Critique my new build... Opinions please!

[Convicted1]

Well... About to head back out to the garage to put some more work in on this thing...

I will say... I'm thinking I should have taken everybodies advice regarding the Matrix cards... With these things installed there is ZERO room for expansion on any of the other PCI-E slots.

And I really need to add Firewire capability to this thing...

Seems after some reading that these Matrix cards aren't "all that and a bag of chips" in Overclocking anyway unless you're going subzero...


I'm strongly considering returning these Matrix cards and just buying the EVGA 3GB models I had chosen at one point. Several plusses to that for me... 1) Full Block Water Cooling, 2) Use of some of my other PCI-E slots, 3) Better airflow in SLI...

Only thing that sucks with returning these is waiting the extra week to get new cards. What ya'll think? Is the wait worth it?

Eh well... More pics in a bit.

 

[Knufire]

If you're planning to watercool, I'd get a reference or a ASUS DirectCuII. There might be other cards that work with full cover blocks though.

 

[DHP]

I mean... Ideally... I'd love to have a variable setup... But I can't find a fan controller that would handle the 48 Watts EACH or 144 Watts Total.

I guess I could always try to build my own...

This one handle 50W per channel
http://www.overclockers.com/lamptron-fc9-fan-controller-review/

 

[Convicted1]

Well... I'm starting to figure out why FrozenCPU charges so much to sleeve cables... My fingers HURT right now! LOL

-Got most of the sleeving done. All of it in the top removable panel (at least that shows).

-Got the pull fans and radiator mounted for the H100, MoBo installed twice (Seems ASUS could have told you that stupid ROG Bluetooth needed to go in BEFORE you installed the board into the case!)

- SSD and WD Black Mounted and SATA cables run.

Next up is mounting the push fans to the radiator, hopefully I didn't screw the pooch in not doing that before I mounted the radiator, but I wanted to make sure my layout would work.

Then It's installing the PSU and deciding what to do on the GPU's.

Here's some (horrible) pics.... Tell me what you think of the wire management since it's my first time actually paying attention to wire routing.

 

[Knufire]

Looks great so far! Just a question, how are you going to route that Molex connector above the PCIe slots? Or is it necessary unless you're going with crazy GPU setups that need the extra power?

 

[Convicted1]

Well... Everything is together now...

Hit the power button and all the lights come on, but no beeps from the onboard speaker (I think I've got it wired right!) and the onboard diagnostic display reads 00.

Anybody got any ideas?

EDIT: Is there any chance I WASN'T supposed to remove the little cover that was on the 8 pin connector for the EATX? It had 4 pins open and 4 covered, I just figued it was optional to use the 8 pin and thats why the cover popped off so easily.

I removed that cover and used an 8 pin instead of a 4 pin.... Could that possibly be my trouble?

 

[Convicted1]

Well... Swapped the 8Pin for the 4Pin and still no POST.

When I first pressed the power button I thought I smelled something burning, but dismissed it as just being the smell of new electronics warming up... Didn't see any smoke whatsoever.

Starting to think that wasn't the case now though...

 

[Convicted1]

I think I'm getting somewhere... The LN2 mode was ON... Wasn't letting it POST.

Will report back in a bit.

 

[Knufire]

Just leave in the CPU and a stick of RAM and do testing from there.

If you have the MIVE-Z, use the onboard video. Otherwise, well, you have to leave a video card in.

Another option is take out all the RAM, it should beep with a no RAM error.

 

[Convicted1]

It's ALIVE!!!

Making this very post from the machine!

I guess having that LN2 Switch on is what caused all the problems.. Still don't really understand why it would affect anything, but I don't understand what that switch actually does either.

Got the OS and everything installed obviously, Drivers all up to date...

Now it's time to personalize this thing!

I'll get some pics posted ASAP...

-David

 

[\dev\goat]

Post your success with the Vertex3 in particular.

Tonight I came home from work and my computer had rebooted while i was gone and drive was undetected again. I installed new 2.11 firmware on the v3 and no problems yet but I have my fingers crossed. If yours works fine after some time I think I might try an RMA. With the hundreds of people posting on ocz's forum I have been reluctant because I thought it might be a waste of shipping&handling fee for a new drive with same problems.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...re-we-are-with-Vertex3-Agility3-Solid3-drives
Translation: We're clueless !

 

[Convicted1]

Alright....

Sorry I been away all week... School was kicking my rump and one of my rules is no play till all the work is finished.

I'm finally caught up now and have time to give an update.

So far this machine has been absolutely awesome! I hadn't realized how slow my old box was untill I fired this one up for the first time!

There have however been a few setbacks...

First off being my H100 was DOA. So I'm at the moment running the stock Intel heatsink and fan. Such a waste right???

A minor issue is the fact that I still need to order some sleeved extensions for some of the peripherals, as well as the EATX Leads.

(SOLVED! Needed to space the two cards apart a bit using a rubber spacer.. The one card really WAS running 20c hotter! Fans couldn't get any air.) Another issue being that the temp readings in GPU Tweak for the Asus Matrix cards are a little wonky... One card reads that it idles at 55c, while the other a more reasonable 31c... Yet the instant I switch to the GTX 580 that reads 55c most of the time, it will read about 33c for one capture, and then jump up to 55c. There are a few odd temp readings between both cards that I'm trying to straighten out, such as the card with the lower core temp reads that it's board is about 20c higher than the card that reads 55c for core temp... but to be honest... I have no clue how to go about it. I'm seriously debating at this point buying either a Mars II when they become available, or going ahead with some sort of reference card 580 and doing my custom water setup.

The last "issue" thats driving me crazy is the fact that I'm running the G19 Keyboard with the "performance meter" display... And when idling with no programs actively running the CPU meter jumps from 0% Load to about 45% load and then back to 0% load about every 2-3 seconds, but when I run process explorer, the jumping stops, and PE shows a total of less than 2% CPU utilization... I don't know if somehow I've already come across some tricky peice of malware thats able to hide it's activities when PE is running or what.... All I know is that MSE shows the system as being clean. I'm sure the performance meter on the keyboard isn't too terribly accurate anyway, but it should be better than a 43% difference and I'm 95% positive it didn't do this for the first couple of days.

If anybody has some thoughts on these issues I'd be glad to hear them!

So for right now these are the things I'm working on in my free time...

1)I'm still doing some tweaking and such regarding what processes need to be running in the background and what I can live without.

2)Waiting on the H100 to come back from RMA service so I can start playing around with overclocking the processor. Currently the only thing I've done so far is to load the XMP profile for the Dominators.

3)Trying to decide which benchmark programs to invest in... If anybody from the benchmarking team would like to chime in on that it'd be great! I'm working on hammering out my 100 posts, and would like to start getting my benchmarks done to gain membership on the team.

4)Trying to gather all the little tweaking and testing apps that are out there... I especially need something for testing the SSD and HDD's.

I've got a bunch of pictures I need to go through and organize for posting... Hopefully I can get to that in the next couple days.

For the question regarding the Vertex 3... Not so much as a single problem with it so far. Works flawlessly... However... I haven't done any research on what firmware is on it, or anything like that yet. But I will once I figure out what programs guys are using to bench the drives.

 

[Convicted1]

Vertex 3 Update.... Possibly having problems already.

First off, my computer remains on 24/7...

We spent the day out running around today, and when I got home I found that my machine had rebooted, and an error message presented itself stating there had been a bluescreen event.

Haven't had a chance to look into it any more than that... But at this point... Seing as nothing is OC'd... and everything else has been rock solid stable... I'm leaning towards the Vertex causing that problem.

Going to order a Cruicial M4 tomorrow just to make sure I have a backup laying around.

Will report more when I have time to look into it.

-David