[./bA] The Mammoth 1.0

[bANONYMOUS]

I was in desperate need of a new workstation after my G75VX died from a bad BIOS flash, the laptop was great for video editing but the i7-3630qm was holding me back, for example, it took 12 hours to encode this video.

Money was a little tight as I wasn't expecting this laptop to die from a custom BIOS flash as I've done quite a few before without issues (just trying to pull a little more out of it for video editing) so I decided to pick up a used Dell Precision T7500 workstation off of eBay for $455 CAD after shipping to start a some what budget workstation replacement, it came with a single Intel Xeon x5680 3.33GHz 6 core and 24GB of 1333MHz ECC memory, for storage I used the Corsair Force LE 960GB SSD from the G75VX as it would no longer be needing it, and for GPU I found a used EVGA GTX 660 ti on eBay for $100 CAD after shipping, so all said and done, I spent $555 on this workstation ($840 if you include the $285 I had already spent on the SSD for the G75VX when it was on sale at Newegg this spring).

I'm still waiting for the Asus Wireless AC PCI-e card for $35 CAD, 7 port USB 3.0 PCI-e card for $30 CAD, and IC Diamond thermal compound for $15 CAD that I ordered.
Once that stuff arrives I'll be doing a complete rebuild. Chassis will be matte black, everything I'm using will go back in, what I'm not will be put away, front bays will be getting filtered vented covers once I decide on the style I want, filtered mat going down the front air flow panel to reduce all kind of possible dust build up once that is ordered, and I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to be doing with the front bezel yet, been playing with the idea painting it very dark brown or even the possibility of dark brown wood grain vinyl wrap.

The new computer has a lot of future proofing for me as well since the 6 memory rails can support 8GB modules totaling 48GB of RAM if absolutely needed, as well as a CPU riser card I can add after for a second x5680, or even upgrade both to x5690's and an addition 48GB of RAM totaling at 96GB of RAM. The power supply is an 1100w 80+ Silver which is well more than enough for a second GTX 660 ti in SLI down the road, or even upgrade to two 780 ti's in SLI which not only run quieter but have a lower power consumption. In short, this is going to be a very long on going build as I change and upgrade parts.

Workstation Comparisons

Old Workstation:
Asus G75VX
Intel i7 3630qm 2.4GHz Turbo Boost 3.4GHz Quad Core
Nvidia GTX 670mx
Corsair Force LE 960GB SSD
16GB PC3-8500 1066MHz

New Workstation:
Dell Precision T7500
Intel Xeon x5680 3.33GHz, Turbo Boost 3.6GHz Hex Core
EVGA GTX 660 ti
Corsair Force LE 960GB SSD
24GB HP PC3-10600 1333MHz

I'm quite happy with this purchase and I gotta say, I couldn't have built something comparable for cheaper

Now for some random photo's, I don't have much yet but once I start working on this I'll have significantly more.
This is the G75 I was working with, had pretty bad over heating issues with it being overclocked on a custom BIOS, I couldn't actually use it as a laptop anymore.


The Corsair Force LE 960GB I picked up from Newegg on sale for $285 CAD this spring.


And here we have the new mammoth, the Dell Precision T7500


After running it all day completely stock everything with a GTX 660 ti, the system temperature was only 28 degrees celsius while the average core temperature was 42 degrees celsius.
These will be my numbers to beat once I rip this thing apart and start removing everything I don't need, new fans and IC Diamond thermal paste.


I did a sound test and it's been running right around 64dBA stock.

..and just for fun, here the old vs new cpu comparison
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-X5680-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3630QM

and old vs new gpu comparison
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-670MX-vs-EVGA-GeForce-GTX-660-Ti

[bANONYMOUS]

I found some metallic black paint I had left over from an SUV I was repainting I'm going to use on the front bezel instead of the dark brown or vinyl wrap idea, I also ordered a Xigmatik Dark Knight CPU cooler with an additional 120mm Antec fan for $25 CAD which should be coming in next week.

[r3d3mpt10n]

I like this:)

 

I find seeing people reuse and retrofit things/ make things work on the cheap to be fascinating. Reminds me of tech yes city. Curious to see how it all turns out!

[r3d3mpt10n]

on a side note, remember some shiny new compound on the south bridge too, and the latest BIOS update (something I'm a bit OCD about)

[srmarkovic]

I am also building workstation. I still don't have GPU but I ordered Asus STRIX 1060. I still use my old 16GB RAM  i7 2600k @4.6GHz and my old Asus n56jr with 8GB RAM, 240GB ssd and 1TB hdd for editing and encoding. I wanted to use x5690 for workstation build, but I couldn't find it so I ended with different socket.

 

Can you please run Cinebench 15 and post result? 

[bANONYMOUS]

On 8/4/2016 at 4:38 PM, r3d3mpt10n said:

remember some shiny new compound on the south bridge too, and the latest BIOS update

When I reapply thermal compound to a computer I do everything, complete tear down and clean everything while it's out before reapplying, grease the fans and such too.
and latest BIOS was the first thing I did with it when I set it up haha, I see our OCD for stuff like this is very much the same.

On 8/4/2016 at 7:38 PM, srmarkovic said:

Can you please run Cinebench 15 and post result? 

Your build looks a lot nicer than mine, as for Cinebench 15, I have been running it with Linux since I got it, however, lucky for you I just switched back over to Windows 10 earlier today so I just ran the test right now.


I picked up the Asus PCI-e Wifi card


Here's the Xigmatik Dark Knight cooler


Xigmatik 120mm fan


Asus Rampage backplate (if needed)


Antec 120mm 3 speed fan


IC Diamond thermal compound


I forgot to take a photo of the USB 3.0 PCI-e card as I had already installed it when it arrived.

When I do the tear down to paint the chassis, I'll take pictures of everything that's going back in.

[bANONYMOUS]

I was too excited for new parts to wait until I had everything to paint the chassis, so I tossed in what I have and it's a win lose situation but I'll fix it.

So I popped it open, the idea was to retrofit the cooler behind the stock air duct so I can run it without fans to keep noise down as this computer is already extremely quiet.


Here's the 7 port PCI-e USB 3.0 card, when I get a second GPU it will be moved up to take the other PCI-e slot.


As you can see, the antennas on the Wifi card hit the chassis which is why I thrived on getting this Asus card that has a remote location antenna


However, after running a speedtest with the Dlink PCI Wireless N card, I installed the new Asus PCI-e Wireless AC card with intent on using double sided tape to afix the antenna to the rear of the chassis, only to find out it's magnetic, it's like it was made for exactly what I wanted to do, couldn't be more pleased with this purchase.


Here's a speedtest with the old Dlink PCI Wireless N card


And here's the speedtest with the new Asus PCI-e Wireless AC card, it feels so good to have over double the speed with Wireless AC again


Now because I'm extremely impatient, I'm putting the Xigmatik Dark Knight cooler on with the stock Dell back plate. Here's the stock cooler, I didn't even get the right one, stock for the T7500 with this CPU should be the half size heat pipe cooler, I have the stock T3500/T5500 cooler on here for some reason, so someone was in here tinkering before I bought it.


Comparison shot between the two, the stock one is sitting there slightly higher than where it would normally be for side by side it's as close as I could get without taking it all apart again. I had to reuse the screws from the stock heat sink because they're backwards, the Dell back plate has thredded posts and the heat sink "screws" are essentially nuts, I did manage to get it installed with IC Diamond thermal compound however, it went form 42 degrees idle, to 56 degrees idle after swapping this over, I'm assuming the "screws" aren't holding down the new cooler tight enough seeing as they're not made for this cooler, which would explain the increased temps.


I put the 120mm Antec 3 speed fan fan the Xigmatik Dark Knight because the fan duct could not be reused, it would hit the top side of the cooler, so the duct is going to have an appointment with the Dremel soon enough because the duct directs airflow towards the RAM and I noticed they get quite warm to the touch so I can only imagine what they're like without the directed air flow over them.


This is how it's sitting for now, running hotter than I would like but I'm not pulling the motherboard out until I have everything to paint the chassis so I can do all of that at once, I'll be picking up the supplies tomorrow since I'm working on another car I need to get paint for, so I'll be out getting stuff from the paint store regardless.

[srmarkovic]

Coolers and thermal paste bother me also. I have two exactly same LC Power LC-CC-120 coolers. I used paste I got with them. Now I have 35 degree on one and 42 on other processor in idle. Room temperature is 28. I will buy other paste and I think to put more paste and to spread it on heat-sink.  

[bANONYMOUS]

The way you spread thermal compound doesn't matter, but how are your coolers set up? Is one fan blowing the hot air off of one onto the second one? That's one way they could be reading different temperatures. However, if your temps are like this while using your computer, it's probably just not loaded up enough, for instance CPU 1 being at 42 degrees because of daily tasks, while CPU 2 isn't being requested yet so it's idling at 35 degrees.

Try running AIDA64 stability test for a few minutes and see if both CPU's start matching temperatures, which speaking of AIDA64, I think my temperature sensors are broken, because the system temp has not moved from 27-28 degrees, it flickers between both no matter what the ambient temperature is or how hot the CPU/GPU is running, my CPU also goes from idle temps, to 98 degrees as soon as I start the stress test, anyone have any ideas why this might be a thing? Are there drivers for temperature sensors on Windows like there are for Linux? I've never heard of this for Windows so I didn't bother looking and just assumed it would work.

[srmarkovic]

Well in Aida (or Prime95) temperatures are 62-first, 67-second CPU after 20min. Boat heat-sinks are oriented botom-up. What kind of software do you use for temp. reading? Aida, Hwmonitor? Non of this couldn't read other sensors than cpu although  my board has 120 sensors. Only SpeedFan (freeware) can read more sensors. This is old software, but my friend we use old hardware. Try with SpeedFan. 

[AlienALX]

I had one of these a few years ago. I managed to fit a H100 in mine

 

 

Couldn't use a 120mm fan at the top so I just used a 92mm fan on an adapter. Then I made some covers.

 

 

And carbon wrapped the front panel.

 

[r3d3mpt10n]

I would love to order some used parts on eBay but i fear our sketchy customs would nail me hard. Nice wrap @AlienALX.

 

CPU cooler looks like a super tight fit @bANONYMOUS

[bANONYMOUS]

On 8/5/2016 at 5:24 AM, srmarkovic said:

What kind of software do you use for temp. reading? Aida, Hwmonitor?...Try with SpeedFan. 

I use both Aisa64 and HW Monitor, I've never heard of SpeedFan, I'll give that a try once I get it all back together, thanks.

 

On 8/5/2016 at 10:29 AM, AlienALX said:

I had one of these a few years ago. I managed to fit a H100 in mine

Couldn't use a 120mm fan at the top so I just used a 92mm fan on an adapter. Then I made some covers.

That's pretty cool, but it's not the same model though, the one you did is a T3500/T5500, the T7500 I'm doing is about 2" wider and about 5 or 6 inches taller, it comes factory with a 120mm and 160mm fan for intakes in the front and a 120mm exhaust fan in the back. But this does give me closed loop liquid cooling ideas if I need it in the future.

 

On 8/5/2016 at 3:59 PM, r3d3mpt10n said:

I would love to order some used parts on eBay but i fear our sketchy customs would nail me hard.

I understand the struggle, It's the one reason I haven't moved out of this one horse town because I live only about 45 minutes from the border and there's a local store down there that will let you use their address as a shipping address so you can get free shipping "within the US" and then I drive down once every week or two and pick everything up for a package small fee for them holding the packages for me, and then I pay import taxes coming back across the border and clear customs myself so there are no brokerage fees on anything, only import tax and usually if it's not that expensive they don't even bother charging you taxes so my wireless card, usb card, thermal compound, etc, all of the smaller stuff there wasn't even import tax on those so I paid US price with free shipping and a $3 package fee. I don't know what I'll do for cheap builds if I move out of this place.

In other news, I accidentally broke the Northbridge fan when putting it back together, I'm at 10 hours working on this today, taking this case apart to the bare chassis is an absolute nightmare, I'm pretty sure there's 100+ screws on my desk now.

 

I sorted out the CPU cooler issue, when trying to attach the back plate, I found out the stock Dell back plate also holds the processor retentioner on, so digging through some parts I found some very low profile 5.25" bay mounting screws with the same thread pitch to hold the retentioner down, so I could use the Asus Rampage back plate, securing this cooler down properly.

 

And a tight fit is an under statement, there are paper thin gaps around some of the motherboard components after installing this cooler, standard case screws were also too tall, like the screw head was too tall to fit between the back plate and the motherboard but I finally got it all said and done. Going to bed now so I can spend the entire day painting the case when I wake up in 3 hours

 

[bANONYMOUS]

Okay, much needed update here.

This was my issue with the retention bracket for the CPU


Reason it was off is because I couldn't get the stock Dell back plate removed and that was when I found out the CPU retention bracket also mounted down to it


First idea was I was going to cut the stock back plate to give room for the new one while still leaving the posts for the CPU retentioner


But as mentioned above I found some old screws from an optical drive or something, general 5.25" device mounted screws.


Which worked perfect for holding it back down without the stock back plate

 

The head on a standard case screw was too tall to fit the back plate over top which is why I had to digging for screws in all the old parts I have laying around, can't get much closer than that.


Even the the cooler mounts almost touche the tops of the ferrite chokes between the left of the CPU and right of the MOSFETs cooler.


Used some double sided tape to stick the fan adjuster to the side of the fan and keep it nice and hidden out of the way but still accessible if needed.


Northbridge repaste


Southbridge repaste


GPU repaste


I have it back up and running now, my phone is still backing up the rest of the photos to Google Photo's so I can upload them but now that it's back together, I checked temps again and everything is exactly the same as stock, I have actually noticed nothing change, I'm assuming at this point that Dell must uses some really good paste right out of the box because there is no improvement on anything by cleaning it up and switching to IC Diamond, which I've noticed huge results on everything else I've used this compound on. My G75 dropped something like 8 degrees on the CPU when switching to this thermal paste over stock Asus paste.

Oh well, the knowledge of knowing everything has been cleaned out, greased, and new thermal compound makes me feel at ease knowing I changed everything.

More pictures of the painting and reassembly process coming up once my phone finishes backing up to Google Photos

[bANONYMOUS]

I didn't take as many photo's as I thought of the painting process, probably because most of it was done in the middle of the night, anyway, here's the bezel after scuffing with 600 grit


Self etching primer


Chassis was scuffed down with 600 grit, the top and bottom panels were riveted on with weird hollow rivets, which I wasn't sure if they were intended like that to be bolt holes for something else later on so I didn't want to risk taking them off and not being able to get something back on if I used normal rivets.


Self etching primer


This is where I didn't take many photo's, the entire painting process on the chassis and all parts going matte black are non-existent. The bezel was painted with metallic black paint, but not the paint I had on hand, this was for a different vehicle that originally anticipated so the metal flake is turquoise and pink.


After the clear coat was put down the metal flake colours really started to come out.


The chassis after it was done being painted and all masking removed


Now this is where I had to figure everything out as I went because there is NOTHING documenting how to remove the back panel or bezel from a T7500. It's held on with these little black clips, there's 5 of them and the panel pulls straight off, doesn't slide


Obviously I'm assembling the computer at this point so these pictures would normally be reversed if you're taking one of these apart but before you can pull the side panel off, you need to remove the 6 screws at the bottom, 4 screws at the top in the reverse location, and there are two screws behind the hard drive cages which allow the back panel to be pulled straight off. The bezel isn't that crazy to figure out, once the side panel is off it makes sense that there are 6 screws holding it in place, gotta be careful of the power button as it's attached to the bezel, but it's located behind the black covers for the 5.25" bays so it all needs to be removed at once, there's clips on the side for the 5.25" bay covers to remove the entire assembly at once.


The beginning of my quick wire tuck to try and clean stuff up of the PSU cables I'm not using


The extra 8 pin cables are all tucked up into one of the 5.25" bays which are actually holding the SSD in place right now because I forgot to order a 5.25" to 2.5" adapter


With the motherboard tray in, I feel like it's clean enough for my liking, considering it's basically a completely factory Dell other than paint and removing some cables and brackets I won't be using


Assembly is all done


I still have to replace the north/southbridge fans so it's not 100% buttoned up, but at least for now I can start using it again.

 

So with all of this being where it's at for a bit, the next steps will be to sleeve the PSU cables, and I'm going de-pin the extra SATA power cables to remove them completely rather then tucking them away again. I also have a small grounding pan that goes between the motherboard IO and the back of the case that I forgot to put back in before installing the motherboard, and I found two little plastic trim pieces that are suppose to go on with the Bezel which is the first thing to go back on, so I need to completely take this apart again to put hose plastic trim pieces back in, and reassemble from there after the cables are all sleeved black.

I haven't done anything with the air duct yet because of the north/southbridge fans being broken, I wanted to keep as much open case air flow going as possible until those are changed. Once those are ordered and arrive, I'll finish the air duct like originally planned

[r3d3mpt10n]

Looking great so far! lol that silver heatsink on the motherboard is super tall! haha and well done on managing to get that cooler mounted:P I'm impressed. I have a problem with rage quitting when something doesn't fit...

[AlienALX]

Oh I see dude. I didn't realise it was different. Love the paint on the face panel, would have debadged it though with some filler. I would also be a little worried about the CPU socket warping without the plate on the back..

 

BTW if the PSU is anything like my Dell one was removing the pins to braid is easy enough

[bANONYMOUS]

19 hours ago, r3d3mpt10n said:

I have a problem with rage quitting when something doesn't fit...

This is exactly why it took me a week to take this apart, paint everything, and get it back together, this case goes together like a puzzle, every piece interferes with another so if one piece isn't put back in order, it needs to come apart to put something else in, like the two plastic trim pieces I forgot to attach to the bezel before attaching it, so the entire computer needs to be taken apart again, not to mention how tight of a fit this case is, getting everything in and out without scratching the paint was a night mare.. all 6 times I had to pull it back apart to add something I forgot haha

15 hours ago, AlienALX said:

I would also be a little worried about the CPU socket warping without the plate on the back..

BTW if the PSU is anything like my Dell one was removing the pins to braid is easy enough

I have the Asus back plate on so the motherboard isn't warping at all and that's good to know about the PSU, should make it go by pretty easily once I order everything for it.

[bANONYMOUS]

It's been awhile since I did any updates on this, something happened and it fried the DIMM 2 rail on the motherboard, luckily it was so soon when this happened that I was still covered under the eBay buyer protection claim and they exchanged the motherboards, they ended up sending me the newer model which doesn't have a southbridge fan which worked out quite well as I intended on buying the newer southbridge heat sink to get rid of that fan seeing how that one fan was the loudest part of the computer.

The computer is running even quieter now with that southbridge fan gone, and to make matters a little weirder, I've never experienced anything like this before but because it's so quiet now, I can hear that my Xeon is really loud when encoding video, it sounds like an old CD writer.. but there are no moving parts in this other than the fans, it's solid state and there's no optical drive, it's the weirdest thing.

I don't know if this is normal or what, but it's working so I've just been ignoring it for now. I also did some reading on SLI cards and didn't know they were motherboard specific which this one does not support SLI. So once I have a little extra spending money I'm going to be buying a second hand Maxwell based Titan X as it's only a few hundred more than two second hand 780 ti's like I was planning, and the power I'll be getting from it isn't even comparable which should make this thing unstoppable for what I need right now.

I'm also not sure if I should start planning a new build, or upgrade this one but I've been looking at the EVGA SR-2 which I believe is an HPTX form factor motherboard, it supports LGA 1366 so I can just pull this CPU and swap it over along with a second one rather than buying the riser card for this. just start parting it out for what I'm keeping and build new once I need more CPU power, but we'll see what happens when that day comes.

Depending what ends up being the cheaper route or the more practical to cost route this build might be ending sooner than I thought it would.

I'll get some pictures of the newer model motherboard now that it's installed and the progress shots of the heating duct and CPU cooler modifications that I did to make it fit perfectly which finally dropped CPU temps. (it just wasn't sitting flush with the CPU this entire time)

 

Here's a video of the Xeon noise, the fan noise is my antMiner S7 running in the other room.

 

[DieHardBarrett]

@bANONYMOUS

Having modified my Dell t3500 to an extreme extent, I know all about your cpu backplate, Northridge upgrade, ram issue, cpu heatsink, and mysterious proceasing noise. Thanks to the H90 AIO and all BeQuiet! fans, the weird noise is normal and annoying. How did you narrow it down to the cpu, because most people say it's capacitor whine. However I do agree with you... here are some pics of my venture down dell-precision-mod-lane.