Axle182's WCed 1200 Sli

[axle182]

I agree Daz. if i win lotto, ill chrome the whole thing

Well update as of lunch today, i FINALLY got Vista Ultimate 64 bit to install. It took alot of web searches to find the problem. Spent most of the night making brackets for the res and the front rad. I also found that the rear rad sticks out a little much and i cant get the side cover on easily....... ill save that for another day! the cover can just sit at an angle for now

First problem that came up, setup raid 0, hdds working fine, started the install, of course its not straight forward so had to setup the partition twice. Started the install, got to the part where it wants to reboot, and of course BSOD, and then it rebooted.

Second problem - when it rebooted, now it couldnt find one of the hdd's! So i changed out the Sata cable, even the power, still nothing. I then hit the table (not the pc), and woohoo, its back....... if you can give me a reasonable explaination..... lol

So i try it all again, and it starts to fail at completely different times while trying to load Vista. 4th attempt, it loads into vista, and i install my nvidia drivers. it asks to reboot, and of course now on every reboot, i get BSOD. So i start my web searches in earnest at about 12am last night lol. Main concensus was that you cant have anywhere close to 3gb in the pc when installing. So i tried 2x1gb sticks, still no luck. then i read that the total gb's includes your GPU memory, so i dislodged one 8800gts (its not pretty, how i got the loop to still function as normal ) and i took out one of the sticks, so i had one 8800gts 512, and 1gb of ram in the machine. then i got mega tired, and waited till lunch today to try it.

It installed smoothly, and i left it installing all the auto updates (80 of them!) so i shall see tonight whether it will be a success or not. if it actually reboots, ill be a happy camper. I also installed the latest board drivers. Last option if its still wonky, is new bios....... gawd now i have to learn how to do that too! Any vista experts out there, dont hesitate to give me suggestions on what else to update to make it rock solid with 64 bit

[axle182]

OK I spent what time i did have to work on the rig getting it solid and setup, so appologies, i dont have any running nice pics yet. But rest assured, I love how it came out. still some work to do with some wires, but its running, nice and solid, and much quicker than what i had

Thanks again to all for your help and advice. Im racing in Saskatoon this weekend, but ill get some pics of the PC when i return!! Have a great weekend everyone

[Cptn Vortex]

Hehe, nice build, the tubing looks so tiny. Get some 1/2" ID in there, would give it a little more muscular look.

[Jackquelegs]

Originally Posted by Cptn Vortex

Hehe, nice build, the tubing looks so tiny. Get some 1/2" ID in there, would give it a little more EPEEN look.

Corrected

[Cowboy]

Wow! Nice job!

glad to see you put my WC gear to good use.

[axle182]

Update, sorry for not posting finished pics. After cleaning the PC area, putting it ontop of the desk (too nice to put under it... dont care how much room it takes up!) and becnh testing and running a tonne of games, its getting torn down again. Another friend wants a gaming PC, and he wants the vid cards I have. Pics up a pair of Koolance FC WB's for a GTX275/285 locally dirt cheap, and tonight ill pick up my new 2x EVGA GTX275 FTW's
Im hoping i notice a slight difference in performance. We'll see how long it takes to tear it down, install the blocks, cards and plumb it back together. Fingers crossed, its just a case of replacing the cards and the tubes line up fairly close!

Seems my PC is ever evolving, and the pair of FTW's are the first expensive brand new components! lol. Now if anyone knows of anyone selling a pair of FTW's second hand of course ill listen but let me know before tonight! lol Thanks to all again at HWC!

Side note - Daz, got another win on Saturday night. Got a bonus for winning both heats also which is what spurred on the big purchase :D

[axle182]

Update, well got annoyed at myself for rushing on the koolance blocks i found locally. Unfortunately the guy selling them got the part number wrong, so of course they didnt fit my 275 ftw's. After a bit of research (not enough!) i got the 275's changed out for 1gb 285's as i was sure the blocks would fit these. Of course there are 2 revisions of the damn 285's, which i found out, about 5 minutes after i realised the block wouldnt fit.

So, a little disheartened, i decided to just quit the search. I put the 2x 285's in, pumped em up to FTW clocks and have been rock solid since, and love them. Only problem is the noise on air, when playing games. they need to run at 100% fan to keep the temps at bay. I also added a 9800 gt for physx. I had problems getting the 192 drivers to work, so went back to the previous ones and its been fine.

Well this week, I guess i got the bug again (thanks Daz!). I have a couple of Ek blocks coming for the 285's (rev 2's!) and have some 780i MB blocks to play with. So it'll be torn down to nothing yet again. ill be moving the 120 rad to the top under the 240 fan, i want as much air over the mosfets as possible as im not putting a block on them, just heatsinks. Ive had the E8400 running perfect at 3.6ghz with a simple bump of the FSB and no other changes so far. Ill be taking it to 4 and hopefully a little above once the cooling is sorted.

So now here is my question to the water cooling pros! My loop will be something like this -

Res - MCP350 - EK 285 block - EK 285 block - 780i south block (EK) - 240 rad - CPU - 780i North block (EK)- 120 rad - Res

Do you think ill have flow problems with the 350 pushing that? Also do i have the sequence looking ok, Ive done alot of reading and tried to understand what components are the most critical to keep cool when OCing. Hence why i want Rad then GPUs, and Rad then CPU.

Any and every piece of advice is happily received

Almost forgot to add, i also decided on going tri LCD after viewing a few youtube vids. I have the DTH2G sitting idle on my desk, while i have one 226BW in transit, and another waiting to be sent, to join my current 226BW on my desk in tripple glory. And i got the track IR system which only adds to the fun!

[WolfBane]

Would love to see some vid of this killer system working !
Great job BTW

[Dazmode]

If I remember correctly 350 is like 655 on setting 3. I run dual 285 with chipset and CPu blocks at setting 2 for a week and didn't even noticed that. That was no overclocking although.

[axle182]

Daz, what do you think of the Koolance Exos with my system? I have a local guy selling one for $100. Would that be a good addition to my system?????

Cheers