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PROJECT LOG Desktop Overkill - 10980XE, 64 GB RAM, 3080 Ti, water cooled

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Well done Thideras. That rig looks like it'll hold you over for quite a few generations.
 
Nice temps. The stock cooler does the job nice and quiet, but it's amazing how much cooler a solid custom loop runs the GPUs.

Any idea on water temps and fan speeds?
 
Nice temps. The stock cooler does the job nice and quiet, but it's amazing how much cooler a solid custom loop runs the GPUs.

Any idea on water temps and fan speeds?
Thanks! Not sure what the water temps are; I don't have a sensor for it. Fan speeds are set based on the CPU temperature, so it jumps around a bit.
 
I hope you are using it instead of just playing minesweeper :rofl: Another quick advice - 45% connector on the gpu that connects to the cpu so that all possible kinks are gone.
Q - that motherboard looks small inside that Huge case. What else are you going to install? Dual gpuÂ’s?
 
I bought an Antlion ModMic in 2016, and it has been attached to my Sennheiser HD650 headphones the entire time. It has worked well, but the cable recently started having issues and it has been getting worse. The mute has also never worked correctly, and the cable would rub on my hoodie (which people could hear even with noise suppression).

I picked out new gear and I went a little overkill. I went to a local Guitar Center to test out microphones and walked out with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen (I asked for a Solo but they handed me the wrong one) and an AKG P420. I also picked up a Blue microphone stand and bolted it to my desk.

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Been awhile since an update, and a bit has happened.

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I frequently visit my partner in St. Louis, and having to lug around my huge desktop with watercooling is just not fun. While it is nice to have, I don't like moving it and it takes a ton of space in the truck. I decided to get a gaming laptop instead, so I can do gaming and photo editing on the go.

I traded my ancient Lenovo W530 for an HP Omen 16.1", and what an upgrade! I was nervous buying a gaming laptop, because the first one I bought back in 2006 (Toshiba) was absolute garbage which would overheat and die constantly; plus their support is some of the worst I've seen.

I got an amazing deal from B&H; $1400 for an HP Omen 16.1" with:
Core i7-12700H 12th gen 14-core CPU
Nvidia 3070 8gb
16.1" 2560x1440 165 Hz IPS screen

I upgraded the RAM to 64gb and added a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro. It easily plays games and is great for editing photos. It is built exceptionally well, which was a nice surprise.

The only problem I had was the touchpad freaking out frequently. It was effectively unusable. This was a very common problem due to a grounding issue. Sending it to HP for replacement did not fix the issue, so it seemed to be a design problem. There are fixes online, however, their fix is janky at best, with an unanchored wire in the laptop. While this did solve their problem, I don't like how they fixed it.

I tried soldering onto the various parts, but they were all aluminum. Instead, I tried to figure out where exactly this grounding issue was. They were connecting a wire to the backing plate and grounding it. If I measured the resistance between the plate and various grounding points, it was between 8-24Ω. The backing plate was connected to the PCB of the touchpad via a tab. The copper on the PCB was grounded correctly, but the tab was not making good contact: there was resistance between the two where there should be none.

If I pushed down on the tab, the issue was resolved. However, I couldn't solder on the aluminum. My options were to wedge wire in there or pull out the touchpad and bend the tab slightly. I decided to do the "wedge" option, otherwise I'd have to disassemble the laptop more.

I took some wire out of a CAT6a cable, folded it into a U shape, and shoved it under. Since then, the touchpad has worked perfectly. Since it usually took minutes to malfunction, this seems to be solved.

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This was the source of the problem.

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This was reading 8-24Ω before the fix.

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Since I built my desktop, I kept having an issue where the entire USB subsystem was dropping out. Nothing connected to USB would function, which makes it very difficult to troubleshoot. The only thing I could do was power it down with the case button, but it would frequently hang after Windows shut down. It would seemingly happen randomly, sometimes a week between issue, or multiple times a day.

I tried backing off my overclock, raising/lowering voltages, and many other settings. Nothing seemed to help, no one online had a similar issue, and nothing in the logs was useful in figuring out the problem. One day, I was copying files and got the dreaded "Can't read from source file or disk". I immediately knew this was an issue with the SSD and did a full scan.

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The results were what I expected. My Samsung 980 Pro was faulty. I quickly pulled all my files off it, swapped to an old SSD, and sent it in for replacement. Got a new one back and it has been working great since. Since I had this issue shortly after I built the system, I think it was a faulty drive to begin with. Always do a full scan on new drives, I guess.

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Way back when I got my Dell Ultrasharp monitors, I had 2 extra LG monitors. I gave these to my mom so she could have a better setup at home. About 6 months ago, she said the backlight of one of the monitors wasn't always coming on; the picture looked blotchy. I swapped one of my LG monitors with hers and the one I had seemed to work ok for awhile.

About 2 months ago, when the monitor was first turned on, there was a single LED backlight out. Simply power cycling the monitor fixed the issue. Since then, it has progressively been getting worse. More LEDs are out when the monitor is cold, and it takes over 30 minutes for it to warm up. Once it was warm, power cycling fixed the backlight issue.

The laptop has a 165 Hz screen, and it is fantastic in games. Going back to a 60 Hz monitor is painful. However, I don't want just any gaming monitor. I wanted a high refresh rate one with good color reproduction since I edit photos frequently. I looked up how much 27" 2560x1440 165 Hz IPS panels were and was prepared to see $1000+ prices. I was happy to find them in the $250-300 range and ended up ordering a Asus VB27AQ.

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Got this installed about a week ago and it has been fantastic. 165 Hz in games is such a massive upgrade from 60 Hz.

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With this monitor swapped out, I've greatly increased the GPU load in games. In my watercooling loop, the fan speed is based off the CPU temperature. While this works, it is annoying because the temperature fluctuates quickly and if the CPU is more idle than the GPU (which is true in games, especially with nearly tripling the framerate), the water temps would get pretty high (~40c). While all hardware is well within their thermal specifications, I can improve the loop.

I'm going to install a thermal probe on a radiator or fitting, and base the fan speeds off the approximate water temperature. This should fix both the fluctuating fan speeds and the high GPU load raising the loop temperature.
 
Almost forgot the last upgrade. I swapped out my Seasonic 850w with a Seasonic 1300w.

When I built the system, I was not expecting to use my 1080 for anything other than driving monitors and maybe running vseeface (which isn't high load). Adobe has other plans. Their applications will use whatever GPU it wants, and the only option you have is to enable or disable GPU acceleration. In Lightroom, it is a huge performance increase.

It is probably obvious to you, but a highly overclocked 10980XE (18 cores), a 3080 Ti, and a 1080 is a bit much for a 850w power supply. I would get nearly instant black screen restarts when using Adobe software. Gaming and high CPU loads were fine as long as the 1080 stayed idle.

I decided to check how much I was pulling, and it was well over its rated capacity.

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Oops.

This was the whole system load right before the system turned off. If I pulled the 1080 from the system, the power supply would handle it fine, but I was still well over its rating.

A couple months ago, I ordered the Seasonic PX-1300 Prime, which was only $330.

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After swapping it in, the system was much more happy and could handle the full load of the CPU and both GPUs without complaint. It also gives me some headroom if I want to add anything else.

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