PROJECT LOG 750Dlaw

More came in yesterday, but I was too tired after cleaning my case (will never let it go without dusting for 6 months again!) and installing everything to post pics. I'll do it now.

The goods:
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I didn't take any pics of the install itself, or the case tear down and cleaning. I did take a couple of after shots though:
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And finally, a shot of inside the case. The (lack of) wire management will likely set many's OCD off, so viewer discretion is advised:


I still have to reformat my 250GB drive and reinstall Windows, so neither of the other drives are connected yet. I also have to clone my old HDD to the new one.

Also, a note on the cable management: I'll be sleeving the PSU cables when I get the kit, so I felt like spending a lot of time on them would be a waste.

I got (most of) the rest of my parts in Thursday, and have been diligently working on it after work. I'll go through what I did after its done, so I don't have to type everything out on my phone, but here's the group photo:

I did it! You guys definitely play down how much work it is to set your own custom loop up. My hands are incredibly sore!

Anyway, it turned out pretty great, I think. The cable sleeving kit I ordered didn't come with instructions, and I didn't want to mess up the cables and at the very least have to pay $90 for new ones (because I'd order them pre-sleeved), so I didn't do it. Still, I'm happy with the result.

Here's the log.

The first thing I did was open the radiators, and after flushing with warm water and then distilled, I installed the fittings:


Then, I removed the stock HSF (replaced the Hyper 212, who's fan died) and cleaned the CPU off: (apologies for the terrible pic)


Then, I worked on installing the CPU block:








And here's the result:


Then, I installed the bottom radiator (which I later had to remove again to install the rubber stand-off thingies for the fans):


Then I began working on the front fans/radiator. This is where I ran into my first problem. The end cap on the radiator made it just a tiny bit to tall when using the stock mounting location for 120mm fans, so I had to beat in the 5.25" bay a little bit to get things to line up right. That process waited until the next day (Friday) to be completed, as it was 10:30PM, and 5AM comes early.


Also, Friday, I installed the reservoir, and made the first tubing run. Holy crap, fittings are hard to tighten!


I installed the top radiator:


And then worked on the GPUs:






















That was it for Friday.

Saturday, I did the rest of the tubing runs, and started the leak test:






And at noon today (Sunday), I declared it DONE! I did some cable management, and closed her up. I'll take some better pics when it gets dark out, but here's the first shot:



So what do you guys think? I'm pretty happy with it. The only bend I don't like is the one coming from the pump into the bottom radiator. I'm pretty sure it won't kink, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.

My maintenance schedule looks like on June 6th (or there abouts), I'll be doing a flush and refill, and next March I'll be doing a full tear down. So next year, I'll probably order some tube clamps so that I can adjust the angles of the runs a little, and maybe the order.

I love it Dlaw. Gimme some better pics. Looks great from what I can see.

I apologize in advance, I don't have a decent camera to take pictures of this with, and my phone really hates the UV lights. I'm going to ask my father-in-law to borrow his camera next time he comes up, but until then, this is the best I can do.

I was just yankin' yur chain a little D. Looks awesome!

Thank you sir!

I've been stress testing the CPU (IXTU) and GPUs (Firestrike), and I'd like everybody's feedback on the temps, if you wouldn't mind. I haven't started overclocking yet, but I'm thinking probably some time later this week I'll be getting into it. Here's a shot of Open Hardware Monitor, I like this better than CPUID's version. Everything matches up between it, IXTU and GPUZ:



Don't mind the high temps in the motherboard section, they have to be dummy temps. None of the heatsinks feel warm, and it reads the same, idle or at load.

Temps look normal

Cool, wasn't really worried, just making sure I didn't miss anything. This is with the fans set to silent (~800rpms).

I appear to have a fitting cross-threaded. It's the one coming from the front radiator, going into the GPU bridge. I probably wouldn't have even noticed, if it weren't for the fact that the line looked like it was coming out of the fitting at an angle. Here's a couple of pics:





Do you think I'll be okay running that until this weekend? Or should I shut her down until I can take care of it?

Are you sure that's cross threaded? It's hard to tell in that pic. My thought is if it isn't leaking it should be fine, but definitely keep an eye on it.

I guess it might not be, but it feels like the collar is a little cocked. Maybe it just needs to be tightened down a little. I'll check it out tonight.

So, I drained the loop last night and checked that fitting out. It was in fact cross-threaded. The tube coming out of it was almost popped off, so much so that I actually pulled it out without much resistance. After taking care of that, I decided to check the other fittings. The one coming from the CPU and going into the res was a little loose, but not alarmingly so. The longest run is the one from the front rad to the GPUs, so it's the one I worry about the most. I'm sure that line isn't light.

I leak tested for another hour, and everything looks good. The only thing now is bleeding the system back out. Here's a couple of pics:





And here's one of my new front panel:


And I put a badge on the bridge:

I've started overclocking! Starting with the CPU for now, after I confirm stability at max clocks, I'll let it settle in for a week or so before I overclock the GPUs. That's the plan, anyway.

I do have a question. Right now, I'm overclocking in IXTU. I know, it's not the preferred way to do it, but I figure that I can get an idea of what's stable from within Windows, then do the final tweaks in UEFI. Will that work, or is it an overall terrible idea? I've been one of the guys who've spoken against the use of these tools, so feel free to talk me out of it.

Overclocking with software is fine so long as you understand that there could be some stability issues. Overclocking through Bios will generally be a little more stable.

I got a couple more things. The wife didn't like how the reservoir was kind of lost in contrast to the rest of the parts, so she asked me to order a light for it. I (being a great husband, of course ) did that and installed it. I also got the SLI bridge that was OOS when I ordered everything else. The last thing I ordered was this Novus kit and some microfiber cloths, to polish up the side window. It has a few scratches from when I used paper towel that was rougher than I thought. It gets great reviews, and every link I clicked on Google when I searched for acrylic polish recommended it.

Here are some pics. I haven't polished the window yet, that's on the agenda for this weekend.

I think I have a stable overclock on the CPU @ 4.9GHz. Temps never got over 83C. What do you think? 5.0 at this voltage doesn't boot, should I try with a bump or two? Or is this about it?

What voltage is set?

VCore is at 1.35v. I believe it is VIN12 under the board, at least that's what seems to line up.

Did some GPU overclocking, ended up at 1528 on the cores and 3758 on the memory. Firestrike score seems pretty good: