Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Aperture Science Laboratories Workstation v.o² Update 30 Sept 11

Dang! For some reason I envisioned the o2 case being larger than it is...

 

considering the size of the board, I'm not surprised

 

Hmm. There should be more portal functionality in this rig.

Clean design, though : D

 

Very cool and clean design, I can't wait to see when it's finished

 

Same here can't wait to see it finished. I really like the size of this it seems right. Any bigger and I think it wouldn't look quite right.

 

Any smaller and I would have needed a shoehorn and some KY Jelly to make it fit

Not long to go now!

 

Nice, I really like what you got going here. The orange acylic with the white make a very striking contrast.

 

Agreed on the color contrasts. Very good choices.

 

[Initialise]
>Initialisation complete, begin GlaDOS client terminal boot test
>CPU1 OK
>CPU2 OK
>MEMORY OK
>HARD DISK OK
>GPU OK

>GCTBT RESULT OK
...
...
+Begin GlaDOS installation

>Installation complete

-Welcome back test subject, shall we begin testing?

(OOC: Hardware is running fine, bought a 2.5" SATA 320gb HDD and will be installing WIN7 tommorow )

 

Awesome news!

 

very nice, am glad to see its all working out for you so far.

 

Thanks for the comments guys! Am posting this on o². Feels weird being on a quadcore!

Couple Issues so far:
-Speedfan crashes on load due to the server board sensor array massiveness
-nVidia doesn't seem to do a win7 driver for nForce2000
-louder than expected

edit from aurora: older nVidia driver =instant bluescreen. yay -_-

 

This looks great! Keep up the good work!

 

Running through windows updates and driver updates. few more niggles:
-Can't get a driver for my temp sound card - last update for the card was Win98!
-nVidia drivers+system utilities don't allow ANY o/c options. So no undervolting the CPU's for me

 

Use coretemp for a monitor. Most accurate one so far and lets you offset the individual cores.

I've been working with CPUid for HWMonitor in trying to get the program to recognize the sensor array. Speedfan misreads the sensor array and thinks it is a different chip. Can't even get a responce from them about it... Everest, if you try to open it's settings will go into an eternal scan of the sensor array. They too are working on this issue and have no idea why it misreads the board as a different sensor chip.

Nvidia's nForce2200 chipset is built into Windows 7 x64. (That's what I run as well) I've downloaded the latest nForce chipset drivers for the latest board anyway and let it install. It updates the drivers for the drive controls and for another part of the board. (edit: I do not recomend x32 on this board and anything less than professional, business, or ultimate will only use 1 cpu and 4gb ram)

Can't help on the sound. Acrylic amplifies quite nicely. Use rubber mounts or groments between the fans and what they mount against. It will help lower the decible levels a touch by lowering the vibrations of the blades.

 

Which sound card are you using? Windows 7 x64 usually finds all the older hardware drivers that are out there once you do a manual "Search for drivers using Microsoft Updates" on the hardware property screen. Soundblaster Audigy 2 worked well, quite well... kinda wished I hadn't upgraded it to the soundblaster X-Fi model sb460. Works really well but has a few hickups with the digital out...

Understood about the o/c and voltage settings. Been trying to find a program to let me use them also. There is within the bios a setting called "Cool-n-Quiet". This allows Windows to automatically downclock the voltage and multipliers to lower settings so long as you have a CPU model that allows for the down clocking. NOTE: Haven't gotten the feature to work correctly in Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Works in Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and Windows XP Professional (no multicore support seen).

 

OOOH. I see you gave up on the (classified) frame and went full scratch build. It looks much cleaner because of that. -Really sweet rig so far.

 

Sound card will be ditched - way old.. don't even think it's AC97!

Going to buy these this week:
http://www.quietpc.com/nz-en-nzd/products/40mmfans/mini-kaze
To silence the PSU. Have replaced the heatsink on the chipset as per falcongrey's suggestions, a standard K6/2 cpu heatsink fits perfectly, and has a fan. AMD stuff rocks!

Am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit but still no driver for that sound card.
Quicky hardware testing update:

[2010-08-15-21:16]
>Continue stress testing
>RUN "hyperpi /32M /4 cores"
>Testing...
>Testing...
>20 Minute update, all cores ≤ 65 degrees
>Test complete
>SHUTDOWN

The team seems to be happy with the hardware so far, less than teething issues than the ALPACA unit. My team leader seems to be happy.
We have been warned by GlaDOS that one of our team may be selected for testing soon, so this project must be completed with haste!

...to be continued...

 

65c seems a bit hot. Not sure of a K6/2 cpu heatsink w/fan can disipate the heat fast enough like the newer copper cores with heat pipes.

Thermal limit on the OSP275FAA6CB is 68c and Tjunction is 70c. If you google it or goto CPU-World.com and search for your specific model you should find the thermal limit. Try to stay way low of it if possible.

On my chip, the average temp should be around 45c. My goal is to get it down into the upper 30s to low 40s.

This is the one that I have ordered to use on my chips in replacement for the one I am currently using. Stressing the chips will raise the heat to above 68c and for me that wasn't acceptable.

Dual Core s940 heatsink with dual copper pipes and copper core

 

The chipset heatsink (the k6/2 unit) barely gets warm now!
My chips are designed for 67 degrees max ><. We will have to see how the dual 100mm fans help, as their placement blows directly onto the CPU heatsinks.

Those heatsinks look good (surely 80mm fan max due to the space constraints) but the shipping from those guys is $47USD to me! Nothing on ebay similar either.

To be honest if the 2x100mm fans don't help I'm going to start searching for a M-atx board and an AM3 chip Performance wise I can't justify dropping more money on heatsinks for a what is the equivalent of a 2.2ghz quadcore!