• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Build Log - Liquid Fusion

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

ssjwizard

Has slightly less legible writing than Thideras
Joined
Mar 12, 2002
Ok so I am building my wife a new AMD fusion system right now.

Specs:
CoolerMaster 690 II basic
Sunbeam Tech RheoSmart 6
Gigabyte A75-UD2H socket FM1 motherboard
AMD A8 3850 APU
Powercolor Radeon HD 6670 1GB
4GB G.Skill Ripjaws-X ddr3 1866 8-9-8
OCZ Solid 3 60GB SSD
Seagate barracuda 500GB
aOpen 24x DVD-RW

Cooling:
2x XSPC RS240 radiators
4x Roswell RFX120 red blade fans
XSPC X20-DC750 reservoir / pump combo
Alphacool Nexxos XP waterbock
[strike]Swiftech MCW 80 waterblock[/strike]
EK NF4 rev 1.1 chipset waterblock
Primochill UV red 7/16" tubing.

Dress up:

UV purple cable sleeves
UV red cable sleeves
UV red & UV purple zipties ect.
2x 12" red LED light bars
2x 12" UV LED light bars
4x 1.5" diameter red LED feet

Mods:

Mesh side pannel with custom paint

Alright then, so we got started putting this build togeather tonight after USP finally showed up at 9:30PM!!!! with what we believed to be the last shipment of parts for this rig. Unfortunately the MCW 80 is simply to big to fit this GPU. I had a suspicion that it would be but decided to take the gable anyways. Fortunately I did have an old nForce 4 WB around that DOES fit it. unfortunately though, I dont have any G 1/4 90 deg fittings on hand so back to PPCs to put in a rush order for some I guess.

img2230s.jpg

img2231j.jpg

img2232c.jpg

img2233o.jpg

img2234ey.jpg

img2236p.jpg

img2237z.jpg

img2238s.jpg

img2239lb.jpg

img2240b.jpg

img2241t.jpg

img2242p.jpg

img2243w.jpg

img2244z.jpg

img2245z.jpg

img2246qo.jpg

img2247x.jpg

img2249z.jpg

img2250d.jpg
 
Isn't it funny how we want the best for our wives, so naturally, only H2O is acceptable. :p

Same holds true for me and my wife.

This is looking like a nice clean build. Waiting for progress.
 
Status update!

Ok so by a miracle of wiggling and wobbling I managed to get it all connected up. I go it filled and mostly bleed with about 2hrs of leak testing. Im pretty confident that all will be good as I tightened all my fitting and clamps with a pair of 420 channel locks.

I swapped in the PSU from my media PC to use while I finish the work on her other PSU. All basic cable routing finished up quickly.

And on to the new issue. This build just does not want to cooperate I swear. I went to fire everything up and getting no post.... Not sure what happened here. Im going to double check all my connections and reseat some things and try to track it down here in a bit.

Edit. Tragedy averted. I managed to get the system to post with my old *** geforce 6200 and enable the onboard GFX. I restored all defaults on the MOBO and ill be going to test the radeon in a bit. Just want to get my PWM controller and a few others sorted while im already in windows.

Edit2. Ok well everything but the radeon is going well. For some reason the bios isnt detecting it and windows doesnt see it either... This could be a serious PITA! I will fiddle with it a bit more before I hastle with trying to warranty it. I am a bit concerned that it may have been damaged during installation last night. I decided that I was going to move a hose from the front of the rad to the back, when removing the tube I slammed my hand into the video card pretty hard. It doesnt have any obvious signs of damage though. I have certainly had worse things happen to HW and not ruin them so if thats the cause of this I will be very surprised.

img2251z.jpg

img2252e.jpg

img2253bn.jpg
 
Last edited:
Well a small update, I had a chance to finish sleeving the PSU so I went ahead and swapped that out tonight, I also had a chance to sleeve a few SATA cables so those are also done. I need to make some fan extensions or simply extend a few of my fan wires before this is over. I have not sleeved any of the IO cables yet either, not sure if I plan to or not.

img2078n.jpg

img2079p.jpg

img2081s.jpg

img3011v.jpg

img3009n.jpg

img3012h.jpg
 
Ok well I had a chance to extend all of the fan wires. I had a 12" 3wire Y connector so I cut that up to extend each of the 4 roswell fans 6" by cutting the connector off and soldering them inline. I also completed most of the sleeving except for the front IO stuff which Im still undecided on(feeling lazy). I also got a new 6670 this week so it has been reinstalled. Since It was pulled though I did flush the system one more time because it seemd to have some residue in it still. In that process I swapped the inlet outlet hoses on the CPU block which shaved 2c off the final temps. As a result I had to redo the ziptie bundles so now it has a vaguely familiar silhouette to it now.....

Lastly Ive got the side panel masked up and marked out for the mesh window. Im planning to use some of the extra mesh that I picked up for my cube case build. I am also planning to paint it purple to match the sleeves. Depending on whether or not I can find a can of transparent UV paint for a decent price locally Ill also be putting part of her nickname overlayed onto the mesh with the UV coating so that it will glow off the purple mesh.

Once I get that done it will be time to install the lighting which has yet to be sleeved as Im fairly sure ill need to mod the cables for.

and for the pics!

img3015k.jpg

img3013tn.jpg

img3014a.jpg

img3059g.jpg

img3058kl.jpg
 
Last edited:
awesome build man. I like the sleeving job as well. Nothing, but the best for the wifee. I'm sure she'll will appreciate it, plus it gave you another project :)
 
Nice!

I just have a tiny question. You put your top radiator fan on the outside part of the case, but if you wanted, is there enough space to put another set of 120 fans on the inside of the case ?
 
They would need to be slim fans. That xspc rad is like 28mm thick. It has about 15mm more before it interferes with the motherboard. If you have a board that has more clearance at the top you could definitely add a set of fans. Honestly though you need a pretty high FPI radiator to need push+pull on a single radiator.
 
Looks pretty sweet!

Out of curiosity, why the mATX instead of a normal sized one?
 
Actually I didn't realize that it was an mATX board when I ordered it. Basically I read the review that hokie did on launch day and ordered 2 boards. Ended up only building one rig.
 
Alright well some crashes with that mushkin last night have pushed me to do something Ive been avoiding for a while now. Im currently reinstalling windows IN IDE MODE because for some reason even after 4hours of prime95 blend + furmark /w SLI enabled stable 10 minuites of dragon saga crashes the system. I think I finally fixed that issue but now netflix doesnt work along with a few other programs are acting buggy.

IDE mode is one of the biggest holdbacks on the locked multi APUs, because nearly every integrated component is reliant on the Bclk in this architecture. The storage controller is known for acting funny above 100FSB when in AHCI mode, IDE seems to carry over a legacy divider allowing opperation from 133FSB onward.

Hopefully that means that ill get to rock out on some OC action with this APU tonight.
 
I spent most of the day today hammering on this fusion rig. As I guessed my APU is a stubborn one. I have not been able to get anything close to stable enough to run any bench or other task above 3800mhz. I tried everything I know higher FSB with lower multi, higher multi with lower FSB. I even tried loading this puppy down with 1.65v and it still wouldnt budge. 142 Bclk is the highest at any multi I could manage to clear 3d mark vantage. Now that I know what settings I can rock with almost every component Ill be running some of the other benches this weekend probably.

So what did I manage to accomplish during all of this?
11353 3D marks
which is a huge improvement from my baseline testing @ ~7k from a month ago.
 
Installed a few of the lights today, still might move them around.

img3148op.jpg
 
nice. this thread has been my motivation to actually throw a computer back into a case and make it all pretty like :thup:
 
Back