Experimental radiator \build log!!!

[toolmaker_03]

well here are the radiators, my problem is the configuration of them, simply too many possibilities, so if you could find the time to give your opinions, I would really appreciate it.
I also need advice on a type of shroud for the radiators, the purpose is to inshore good air flow through the radiator.
and lastly how to attach the fans to the radiators?



all advice is welcome and thank you

 

[Motopsychojdn]

How about allocating cores 0+1 to the recording program and the four remaining to the game? tried anything like that?
Moto

 

[toolmaker_03]

Ok you have my attention, how would I even go about doing something like that. I would assume that this is another program that allows you to split the workload however you want to right?

 

[wolfram23]

Best recording software I've used is the one in MSI Afterburner. Although you have to tweak it a bit, otherwise sometimes the play-back has pauses in the video. Not really sure what causes it, might be the encoding process. I didn't try recording RAW files like FRAPS, now I'm wondering if that would fix it... hrmmm...

Anyway normally I record with, iirc, mpg compression, full resolution, 80% quality, stereo sound.

 

[toolmaker_03]

Well if I drop the game res to 1280x1024 it has no problems doing that but if I try to rec at 2048x1535 yes even with smart copy it is too much for my processor to handle both the game at that res and the recording at that res at the same time. The same goes for if I keep the game at high res and rec at lower a res it works fine but the graphics are blurred and that was not my intention. So I am considering setting up a tripod with the digital camera/video recorder and trying it that way to see if the camera can get a good image of the screen at high resolution.

 

[toolmaker_03]

On a side note I need another SSD, because 120 gigs is not enough for today’s games 240 to 480 will get me all I will ever need I can remember when 160 gigs could hold every game I owned at the same time but with today’s games you need a lot more space so I will be getting a second third and fourth of the Intel 520 120 gig SSD’s for this rig so that I do not have this issue anymore good thing this board has a A drive for the raid drivers.

OK here is a question I have been asking myself for some time now with the new motherboards there is no connection for an A drive so how do you setup an array on that system I know it can be done but how do you do it?

 

[wolfram23]

I can't see an OCed 1100T bottlenecking with recording, same goes for a pair of 480s.

Did you try MSI Afterburner like I mentioned?

FRAPS is a crappy recorder IMO, especially with dual cards. My GPU usage would drop, FPS would drop, and it records 4 gig files per 5 mins or so. Afterburner has very little framerate drop, mostly uses more CPU but even then I was able to record without much hassle in games like BF3 and Metro 2033.

 

[toolmaker_03]

Well afterburner was the first one I tried than I bought another but in afterburner at 2048X1535 the video file was 11 gigs for about 10 minutes worth of game play and it was a really pause pause pause show afterword. The gameplay was fine dropped my frame rate from 255 to 120 in the game so I thought it would be fine until I tried to watch it. So I will try again with different settings what res do you play at? and i will match my settings to yours to see if it makes a diffrence.

 

[wolfram23]

I only play at 1080p, but RAW capture is very demanding and hard drives end up being a huge bottleneck for it. Before any recording you really have to make sure your HDD is defragged and will be available for 100% of the data. Keep in mind, 11gigs over 10 minutes means a data rate of 1.1gig/min - do you know of any HDDs that can go that fast?

 

[toolmaker_03]

OCZ revo drive 3 :lol:

I do not have one of those, but I now see your point now, I never consider this type of stuff but 1080P in computer terms is 1900X1024 or on a square screen that is 1280 X 1024 and it does record fine at that res with no problems. At work I build systems that can do this easy I build satellites for a living. They make a home PC look like a joke in comparison. So I am always expecting more out of it than I can get.

 

[wolfram23]

Well like I said before, use MSI Afterburner and instead of RAW go with one of the compressed formats.

You can see a long video I recorded of Metro 2033 here: http://wolframpc.blogspot.ca/2011/12/metro-2033-is-awesome.html

I used MSI Afterburner, and my rig is an i5 750 @ 4ghz and a pair of OCed 5850s, with 8gb RAM. So you've got more GPU power and probably more CPU if not about equal there.

 

[toolmaker_03]

I can’t play horror games anymore they give me nightmares ever since silent hill 3 they have gotten the graphics so good that it looks to real I did play dead space and dead space 2 but it took me a year to get through it because I was scared and they try to scare you in these new games and they do a pretty good job of it.

 

[toolmaker_03]

Ok so I have been playing with this rig for some time now and I think that I have it down but I have found that nothing makes sense with it the processor will run nice between 3.3 and 4.1 I have it at 3.7 all the time now but the memory is the strange one the specs say it is 1150 at 5 5 5 18. I am running it at 1072 with everything in manual at 5 5 5 17 that is what it runs stable at, not 5 5 5 15 or 5 5 5 16 but 5 5 5 17 at 5 5 5 18 it restarts the computer when it gets a little hot but at 5 5 5 17 it does not restart but it does like the voltage up all the way to 2.3 volts before it becomes truly stable. The processor is the same way it needs 1.57volts at 3.7 to become truly stable without issue. I do not know why but it hasn’t restarted for 5 days straight now, I will keep you updated.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Flatspots hehe, the joys of tweaking
Moto

 

[toolmaker_03]

that is one way of putting it, indeed the joys of tweaking can be hard, have you run into a issue like this?

if yes, how did you figure it out?

i continued to removing one stick of memory after the next until it was stable than started adding them again and adding to the voltage until it was stable and with each stick of memory added the voltage needed to go up.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

It will do, same as a four cylinder engine needs more petrol, four ramsticks need more juice
a flatspot occurs where at a given voltage/speed you get bsods, sometimes that is the limit of that component, but sometimes if you go a little further it irons itself out and is fine, it is just a case of working through (P.i.t.a. 😛) and deciding when enough is enough, its all good pushing stuff to its limits but you also have to be able to say 'thats good enough' sometimes and accept the result, even if its not as high as you were aiming for
Moto

 

[toolmaker_03]

Yes, I have noticed this even though the memory says that it is the same type two of the sticks cannot handle as high of a clock as the other two sticks same thing the other way, with down clocking two sticks cannot handle much while the other two can. I am now considering getting two more and trying my luck at getting two more good ones. I think that over all the system will be more stable if I get sticks that are closer to each other either way up or down with there abilitys.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Thats why (especially for overclocking specifically) matched sets of ram are recommended, they are binned at the factory to have very close limits to each other, delivering, although not guaranteeing better results
after that,
its all in the playing mate,
Moto

 

[toolmaker_03]

well i thought that i was buying 2 2 gig sticks but thay sent me 4 1 gig sticks and of two diffrent sets the same speed but diffrent boxes for each set of two

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Pain heheh,
Moto

 

[4Ryan6]

well i thought that i was buying 2 2 gig sticks but thay sent me 4 1 gig sticks and of two diffrent sets the same speed but diffrent boxes for each set of two

If the motherboard you're using is the one listed in your sig, the ASUS Crosshair II it does not cooperate well when you fill all 4 memory slots and overclock, as a matter of fact, the ASUS Striker II Extreme even makes a reference to that issue in the manual.

Even though it does not reference that in the Crosshair II manual, I have discovered from my own experience with that same motherboard, which I have in my hands right now, when it comes to overclocking, a matched set of memory modules in the 2 primary slots, will give you your best stable overclock results, and that M/B slot limit is 2G module per slot.

I definitely make reference to that in the Black Edition Overclock guide, however I'm sure from past experience with you, that about 2 weeks from now when you're still stumped, you may consider what I've just shared with you is some good info, or maybe not.

The Black Edition overclock guide has been there all along and thousands have used it successfully to overclock their machines so actually I've long since done my part to help you, but sometimes it's frustrating to see you bouncing around like a ball in a pin ball machine.

Continuing with advice to you; two independently bought 2x matched sets, will never be able to run the initial timings across 4x modules, same voltage yes, timings NO!

Additionally, hopefully you marked somehow the sets that came packaged together because they may not work mismatched with the other modules, I've seen that happen!

I suggest getting a matched set of 4G 2 x 2G and only populate the 2 primary DDR2 slots of that motherboard, for your best overclocking capabilities, and until you can acquire them use just 2 modules of what you have on hand.

 

[toolmaker_03]

No I read that, I was a little scared at first that it would not start up with all four sticks in but it did, then I was scared that I would never get it stable but I did, with all four sticks. They do limit me to a 4.2 GHz on the processor for me to get to 4.5GHz I do have to remove two sticks of memory to get it stable. I do thank you for the walk through on how to do it, I did find it useful and it did answer a few of my questions. I guess the rest is simply trial and error.

If I can find them I will replace them with 2 x 2GIG sticks later for greater clocks, but I am already looking forward to my next build in a couple of years, this will be a good trainer until then, for the real thing. I am impressed with how well a built up system can run so I am willing to do it again a little bigger and little stronger next time, with a lot more cooling ability.

 

[toolmaker_03]

Ok so I am still not happy with the way this loop is operating so I am considering splitting the loop into two loops instead of one parallel loop. So the next way I will configure it will be 360, 240, CPU, and GPU on one loop and a 360, 240, MOBO, and GPU on the second loop. Let’s see if that helps any and if not OH well it was worth a try I guess. I may keep playing with this for a while before I get it the way I want it to be. Sometimes there is a better answer out there you just have to look for it or have someone tell what it is. Hint for anyone interested I would like your opinions on this and how you would approach the problem.

1) too much vaccume in the system

2) temps are not stable on the second GPU the SLI bridge may be too restrictive.

3) flow fluctuates with temps as temps get hotter the flow of the system goes lower I am thinking that the pins in the blocks are expanding as temps rise lowering the overall flow of the system and making temps move around too much.

 

[toolmaker_03]

Let me explain what I mean, if I need to I will go 1 rad, one component, and one pump, for each component then so be it, that is what I will do, to get this rig where it needs to be.
I have 5 components, 4 rads , and three pumps now, so all I would need to do that would be one more rad and two more pumps.

so this is where i am at so far, and i will keep you updated on what is happening.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Seperate loops for each component to cool?
thats a C.m. nightmare hehe, I look forward to watching the progress mate, although for optimum cooling power I personally would run all the loops from one big shared res
Moto

 

[toolmaker_03]

I do not want to go 5 separate loops if I can help it but this is annoying me to no end with how it is reacting. I will try 3 loops to start the CPU on its own loop, than the MOBO mosfets and GPU on the second loop, than the MOBO N.bridge and GPU on the third loop> I was considering only using 3 X 360’s for this instead of the four I have now. I have the rads to do it I will simply remove the two 240’s from the system.

Do you know of a res that can handle all of this I have 2 x 250 bits power z-multitanks now but they can only handle one loop at a time. If I interconnect all the loops through one res wont that alter all of the flow rates or will it simply level all the temps through the system? Can’t say I really understand what I am doing, but I need to try something, because what I have now is good, but I know that it can be better.