Sectorix's Water Cooling Build (Obsidian 800d)

Quick tip - you want the rad fans as an intake, not an exhaust :). Youll get notably better temps.

Looking great though :up:

thanks :) appreciate the help and tips i got here, sure made my head spin and land on the right path :)
( now for some million FPS on starcraft 2 !!! )

hmmm fans to intake ? why would that change anything ?

btw, im currently on 30' on CPU and 28 on both GPUs on idle.

Youll be cooling the rad with room temp air instead of case temp air :).

Granted you have a nice clean build and therefore great case airflow anyway, but its not often in this game you go cooler for free. Idle wont change much but load should drop a degree or two at least.

Your temps are already good - id probably save it for the next rebuild tbh since it looks a bit fiddly to drop that rad. Its nice to know you can tweak some more next time anyway - you'll find that as you use it youll inevitably come up with changes you want to make anyway.

Stunning effort anyway dude - propping up the UK contingent here with style there man :).

So good I said it twice - oops :rolleyes:

some initial cooling benchmarks...

i got to the following temps on idle + the burn ones when using 3DMark11 for 1 hr, resting 1 hr, then FurMark for 1 hr.

CPU i7 920 (OC'd to 3.6 using EasyTune6) --> ilde 34-36°/ burn ~48 °
SLI 580GTX (no OC since not needed) --> idle 28-30° / burn ~40°

some upcoming upgrades :

so, after the system is running for a few days i can tell you that i know exactly what i think needs to be changed, and therefor im going for it.

• the onboard sata3 controller on the GA-X58A-UD3R is really bad in my prespective. major issues with it all over the internet when looking , plus i dont get to the max IO that i expected from my SSD. so this must be upgraded, and i chose the ASROCK SATA 3 PCIE card ( link : http://bit.ly/qnmUQ4 ) as an upgrade, got good reviews on it and it its very good price/performance wise.
• although i really thought the fan noise is fine at first, its not after you spend you entire day in your home office, the noise finally gets to you, so i will add a fan controller, and i have decided to wait for availability in the UK for the new NZXT SENTRY MIX ( link : http://bit.ly/oXq8S5 ) as the controller of my choice, and that will be added

the sata3 controller + 2 AKASA SATA3 cables, that are 100cm long so i can bring them from behind the Motherboard instead of just having cables around ( which we all hate... )

update coming soon :)

ahhhh... second RMA.

so i couldnt understand why do i get BSOD's and drive read errors every now and then. replace the Controller with external controller and still the same issue.
well... Corsair are calling my model back for replacement ... ( http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=95688 )

im going to GHOST it and RMA, lucky for me SCAN.CO.UK picks up their RMA on their own ( very good service IMO ), so i dont expect to stay on my other system for more than a week.
( my other system is an ASUS G53J so im good ;)


UPDATE : postponed the RMA for one week in order to let Corsair a chance to get a firmware update out, after SanfForce announced that they found a bug in the SSD controller firmware ( which is installed on my SSD, but on others as well as the OCZ Vertex 3 ones )... if this is not resolved by then, i will RMA, and ask to replace to a different vendor.

firmware 1.3.3 fixed it. system is ok :)

right, so here are some pictures i took after i placed the finished assembly in its place :)

http://i.imgur.com/TSG0d.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/K38fH.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/t5FZv.jpg

everything works fantastic :)

video overview of the system as promised :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VlnOEDtW5E

let me know if there are any questions, suggestions or anything else you think i should either share or change :)

Incoming Upgrade !!!

ok, so this is end of the year, and i decided to make some upgrades to the system, and build a second computer for an ESX system ( lab ) which i will use the used parts for, plus some of my old gear.

just purchased :
- ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Motherboard [ link : http://bit.ly/vV8BuG ]
- Intel i7 2600K
- Corsair 1600mhz 16gb (4x4gb)
- NZXT Sentry MIX Fan Controller [ link : http://bit.ly/oXq8S5 ]

for my lab system i will add purchased the following parts :
- Corsair H60 ( yes... im never going back to air cooling ) [ link : http://bit.ly/uUwriN ]
- EVGA 8400GS

so the plan is to take out the CPU+BOARD+MEM and put it on a lab computer that will also have my adaptec raid10 controller and 4x500GB drives + an intel NIC, and that will serve as my ESX system.
and to add the new parts + the fan controller on this rig, which should be awesome :)

updates coming as i go through it..

btw, and this is important to me to mention.. the reason i chose ASRock over Asus and Gigabyte were not because of features or price, because they are the same... but ASRock support's WhiteRa which is my favorite eSports Athlete.
also, the reason i went for an EVGA and not generic type for my lab that only needs a vga, was because i will never buy a non-EVGA GPU again, not after the amazing service i had from them.

some of the new stuff is here :)

the MOBO and CPU for the upgrade, plus the GPU and Cooler for the lab PC.

http://i.imgur.com/uJsf2.jpg

all of the parts are here, let the surgery begin :)

first of all i removed the guts of the computer and placed the Motherboard ( after assembling the bottom for the EK block )

http://i.imgur.com/tBCbi.jpg

whilte removing the parts for cleaning i found that there is residue in my reservoir which really made me angry, since this box has only been running for a couple of months, which made me flush the loop. i will not use Feser One again!

http://i.imgur.com/su77V.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/8PRvJ.jpg

installed the new fan controller NZXT Sentry Mix, and its just beautiful and simple and was worth waiting for it to be available

http://i.imgur.com/zF1zP.jpg

assembled.
i did it fast this time, since my wife wanted me to do other stuff ( women ... )

http://i.imgur.com/MHUiW.jpg

the finished result :)

http://i.imgur.com/SQHS4.jpg


now , the temps are 29 CPU ( 35 Burn ) and 28 GPUs ( 38 Burn ) so im happy with it :D
hope you like , and i might do another video if neccesary...

been a while, but i finally found a few minutes to take a few video as promised. here you go :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-AlFZh7Kw8

New upgrades coming ...

i decided to upgrade my sound options. this will be a 2 stage upgrade, firstly i want to upgrade to a card specific sound card with some descent headphones and a condenser microphone.
the second stage will be speakers which i dont really need right now ( my baby sleeps all day long and therefor i always use headphones )

so i currently use the onboard 7.1 audio taht comes with the ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3, and a G930 headset from Logitech, But - i want to reenjoy music, i want a better quality sound
and its about time i stop using a boom mic :)

my research got me to some decision points which were interesting -
on the soundcard area, i considered the Asus Xonar DX or the D2X or the STX , and i also considered the Creative Recon3D or the Titanium HD.
on the headset it was between Sennheiser HD 558 and HD598
on the microphone it was between the gigantic Blue Microphone Yeti or the Snowball, and a Samson Meteor.

Decisions :
- based on reviews and overall options that i may require/want i went with the Asus Xonar DX for sound card
- took the HD558, cant deal with brown headsets to be honest :)
- i eventually decided on a Samson Meteor as a microphone, even though its not as good as the Yeti,
i wanted something that will look elegant in my setup, which the other two didnt provide, and after trying all 3 in diffrent stores ( with my ipad ) i went
for the one that i find will serve me best.

Interesting thing to note about the Asus Xonar cards, is that they require the FDD power connector directly from the PSU, which was odd to me at first,
since the PCI-E can get all its power from the Motherboard, but after carefully reading some reviews i found that Asus sound lab believes that power coming from the
Mobo is spikey and less clean and therefor interferes with sound, which i wont argue with.

also, i have ordered a small and cheap piece of HW which is called "Konig Audio Switch", and its very very basic. what it does is providing a button to switch between
the headphones and the speakers without disconnecting stuff. always handy, and cost 3.5 gbp on Amazon, with great reviews saying it doesnt drop quality.

Order List :
- Asus Xonar DX PCI-E
- Sennheiser HD 558
- Samason Meteor
- Molex to FDD connector
- 4 cans of air duster ( i always do a dust clean when i open for a change )
- Konig Audio Switch

Pictures of the upgrade are coming once stuff is here.

You should consider getting a Auzen X-Fi Forte 7.1 for those headphones. They're not hard to drive but anyway you should be getting at least some SQ improvement with Forte's amp for headphones. You'll also get a full set of DTS technologies. And the chip is native PCI-e, unlike Asus card's Oxygen that use the bridge. The audio chip is great but not sure what they're waiting with releasing the PCI-e version of it. Also as I've recently saw the prices for both at your side of the pond, it doesn't pay off. If DX is really 85 and Forte is 119, I would say it's deffo worth the price difference.

Just a thought to consider.. :)

thanks fr0wn3r :)

thought of many options, and at some point i decided only to focus on cards i can find trusted reviews on ( aka by users and not reviewing sites that get paid to push a manufacturer ) and then i wanted to only check
cards which i can actually hear, so i took my shure headphones, went with a Flash drive with recorded sounds uncompressed, and high 320 songs, and listened to in stores. the DX was on sale btw at 58GBP. and it completely satisfied me
so i went for it. im not afraid to upgrade it if it wont be enough for me, my wife's computer is always happy to receive more parts ( she has a better gamer computer than most ppl i know because of that )

btw, all parts are on their way, amazon confirmed :) i dont know if i wanna do unboxing vids, but i will put some pics when its here.

Ok,

upgrade is complete, and im REALLY pleased with the result.
the microphone does an amazing job, while the sound card and the headphones provide amazing sound.
i will add that the Konig sound switch is a great addition overall because it gives me a switch to change between the headphones and the speakers in one click.

Kit -

http://imgur.com/2LEJt.jpg?1

Card in the case -

http://i.imgur.com/8h6Jb.jpg?1

i now need to paint the FDD cable black to fit in the theme, but thats about it, was really seamless.

Video of my current setup, per some PMs i got :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUavWEM4lpw