Completed MiniITX on Water [Q08+PA160]

[Poison Ivy]

Eek, I am sure you had fun with it but after seeing that glad I didin't go mITX, it looks like wires and tubes in a sardine can.... is there no way to clean it up? I am amazed you got that in there but I have to wonder what is the point, I guess just to say it can be done huh.

[zoob]

Honeymoon is over!

I was wondering why my Gflops were so low and I realized it's due to it running in single channel. I put in my second stick of RAM so it's now running dual channel (previously had 1x4GB stick in there). Gflops are where they should be as I suppose it was starved for memory bandwidth. Now it throttles down the multiplier from 42 to 34 every so often with my 80mm fan running at 5V blowing over the VRM.

CPU temps are about 7-8C hotter as well, but considering my pump is running at 7V and the fan at 5V, the whole thing is basically at my target noise level (very very very quiet) and the CPU is running sub 60C.

Power consumption is hitting about 135W from the wall with the added computing power from dual-channel memory, coming close to the limits of my Winmate DC-DC PSU.

I'm wondering how much it would help keep a stable OC if I turned off HT and simulated a 2500K.

[zoob]

I've concluded that my i7 2600K @ 4 GHz (auto-oc settings is fine, with BCLK set to 100.1 otherwise when set to 100 it is actually slightly less) is the upper limit at which I can overclock with no throttling under the heaviest of loads. It is significantly faster than the i7 860 @ 3.5GHz it replaced, and allows me to use onboard video.

Even with manual power limits increased to well above 200W it still throttled back down to 34x multiplier under full load when OC'd to 4.2 or higher (I didn't care to try 4.1).

At 4 Ghz LinX w/AVX will get about 105-108 GFlops. My Corsair Vengeance RAM is pretty terrible and will quickly crash when set to 1866 10-10-10-27-2T 1.6V. I've resigned to just running it at rated 1600 9-9-9-24 but tightening down to 1T @ 1.475V. The ASROCK voltage control for the RAM has very odd steps.

The cooling on my MOSFETs are the heatsinks as pictured (I did not add the missing one as I could not locate my Wiss snips at the time), but this time instead with a 7V Scythe 92mm Gentle Typhoon. It pushes more air than the Nexus 80mm fan at similar noise levels (very very quiet).

One last thing I noticed, this board does not display the BIOS or anything before Windows when hooked up to my Receiver->TV on HDMI.

Drilled out a hole so I can pass through the USB3.0 cables without using a PCI slot. Unfortunately, I placed it just barely high enough so there's absolutely ZERO slack when plugged into the rear ports. At least it works. I did smooth it out with a file afterwards.



Guts laying out on the side while I perform surgery on the case.


While I was at it, took the metal cover off of the heatsink. It's stuck on pretty nicely and I had to pry it off with quite a bit of force.


Test fit with a GTX580. Too long. :(



To get wake-on-lan working, the last step for me in "perfecting" my XBMC setup, I wanted to get an adapter that let me use my ethernet port on the motherboard. I was unable to find any USB Wifi adapters that provided this function, so I settled on a Trendnet TEW-687GA that I found on sale from NCIX during their boxing week sale. The Trendnet device is only 2.4 GHz and my Linksys E4200 is only 2T3R on 2.4GHz so I don't get to take full advantage of either piece of hardware.




It's huge compared to my USB stick. I don't feel like it really needs to be this large unless it has some massive antennas inside. It supports WPS triggered by the button on the top of the unit, but I opted for manual setup.


Rubber feets on the bottom to prevent sliding, though it won't prevent it from toppling over if you don't run your cables nicely.


At first I tested it on my T61P and was able to pull 10MB/sec through my file server with no issue. No brainer, so I plug it into my HTPC expecting the same, but instead I am met with 60 KB/sec transfers. Interesting. Speedtest gives me 21 Mbps! What's going on here?

Recalling that my server and HTPC both have RTL8111E NICs, and the multitude of problems people have with it, I realized my T61P has an Intel NIC which is the only real difference..

It took a few tweaks, but I found if you disable these two settings, Energy Efficient Ethernet, and Green Ethernet, then I was able to get my speeds back up to "normal" levels.



So, for anyone that has issues with Realtek nics (this is the first for me), try disabling those settings first.

Wake-on-lan works great, and now my XBMC setup is pretty much complete!


Here is the temporary setup next to my speaker and amp/receiver.



This thing is VERY quiet. From the couch I cannot hear it. ASROCK even has a toggle in the BIOS to disable the power LED. I need to look at the top exhaust fan to tell if it is on :)

Parts listing for now:
Lian-Li Q08
i7 2600K @ 4 GHz
ASROCK Z68M-ITX
2x4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 RAM
Corsair Force 120GB SSD
LG Blu-ray writer
Seasonic X660
Still looking for a nice GPU :)

Cooling:
DDC3.25 @ 7V
Thermochill PA160 w/Silverstone AP141 @ less than 5V (Zalman fanmate)
Apogee XT CPU block
Noctua 120mm top exhaust fan @ less than 5V
Scythe Gentle Typhoon 92mm @ 7V cooling the MOSFETs (wedged in there)