System Builder Marathon: High-End System

[Luscious]

My take on your comments Crashman:

Pick one and I'll tell you what's wrong with it...you thought this was an easy choice?

You could try the ones I mention above, or as snootch mentioned, try one of the stacker variants. You can easily install an after-market water cooling setup on any of them. The Lian-Li PC-G70B does give you a lot of room.

V2100 Plus II mounts the motherboard upside-down, which can cause the chipset heatpipe to lose most of it's functionality. I haven't seen a list of which boards (or aren't) affected, but who wants to take that risk? This is the biggest reason why a Koolance pre-configured case system wasn't used.

That's also why you generally remove the heatpipe from the mobo and use NB/SB/vreg blocks. With decent airflow in your case, it won't pose any problem. For simplicity sake though, the PC-G70B does not invert the MB.

I like them a lot, I just don't know of any large radiators that will fit inside one. Does anyone sell a kit that mounts in the front, as with Thermaltake's Armor LCS?

Going back to my first point, why do you HAVE to have the radiator included with the case? And why do you need to have the radiator inside at the front? The Swiftech radbox solution mounts outside, works with any case, and doesn't require any dremel work. Using the PC-G70B again as an example, it has ample room for a 120mm x3 radiator mounted on top without robbing hard-drive space.

Yes, looks and aesthetics are subjective, but the enthusiast will take the time and do the work.

I agree with you that this was not a case-modding or extreme water-cooling project, but I must go back to my first point: it seems your objective is more "what can I buy off the shelf and quickly slap together for $4000" as opposed to "how would an enthusiast spend $4000".

 

[sojrner]

I just love how so few can be pleased with this... funny to the point that I almost wonder if ppl are simply trying to stir the pot instead of actually believing what they are posting...

The way I saw it was they wanted to show the difference in performance between different price-brackets on a general sense. You can add/subtract individual components, adjust the price up or down but in the end you must set limits and have a hard ceiling for each build. Then you bench them to show what the extra scratch will get you. There is always subjectivity when some selections are made... that is the nature of our hobby and what makes it so much fun. Just like a car show where you see a sweet '69 mustang fastback but disagree on the paintjob or the type of intake on the 289... doesn't mean the owner was wrong, just a different take on it than your own.

it seems your objective is more "what can I buy off the shelf and quickly slap together for $4000" as opposed to "how would an enthusiast spend $4000".

and the problem with that is what exactly? A real "enthusiast" will look at this article as more information about how parts perform. A real "enthusiast" would not build an exact copy of ANY system but rather build his/her own unique take on what performance/aesthetics/efficiency is best represented by. In building their own (and I mean truly their OWN, not someone else's idea of what it should be) system they will compile as much data as possible to be able to make an educated decision on what parts to use and how to do it. This article is one piece of that data. The real enthusiast will not quibble over what should have been used, but rather take the info presented (which in this case is very useful) and then make their own that SHOWS what they feel is the best for their budget.

THAT is what an enthusiast does.

Judging by all the whining about all the things in the article that no-one agrees with and very few seeing the good stuff within... I doubt many on this thread are enthusiasts at all, but rather wannabes that can only dream about doing even the relatively simple mods that were performed in this build let alone what it would take to go beyond that.

JMO of course... flame away.

 

[Crashman]

Ah, but Luscious, I'm still thinking about whether the Mozart TX would work with a big square radiator!

 

[cleeve]

It's a great system you have there but overkilled to the max.

How do you use a $4000 budget and not overkill? Seriously.



What would you guys recommend as our budget limits for the next marathon? I'd like to know what you guys think.

For low end, I'm hearing that $500 was too low and $1000 was too hig. Maybe we'll go $750 next time around.

Medium should stay at $1500?

High end $2500? $3500? What's the magic number? Or do we do it in reverse, selecting the best functioning parts for a high-end rig and use that price as the target?...

 

[fumuthabeotch]

I liked all the price ranges. 1000 clams is fine for a low end system, as was 1500 for a med.
I don't really care about high-end though, I say the sky is the limit. Just make the most retardedly fast system you guys can.

 

[sojrner]

"retardedly fast"... methinks that should be the name of the category instead of "high-end".

 

[Crashman]

Retardedly fast is an oxymoron. Perhaps "stupidly fast" would be better.

 

[netsez]

I also say for the high end system to ignore price and get the most extreme performance possible.

 

[Luscious]

Ah, but Luscious, I'm still thinking about whether the Mozart TX would work with a big square radiator!

Very simple answer - yes! You're referring to the Magicool xtreme quad 480 radiator right? I'm not sure if the screw holes will line up, since the case was designed for two dual 120mm rads. But to answer your question, if there's not enough room behind the CD bays for the fans/radiator depth, you can simply mount the radiator inside and the fans on the outside, with the case metal in-between, like a sandwich. Just make sure you use fan guards on those 120mm units. I know it may not look "nice", but it WILL let you get away with it. You may also want to dremel away the four cheese-grater grills to maximize your airflow.

If you're still worried about depth issues, mount the rad and the fans from the outside. The only mod work you'll need here is drill two holes for the tubes, but that's easy.

I've had similar builds (horizontal HTPC cases in particular) where the radiator/fan wouldn't fit inside a particular case and I cheekily got around it by reversing the mounting scenario and placing the gear around on the outside. It will work just as well. The radbox idea from Swiftech is just the same - it fits pretty much any case letting you use single, dual and triple 120mm radiators. You will want to make sure not to bump it though, and be aware of the extra depth your case will take up. I also like to keep 1" space between the fans and radiator to eliminate the airflow "dead zone" of the fans and use either rubber grommets or silicone fan silencers when mounting the fans, but that's just a personal preference.

BTW, if you're using THAT many 120mm fans, make sure they're no louder than 14db each. You might want to connect them to a 5.25" bay rheostat.

 

[Crashman]

Rheostat? Hardly. I'd use quiet fans or, if a lower than stock speed is desired, wire them directly for 7v.

 

[PopsSoCal]

I would like to know if the Antec p180b Be able to be factored into one of these builds?

 

[turtle1]

The article was a good one and did exactly what it sat out to do.

Does anyone know of a water cooling kit for the Silverstone TJ09?

 

[proof]

Water cooling kits are not usually made for specific cases.

 

[dbland3]

Well I'm no DIY casebuilder nor an electrical engineer - and I don't know and ohm from amp - but I would like to build a very nice high end liquid cooled system in the $3500 - $4,000 price range. I've been planning this project for ages now and the prices have generally dropped to the point where it's time to do it (when I started my dream rig was running at around $6000).

Ever since I started dreaming up configurations I planned on using one of Koolance's water cooled cases, primarily because they seemed to know their business and their systems were complete, seemed easy to use, and most of all, required no mods on my part. After reading this article on high-end SBM systems, however, I'm wonering if the Koolance cases (particularly the PC3-726BK case) is still a good choice for a SLI configuration with water cooling for the DRAM chips, hard drives, and video cards, and with an Enermax Infiniti EIN720AWT 720 Watt PS and dual EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS video cards - which is my current choice? Any suggestions, comments or caveats would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[dark41]

I liked the price ranges, but would also like to see the high end system opened up for the most radical system you can muster up.

And I'm quite happy that the case you used required no modding of the motherboard, which would void the warranty. Sorry I missed the part about the video cards not fitting.

 

[dark41]

... I'm wonering if the Koolance cases (particularly the PC3-726BK case) is still a good choice for a SLI configuration with water cooling for the DRAM chips, hard drives, and video cards, and with an Enermax Infiniti EIN720AWT 720 Watt PS and dual EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS video cards - which is my current choice? Any suggestions, comments or caveats would be appreciated. Thanks.

There's tons of opinions on this topic and not many will agree with mine, but here it is:

I've always been impressed with Koolance products. I think the ease of setup, quality, performance, and appearance of the Koolance systems is well worth the money. I'm also a fan of the external kits rather than internal as they're just easier to fill/empty. If you really prefer the integrated design, I'd step it up to the PC3-736BK. Reason being is that the additional room will allow better air circulation for the motherboard. If you're going with water on the CPU, there will be very little air circulation over the motherboard and that could cause problems with high overclocks.

IMO, you're trying to cool too much for any water system to be realistic though. Remember that your constraint will be the 1/4" ID tubing, which will restrict the flow somewhat. If that were eliminated, your results would be much better. However since I'm not aware of any 1/3" ID heatsinks for the video cards (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong ), you're pretty much stuck with the restricted flow. Turbulent flow is what will give optimal cooling, regardless of how many fans etc.. The more things you hook up, the harder the pump has to work and slower the flow will be. Also more heat is being transferred from one device to another. So by the time the last component gets the water, it may be too warm to be better than an air solution would have been. Usually to cool everything you've listed a DIYer would use more than one pump, which isn't really an attractive option with the Koolance systems.

If you're going quad core, water may show some benefits on the CPU. For C2D, air cooling provides very comparable results.

If you went with Crucial Ballistix PC2-800 RAM, they wouldn't require any additional cooling to get the maximum results (which are quite impressive around 1215-1235MHz from my experience).

Also the hard drives will benefit very little from additional cooling, depending upon the model. Seagates run very cool as opposed to Western Digitals, etc..

For me, I'd just cool the 2x GPUs and possibly the CPU. For everything else just make sure you have good air circulation in the case and you'll be fine. The main reason I say this is that you're going with GTS cards, so you're not going to be setting any records anyway. I'm assuming you just want decent overclocking and performance results.

I'm sure some of these DIYers will quote better results from their systems, but they won't be anything drastic.