Case Mod - In Progress Feeding Frenzy: November-11-2009 video card fan installed

Welcome back, we have been missing you and FF of course.

Hopefully you'll be able to do this project right and get it running again

Janne

 

I'm back...

Well it has been a nice hiatus, but I got out the FF chassis last night and started cleaning it up as it has a lot of dust on it. Got about $2.5K from my tax refunds this year and I am at home convalescing from a recent surgery so it seems I'm ready to finish this beast.

The MB and got thrown in the Lian-Li suitcase sized case after a recent problem so I am cruising for some new hardware (MB, CPU, GPU, and associated water blocks).

Have already decided that an ASUS EAH4870 DK/HTDI/1GD5 GPU will be gracing FF along with an Aquacomputer waterblock. Just can't decide whether to go with the full cover block or use one of my silver TwinPlex blocks and some copper ram sinks.

As far as the MB goes I am waiting patiently for an AM3 CPU to make its appearance.

 

it's great to hear from you again TN, every 6 months or so I've been going through your thread to get some inspiration. Please finish it!

 

Lol and to think I was just wondering where you were after a recent AC discussion on XS. Glad to see you're back. No offense but this project kind of reminds me of Duke Nukem Forever

 

Welcome back, I hope you will get this project running again.

 

Yay! You're back! <happy dance>

 

Inspiring? While trying to find my FF Interlude project I came across this thread. Wasn't even aware that anyone was paying attention to this mod.

I don't think I will be returning to XS any time soon. Yeah this mod is definitely taking some time!

Thanks all for the encouragement.

 

Cleaning up

Spent yesterday getting FF cleaned up and sorting out all the stuff I want to use and what stuff I need to sell off. For comparison here is the first pic of this mod:





And here is what's in the keepers pile (the sellers pile is almost as big):





While I'm waiting on parts I will be modding the Aquaduct for use on another project to build a water cooled HTPC. NewEgg should be delivering an ASUS 1 Gb Radeon 4870 early next week. I will test it out in Feeding Frenzy Interlude on air just to make sure it runs right. Then off comes the heatsink and on goes the water block.

Later next week I have a some more toys coming from NewEgg (ASUS motherboard, AMD Phenom II X4 940, 4 Gb of Kingston HyperX memory, and probably a new PSU to run it all. Been leaning towards a PCP&C Turbo-Cool 860, but have also been considering a water cooled Koolance 1300 watt PSU just for grins.

 

Oh, the joy of the Return of the Queen! Please keep me posted on what you're going to be selling; I may need some bits and pieces to go along with all my other bits and pieces!

 

Hail to you as well!

When I get it all sorted out I will probably be posting that list here on bit-tech. Since you asked I will give you first shot at what's there.

 

From what I've understood the PCP&C 860 W is hugely loud, you might want to look somewhere else.. And looking forward to updates, should be good!

 

I got the ASUS EAH4870 DK 1G video card from Newegg Tuesday. I was really scratching my head as to what the DK meant until I saw the box it came in. There is a dark knight on the front of the box.



So the initial plan was to put this card in my Feeding Frenzy Interlude project to see if it worked. Got the old ASUS EN6600GT out and then realized that there was no way that the new card was going to fit as the heat pipe blocked access to the NB water block on my ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe board. I also didn't have the mounting screens to use one of my TwinPlex's on the 4870.

The area where you can see the ASUS logo sticks right out over the NB which wouldn't be a problem with a fan there.



So I put the old card back into FFI and decided to order enough parts to get this going in FF.

So assuming the Fed's put my tax refund in the bank tomorrow I will be ordering the following:

• AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz AM3 CPU
• GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P AM3 motherboard
• G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 ram
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 PSU
• A pair of ASUS DRW-22B1LT DVD burners

All this is going in FF, but I think that two (2) loops will be the max as I think a 240 sized radiator (for the GPU card) will be fitted to the top of the case if everything fits.

Being a person who is always thinking ahead two steps I also found these on ebay so I decided that they might be a good buy for the 4870. I believe they are made by a guy called iandh from XtremeSystems forums. Black would probably look better, but red will do.



This appears to be good thinking on my part as there is no way one of the AC full cover blocks is going to fit. I think it is time to order some TwinPlex parts.

 

Yes the Turbo-Cool series are all kind of on the loud side, but they sure don't give you power problems.

I already have been using a Turbo-Cool 510 SLI for about 4 years now and decided to go with the Silencer 750 instead as my rig will only be using less than 600 watts.

 

Water cooling rule 582

Water cooing rule 582:

When redoing a loop triple check your work....

The GPU I took out of FFI the other day was put back in with a loose water block. When I woke up Friday morning my 6600 GT video card was toast with one long beep and two short beeps.

So along with all the FF stuff I ordered from the NewEgg I also got a cheapie GPU (8400) card to replace it. Now I'm working on the Aquacomputer list to buy for FF and deciding whether I want to use my old silver blocks or get new ones.

All the stuff I ordered should be here on Tuesday and then it will be modding time.

 

Ahh, that's a shame.

I had the same problem last weekend when I redid my waterloop, I used a piece of tube which was a little bit to short. It leaked all over my dvd-burner.

Hope to see some progress this week with all those incoming parts.

 

It got worse.

 

New Toys!

Well I got good news and bad news...

Bad news first:

Put a new GPU in FFI and now I get zip. Lights on and nobody's home syndrome.

Good news:

Since FFI died I can now salvage all the water cooling equipment and hard drives.

I can send the cheapie card back to the egg.

The Feds sent me an extra $450 for tax year 2007.

New toys have arrived from NewEgg! I'm doing my part in stimulating the economy...





My cat likes to watch me work on computers.






This is the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P that is going to run my AMD 720 Black Edition.





Can't work successfully on computers without something to nibble on. I present Top Nurse's family staple food:






Glad I got all these metric screws. The mother board was put in with nothing but button head socket cap screws. In fact all screws will be button heads.







What a mess...






Ready to boot.







Wondering why I just throwing it all together? NewEgg only has a 5 day return period on CPU's. I also want to make sure everything works properly. Ready to turn on for for first boot, but the Ambien is kicking in and it's time to lay down and count silver blocks. So I will do that tomorrow.

 

For those who missed out on the Feeding Frenzy Interlude project it is here.

More good news is that I am sure glad I modded an Inspiron 600M that my niece gave me a year ago. Dumped the Celeron 600M, put in a 2Ghz Pentium M with 2Mb of L2 cache, added 2Gb of ram, and put in an 80Gb 7200 HD along with a few other improvements. So this laptop is saving my bacon as I will be using this to do all my updates on FF till I get all the water cooling gear in.

Decided to get some more silver AC blocks as I already have a silver Cuplex XT and Twinplex that I salvaged out of FFI. Doing my part to help stimulate the German economy too.

 

Just browsed (watched the pictures ) tru your interlude log, nice system shame that it's broken

Care to give a hint to what type of block(s) you ordered?

 

It was a fun project and I finally made that PC-70 look decent. Now I am considering parting out the parts and send the frame to the recyclers.

I'm still pondering about the silver blocks. You see the original TwinPlex's are actually high flow blocks when used with an Aquastream. The TwinPlex Pro's are blocks that really need high flow pumps unless you only have one block in the loop. So the question is whether I will ever want to put in a second 4870. I also was checking the heat of my Raptors and I think I will go back to the original idea of water cooling them as well.

Now that I got everything running a bit I have been thinking of using a Koolance 360
radiator shroud. I just don't like using those fan grills that they are built for. The advantage is that there is more room in the case so I can get my front mounted Aquatube and Aquaero in.

Here is what I have been up to so far in the OC dept. Still on air and stock voltage.


http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=516140

Edit:

Just got off the phone with Koolance and ordered the shroud. I also got a cute little flow meter that I think will interface with the Aquaero and be much less of a drag on the system as compared with the standard U shaped AC flow meter.