii with passive backplate
Radiators: AlphaCool XT45 360mm (top) and 240mm (front), AlphaCool ST30 240mm (bottom)
Pump: AlphaCool VPP655 with AlphaCool HF D5 clear acrylic top
Reservoir: Bitspower Z-Tube 100mm with Z-CAP I and Z-CAP II (acrylic)
Fittings: PrimoChill Revolver 1/2" OD, AlphaCool HF L-connectors, Swiftech 90-degree elbow fittings
Tubing: PrimoChill 1/2" OD PETG

 

[derick90]

Very nice, kudo's m8