Scratch Build – In Progress PARVUM LIGHTNING - Updated 14/06/2016

Beautiful lines and simple yet effective aspects to the build,

As always a pleasure to read your log with top quality pictures!

Cheers for the read and keep up the good work Joe!

 

Although Lightning is complete and running much post arrived from afar, what could it be?







Time for Filco.





But also from Washington state USA, lots and lots of Signature Plastics DSA PBT keycaps.



Although I got lots of spares i'd already figured out exactly what layout I was going for to complement the build.









I'm not sure I actually wanted MX-Blues however the board came with 3 tiny blue LED's which pleases me greatly. I already have MX-Reds and MX-Greens, I don't like MX-Blacks so it seemed like a logical choice.





Really very pleased with how everything looks together!



Hopefully soon a very swaggy Filco cable will arrive from Pexon sleeved in the same black teleios as the build and my plans shall be complete

JR​

 

Another little detail on Lightning to be addressed was the SLI bridge, the motherboard didn't come with a quad bridge and we had just been using a plain black PCB style one and so decided to make a cover. 'LIGHTNING' or the jet would have been way too small on a bridge but the 'OC' logo had just the right amount of detail.



Obviously it had to be an inlay, just like on the front of the case the yellow piece is chamfered on both edges and stands slightly proud of black as it appears to in MSI's graphics.



Each piece is an individual piece of acrylic with the inner OC being held in it's original place. The reverse is area cleared so that the bridge sits inside it and the PCB edges aren't exposed.



All assembled together.



It looks very at home with the motherboards original accessories.





But even more so mounted to the Lightnings.



Hopefully over the weekend I have another little job to do so that the Aquaero heatsink can be fitted to my weird mountings without removing it from the case and then it will be ready for final pictures.

JR​

 

Just realized this picture was absent from the build log...



...and this one too.



I guess you could say that was a teaser, getting very ready for the final pictures now.

JR​

 

I got another small little task out of the way yesterday, the way I had mounted the Aquaero 6 in order hide hide screw heads in the front meant that the heatsink wouldn't fit.





Although it's not really needed to dissipate heat unlike on the Aquaero 5 it does look really clean so I wanted to find a way I could still fit it. The main issue was that the standoffs couldn't sit up to the PCB where i'd put nuts so I milled them all off flush with the heatsink.









It wasn't worth attacking them with any serious precision as they will no longer touch against anything hence I just end milled them off by eye with a small mill which cut really nice and didn't mark the rest of the part during the process.









It fits really neatly onto the Aquaero and makes it look a lot neater hiding the inside face of the connectors from view. At the moment it's just resting in place but i've ordered some adhesive thermal pads as used on memory to hold it in place.







Just a quick check to see all the fans are still operational after rummaging around with cables, all looking good



JR​

 

Really nice touch modding the AQ. Do you have final photo plans?

 

Just one more little detail to address was the very stock Filco USB cable so I ordered a dank one sleeved in black Teleios from Pexon PC's. With lots of options to choose from I figured this would best match the build and the keyboard.









Fitting it was a bit too awkward to photograph as my Filco didn't want to split completely in half, rather than scratching the front edge trying to get it to unclip I just gently slid the cable in from the back edge.







Top work from team Pexon! I'm really enjoying using this keyboard and i'm glad that I went for MX-blues the light tactility is well suited to my mashing style. I've started to use Lightning a little with a 32" 4k IPS AOC and GTA V is looking absolutely epic although something isn't getting on with Windows 10 and causing occasional freezes in game. It's got a few shows to attend over the coming weeks, one quite close to our friends studio so final photographs have been put on hold until then, i'll make sure to get lots of teasers at LSUCS LAN and PC Gamer Weekender though!

JR​

 

Impressive case for some fancy hardware.

 

Very stylish case. I like it a lot. Black and yellow looks great.

 

Holy Cow! You jolted Franklin out of his slumber!
And the rig is deliciously, insanely clean- again. I don't think you've ever built something that didn't tick all the right boxes.

 

Thank you! Much fancy

Black and yellow contrast Cheesecake.

Always good to bump the sleepers. Thanks!






I took a 32" AOC 4k home from work and have started to get some game time in on Lightning. After a lot of messing around getting nvidia drivers and Windows 10 to cooperate some epicly huge smooth GTA V frames are being created. Hopefully I can tear imersa away from it long enough to get a decent Tomb Raider session in at LAN next weekend.

JR

 

LIGHTNING, αclass and I just got back home from an awesome weekend at LSUCS Charity LAN 56. Much chocolate was consumed, chats were had and rather un-ordinarily multiplayer games were played with other people actually present!







After an initial and expected battle with Windows 10, which still thinks it knows best about drivers, both rigs ran very well. AOC kindly sent Parvum a few samples from their awesome IPS range so I picked out my favorite the 32" 4k to take along and stress LIGHTNING with but quite frankly the shear number of pixels was no match for 4 GK110-4250-B1's. GTA V looked epic as always and I also played some Vanishing of Ethan Carter for the UE4 greatness as well as my all time favorite LAN title Unigine Valley.

agar.io also very good at 4k!





Also I got a little more accustomed to my new Filco making a few forum posts and totally not having a Fast and Furious related meme war. As well as the Filco I tried out my gift from OCUK, the steelseries black and yellow thingy's. While less comfortable and pleasurable than my Beyers they are much better suited to the LAN environment than a condenser mic and open backs.







On the way home I managed to fit both rigs in my car although with no room left for monitors I may need to re-think my LAN setup for longer distances and maybe not take two giant ATX rigs. It was great fun and I can't wait for the next event!

JR​

 

out of curiosity;
how much does it weigh?

 

Wow wow wow
This is just awesome. Great work and incredible photos to spice it up.

 

Hi JR23, I'm designing an acrylic block much like yours, and while I'm happy to figure out size/routing etc. of the water channels I wasn't sure about the o-ring channels, and I don't have a spare waterblock lying around to copy. What size o-ring cord are you using, and how deep/wide are the channels? Also any other tips for ensuring a good seal? Any advice would be very appreciated.

 

A long long overdue update on LIGHTNING! Even though the system has been up and running for several months now I was overcome by a sudden urgency to extract just a little more performance. Who knows why, perhaps computex, maybe pascal or it could just be the need play with some Quad-SLI insanity with all this foolish chat of its demise.


www.3dmark.com/fs/8687219

After several attempts with different overclocking utilities, different drivers and piddling with a few other factors I eventually succeeded in breaking the 30k barrier with a clock speed of 1215/1750 on all 4 cards. Definitely an impressive score however I knew at least a couple of the cards were capable of more. So off I went to find the limits of each card under water...



ASIC Quality (%) - Max Core Frequency at stock volts (MHz) - Heaven score (fps)

So after a little testing I found that one card was much weaker than the others, one incredibly fast but inefficient and two somewhere in the middle. Although I had tested each card on air originally I really didn't pay attention to where they were placed on the board. Consequently with this new found knowledge it was decided that there probably was a more efficient order to go with.



Naturally this meant it was time to tear down the GPU loop and mess around with the placement of each card. Not a small task but actually quite a fun one and a decent opportunity to take some photographs of LIGHTNING in pieces.



Because it was originally assembled very quickly in time for insomnia I never had chance to show much of how it fits together so this should be quite insightful and a great chance to give everything a good clean ready for the next season of excursions and shows.





With the rearmost black panel removed all of the screws which secure the PSU's and GPU's are exposed. Once removed the yellow and grey rear panels can be taken off making it easy to swap around the cards.



And relatively quickly the back end of the case is removed



Time to take some cards out and already barely visible bits of hardware start to surface!



A motherboard, complete with chipset heatsink and M.2 drive! I knew it was under there all along.



With the back off and the cards out many other new sights appeared.



But it was time to start putting them back.





Lovely EK-HD fittings made it all so easy.



Bye bye M.2! Maybe I will see you again next year.





While putting back the final card I did a little oops and spilled coolant on the rear bank of memory. Nothing a few minutes with the hair dryer and a clean couldn't recover.



All neatly back and ship shape tucked right up to GPU1.





GPU1 check... GPU2 check... GPU3 check... GPU4 check... oh great, they all made it back.



Last chance for some weird perspectives before the case is reassembled.





Finally time for coolant again, the original pastel yellow still looks perfect, identical to the CPU loop, so back in it goes!



POWER!









Time for more tweaking!



Now the weak card is in the slot closest to the CPU followed by the two average ones and finally the fastest card furthest away.


www.3dmark.com/fs/8784147

The best score I got out of it at stock volts with the new GPU order was 31'782, a considerable gain. Now time to ascend to the realms of some serious overvoltage I think!

JR​