a4mula :
It's just when I see things like this I can only shake my head. Please view this as constructive criticism and hopefully you can RMA away some of the major issues.
I've been asking for advice on various forums and planning this build for six months now... your advice is a bit late.
a4mula :
You should have just air cooled it. Seriously. 4x120 is going to run hotter on this build than any aftermarket HSF. i7+5970+Full board block is going to require at a minimum 6x120. With the money you're throwing around and the amount of space in the 800D this was an easy 2 loop build. You can fit 2x MCR320s in the 800D.
I want it to be quiet, I want it to look cool, and I want to learn how to do water cooling, so I decided not to air cool it. This is a learning build for me, so I'm going with a fairly simple case and only one loop until I get the basics down. Next build will probably be a bit more ambitious. Got to learn to crawl before walk, and walk before run.
If it's too hot, I can mod the case and add a double 120 rad in the bottom of the case, or hang a large radiator off the back of the unit, for minimal additional cost. I thought about trying to do it all with just the triple in the top, but the advice I got was don't do that, it's not enough cooling. I have heard of people doing cpu + one graphics card with a single quad radiator before, so I thought a triple plus a single is roughly the same as a quad and I'd give it a shot.
I thought about two loops, but decided just to start with a single loop at first, mainly because I wanted more than just a 120 on my cpu and the three plus one didn't divide up good into two loops.
Where can you fit the second MCR320 into the 800D? I haven't seen that done before, link to a build log showing a second 320 inside a Corsair 800D please, so I can check out how they did it. I'd love to have a second triple in the case if it's reasonable to do and not too ugly. I can also switch to a double loop easy enough, just get a second pump and reservoir and buy some more tubing. Just a matter of wanting to do so. For now, I"ll try out the single loop and see what kind of results (temps, aesthetics) I get from that.
a4mula :
EK 5970 block, Say bye-bye to your VRMs. When you start to getting temps that encroach 80c on your 5970 you'll know why. The original 5970 blocks like the one you've purchased didn't take into account all of the VRMs on the 5970 and offer virtually no coverage of them making these blocks worse than stock cooling, which is fine on the 5970 btw. They tend to not run all that hot.
Can't I just stick a few more thermal pads on the water block and solve that problem? I purchased what they had in stock at performance-pcs.com. I hadn't heard of any design issues with the EK blocks. I'm surprised they haven't fixed design issues with the EK blocks after the problems were discovered, it's been out for at least three months now, should have been fixed by now. I thought about leaving the stock cooling on the 5970 and just cooling the cpu and motherboard. That's still an option, btw, I don't have to use the water block for the 5970. Or I could add in a second loop just for the gpu, who knows.
a4mula :
WD 1TB. Uses older 320GB platters. Either Samsung F3 or Seagate 7200.12 easily surpass it in performance. If reliability was your major concern the 2TB WD Black is based on the faster 500 GB platters.
I wanted a hard drive with 64MB cache, minimum 1TB of space, 7200 rpm, and SATA III. I didn't particularly care about platter size or block size. This WD 1TB caviar black fit the bill. I won't be using it all that much, just to store maybe 100MB of photos, music, and short video clips, so I don't think it'll be that big of a deal. I like the 5 year warranty on the WD hard drive. Cache size does make a difference in performance, so for the stuff I store and the limited amount of times I use that storage, it should be a nice improvement from my 5400 rpm 16mb cache laptop drive, which I am sure isn't built on 500gb platters because it's only a 120 gb hard disk drive.
a4mula :
12 GB Dominators... You've spent $400 in RAM that's going to show no advantage over a single 3x2GB kit G.Skill ripjaws for $140.
The advantage is the additional amount of RAM. I was deciding between 6GB of mushkin redline 6-7-6-18 1600MHz, 6 gb of corsair dominator gt 7-8-7-20 2000MHz, 12 gb of G.Skill 7-8-7-24 1600MHz, and 12 GB of Corsair Dominator 8-8-8-24 1600MHz. I picked the muskin, then changed my mind, cancelled the order, and picked the corsair dominator 12 GB. I decided I liked 12 GB more than 6 GB, the 2000 MHz wasn't all that important to me, I liked the looks of the blue and black corsair better than the blue and black G. Skills, and I liked that I could unscrew the heat sinks on the top of the corsair in case I wanted to water cool it for aesthetic reasons.
a4mula :
Desk is the reason you didn't go with a 5970 Eyefinity 6? How about the microstuttering that you're going to face with a regular 5970? Trying to push 4800x2560 (12.2 megapixels) with only 1 GB of accessible RAM isn't going to be a happy place. Research micro-stuttering and then reconsider your choice. Seriously. Here's where your power of RMA comes into play.
The number one reason I didn't go with the 5970 Eyefinity 6? It isn't out yet. Also, my monitors don't have display port and I didn't relish the thought of spending $375 on adapters for it. There are no water blocks for the 4GB editions, and not likely to be any, because it's a limited edition board. So I'll get the 5970 for now, and if it can't do everything I want to do with it, I'll either add a second one or sell it off and buy an air cooled 4GB card, depending on the exact nature of the problem that I have with it.
I mostly play 2D games, like Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Civilization IV. I also play some older titles of 3D games that aren't too challenging graphicallly, like Everquest and the occasional Team Fortress II game. So I really only needed a single 5870 card and not a 5970, but the advice that I got was I should go with a minimum of a 5970 and leave the option open to add a second one if needed, so that's the route I went.
There's always new technology coming out down the road. I would love to have an Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard with a pair of Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 4GB graphics cards... but I can't buy those yet, they aren't for sale. Worse, they don't even have an announced release date. I don't care to wait indefinitely. I've been saving up for two years for this build, and seriously planning it with what little advice was available on the boards from people that actually tried to help instead of just making fun of the budget, for at least six months now. I waited for gulftown to come out, and bought a gulftown chip, because the core i7 975 just isn't worth it and can't be justified over the 920. Yes, I could have bought a 930 and had more room in the budget for other things, but I didn't.
I also waited for fermi to come out, and that was a huge disappointment. Noisy, hot, and power hungry. And support for triple monitors not available yet. So I went with a single 5970 and plan to upgrade to fermi gen2 or cypress gen2 either at Christmas or some later date. Basically whenever the technology is out and when I can't do everything I want to do with the existing card.
a4mula :
1500w PSU. Did I miss the part where you were installing 3 or 4 TECs? Were you also planning on running your dryer off this thing? The monitors have their own psus, so unless you plan on upgrading to tri-5970's you kind of went overkill here, by about 700 watts.
I planned to have enough power to power up to four single gpu cards when I bought the power supply. Four fermi or four 5870's. I also like it that the sweet spot for efficiency is around the 50% mark on the power supply, so I'll be operating at the most efficient point of the power supply's power curve and thus getting the most efficient use of my electric bill money.
I planned to keep this power supply for a long time. Five or ten years or so. I could have bought a 1000W Corsair, and almost did. But the one I picked runs quiet, got good reviews from jonnyguru.com, and is 100% modular, something that's important for me for sleeving everything and for being able to remove the psu without re-routing all my cables.
So yes, it's more than I need for this particular build. But it would be less than I need for a Classified SR-2 dual gulftown system with quad fermi 480GTX's in a Mountain Mods Extended Ascension case. Something I also considered until I decided I would rather have monitor glory instead of additional cores and memory that I probably wouldn't use all that much. That, plus the current build is much more affordable, LOL.
a4mula :
Don't feel too bad when as you're in the middle of playing a game and your adaptered monitor drops out. It's a pretty well known issue and one that we all face when not using natural dp monitors. Of course if I had just dropped 4-6k on monitors it'd still piss me off. Hell I only dropped 700$ in monitors and it pisses me off. 5x Dell U2410 = $2600 @ 6000 x 1920 for surround gaming goodness, plus you'd have native dp support, not to mention they'd be brand new. With that being said, those NEC's are nice. You don't know the envy that bubbles through me thinking of them, just not the price tag.
I researched the adapters and made sure to get an eyefinity validated dongle that would support my chosen resolution.
http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx
Perhaps you are using a non-validated dongle?
Also... I researched the monitors thoroughly too. The envy should come from the price I paid for the three nice NEC monitors. I spent $2206.25 for the three of them, including shipping. I chose these because of the price, the ratings, and the fact that they have built in pivot, tilt, and height adjustment.
Since I mostly want portrait setup and something close to 16:10 aspect ratio, I didn't really care to add two more monitors, but I did leave that option open. If I decide I want additional screen real estate, I can always add in two more monitors and switch to an Eyefinity 6 5970 4GB card at some point down the road. But for now I suspect I'll be pretty happy with these, the Eyefinity 6 card isn't out yet, I don't play that many 3D first person games, and I don't particularly want to buy a new desk.
a4mula :
980x... well you already know.
I seriously thought about returning this, but Microcenter's return policy on cpu's sucks, even unopened ones. I think I'll just have to make due with the most powerful single processor on the planet for a while, even if it is a bit too luxurious.
a4mula :
Cute kid btw, your wife looks somewhat shell-shocked. Best of luck with your build, this wasn't shots at you personally. I'd definitely look into replacing the 5970 and reconsider using the EK block on it.
I can't get an RMA on my wife, already tried. Nice idea though.
I'm crazy about my daughter, she's wonderful.
What block would you recommend?
I obviously can't replace the 5970 with something that isn't out yet. And this should get me by just fine until the next gen of boards comes out, at which point I can ebay this one with the blocks and get something else.
I appreciate the advice, but next time it would be better to give it before I place the orders!!
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