My new gaming rig!!

[transpro61181]

Okay so finally, after 2 months of extensive, in depth research, I have finally made my decision and made all the purchases (close to 3500 dollars) I plan on doing some serious gaming on this rig (crysis, call of duty 4, bad company, etc..) I also plan on overclocking the cpu close to4ghz. Does anyone have a similar rig setup and do you think my cooling system is adequate enough for my rig?

Hardware:
Intel Core I7 930
Asus Rampage III Extreme
Corsair Dominator Triple Channel DDR3 1866
1x Radeon HD 5970 Sapphire
Corsair 850w power supply
WD VelociRaptor 300GB Hard drive
Windows 7 Ultimate

Case and cooling system is complete from Danger Den.
Case-DD tower 26 uv blue
Radiator- RAD-3440 Black Ice GTX480
Pump-PUM-L200 DD12V-D5 Pump Variable Speed by Laing
GPU block-GPU-6899 DD-5970 Water Block
CPU block-1 CPU-510 MC-TDX for Intel I7/Nehalem/1366
Fans- 6 FAN-YL3 Yate Loon 120mm High Speed Fan: D12SH-12 (4 on the radiator, 2 on the rear exhaust, im thinking that setup might give the case a slight amount of positive pressure)
Tubing-TUB-5105 Tygon 3603 Tubing 1/2 in
Coolant-FLU-R300 MCT-40 Non-Conductive Solution

I think overall i made pretty good desicions, although this is my first watercooling build. Im still waiting for all the items to ship here. Anyone have a rig similar to this? I welcome any suggestions/comments on what i could do to improve anything. Thank You, Jerrod

 

[m0r7if3r]

Well, everyone else is gonna say it, so i'll say it first, use distilled water and pt nuke instead of the coolant stuff. Its only non cunductive till it gets the slightest bit of dirt in it. 100% pure water is nonconductive, but the impurities in it are what conduct, same with coolant. Everything else looks pretty good, though if you were to go for some higher flow (albeit louder and more expensive) fans, you could pull a decent bit more performance out of that 480gtx, but that can be an upgrade you do at a later date (you could even leave the yates on there and put the better fans on the other side if you got the room.

Overall, looks like a solid rig, should pull some awesome frames! Enjoy it.

 

[Ilden]

You should be able to clock up more than 4GHz. 4.3-4.4 is probably safe on a quad with just one GPU. You could use an SSD in that build.

I echo the distilled comment. "Non-conductive" coolants are about as good as using Kool-Aid.

 

[Sean W.]

if spending a crap ton of money on a ssd isnt what you want to do, look into the segate momentus hard drive, it has a 6 gig cache, it runs at 7200rpm, but because of the large cache it performs much better than a 10k rpm drive and is just slightly slower than a ssd... but for 1/4th the cost

 

[Devourment]

U meant the Hybrid Seagate Momentus XT... get the 500Gb one around 120$ US

 

[CompuTamer]

Yeah, i can hit 4.2ish on air, i just don't like the voltage i have to push to run it there. You should be able to hit 4.2 easy, probably higher.

I second the SSD idea though. It's an amazing upgrade for any computer, and will make it scream at most things. I just put my OS on it and my main apps. (Office, Adobe Suite, Chrome, etc) It helps a ton

 

[Sean W.]

U meant the Hybrid Seagate Momentus XT... get the 500Gb one around 120$ US

yes that ^

that > ssd ( for the price )

 

[transpro61181]

Hey guys I appreciate all the advice! All the things I listed I have already purchased, just waiting for them to get here...taking forever though cause im in Iraq. The reason i got that coolant was not cause its non-conductive, i got it cause i want something to resist corrosion really well and not deal with the hassle of mixing different additives and its kinda greasy so it will lubricate the pump better imo. I heard a lot of good solid reviews on it and that it dosent affect performance..Ill give it a shot and see how it goes. Another concern I had was the VRM bottleneck on the 5970. This is only a problem if you overclock it. I did a lot of reading on this issue and saw that some people were showing 120 degrees c on a few vrm modules in furmark with an overclocked 5970! My question is does anyone have this issue with a danger den water block on their 5970? I saw one guy on dd's forum having to stack 3 layers of thermal tape to get the block to contact with one vrm chip..the guy on danger den said that contact with that one chip (which there are like close to 10 of them) dosent matter...at the same time the card he was talking about was not overclocked. I do plan on doing mild overclocks on this card, and I definately dont wanna fry my 650 dollar video card shortly after i get it! Anyone got some insight on this?

 

[Elfie]

You won't have a problem with corrosion with the parts you listed. Also after it's been in the loop a while it will become conductive due to ion exchange. It's the impurities in the fluid that cause it to be conductive so distilled will work just as well. If it's coloured it may well stain clear acrylic parts and tubing and also leave a residue in the rad that's really, really difficult to get out. It can also cause a gunk to build up in the blocks.

The D5 doesn't need any other lubrication other than water. I've a vague idea the installation notes say something about additives but I can't find mine at the moment to confirm exactly what.

You could stick a fan blowing onto the vrms, maybe an Antec Spotcool or similar.

EDIT: The D5 installation notes just mention that coloring die (sic) or fluorescent additives containing particulate fillers will cause excessive wear to the pump's impeller bearing and goes on to mention that it invalidates the warranty.

I'm not sure what MCT-40 contains.

 

[Conumdrum]

Hey guys I appreciate all the advice! All the things I listed I have already purchased, just waiting for them to get here...taking forever though cause im in Iraq. The reason i got that coolant was not cause its non-conductive, i got it cause i want something to resist corrosion really well and not deal with the hassle of mixing different additives and its kinda greasy so it will lubricate the pump better imo. I heard a lot of good solid reviews on it and that it dosent affect performance..Ill give it a shot and see how it goes. Another concern I had was the VRM bottleneck on the 5970. This is only a problem if you overclock it. I did a lot of reading on this issue and saw that some people were showing 120 degrees c on a few vrm modules in furmark with an overclocked 5970! My question is does anyone have this issue with a danger den water block on their 5970? I saw one guy on dd's forum having to stack 3 layers of thermal tape to get the block to contact with one vrm chip..the guy on danger den said that contact with that one chip (which there are like close to 10 of them) dosent matter...at the same time the card he was talking about was not overclocked. I do plan on doing mild overclocks on this card, and I definately dont wanna fry my 650 dollar video card shortly after i get it! Anyone got some insight on this?

The block will be fine on the card. Your temps will be okay. I have used DD blocks before.

Run the card on air first for a week, same with the mobo, cpu etc.

Your CPU block on the other hand is kinda weak and old. It's design is before any i7s even came out. It will be fine at stock but when you start to push the chip it's weakness will show with higher temps that could impeded your overclock depending on how good your chip is.

You did good, but you limited yourself to just Danger Den.

 

[transpro61181]

I was just concerned cause i hear a lot of talk about 5970 vrm bottleneck on overclocks. Good to hear someone with a dd block on this card is not having problems. I went completely with danger den mainly because they have had nothing but good reviews, customer service is the best i have ever seen, and the fact that they are the only ones that i know that will ship to an apo address hassle free. I was thinkin about going swiftech for the cpu but they wouldnt ship to an apo. Also, there is NO way I would add colored coolant to my loop.

 

[Conumdrum]

I don't know about that exact block on that exact card. I have been Nvidia for a few years now. But I do read a few forums daily and know stuff. Never seen an issue. Hopefully your GPU is reference as DD makes blocks for reference design.

 

[transpro61181]

How do I determine if my gpu card is reference design?

 

[m0r7if3r]

google it, see if others have had issues...