Mike's no budget MM Ascension build.. "SLOWPOKE"

Disclaimer: this is going to be a long and pic heavy thread, first post will be cleaned up when the time comes.

Hello!
I'm Mike and this is my first liquid cooling adventure and hopefully nothing takes a bath. I had a pretend budget for this project of 10-12k. I never really expected to stay under that and when all is done It will likely be well over 15k. Any comments regarding any parts being overpriced or spending this much or that much on a pc is stupid will be completely ignored, everything is ordered there is no going back! Now on to specs..

To get an idea of the insane upgrade this will be here are my current specs:
p4 2.4ghz
asus p4t
1gig rdram
geforce 6200
17in crt
This has no sata, no usb2.0, it was awesome when i bought it 8+ years ago and it's poop now.

*Drumroll*
New specs:
MM Ascension wrinkle black
i7 920 (for a couple weeks or so until i7 980)
gigabyte x58a-ud7
6g corsair 2000c7
1x5870 on air (for a couple weeks until I see fermi benches then it will either be 2 fermi's or 2x 5970)
enermax evo 1250
hp lp2475w

My favorite part of hardware list, Storage!
boot = Crucial c300 256g 8R0 with lsi 9211 or 9260 (whichever I wind up liking better) and maybe the areca 1880 if it winds up better than the 2 above.
storage = samsung spinpoint f3 2tb

Cooling:
Blocks: apogee xt, ek full ud7, and 2 fc blocks for fermis or 5970s
1xpa120.3 for gpus, 1xpa120.4 for cpu/nb/sb both rads with push/pull noctuas (total noctuas in case 19)
2xmcp355 in dual xspc bay res
primo lrt 7/16 tubing
all bitspower compression/rotaries
may possibly add 1 more 120.3 to cool gpus individually, we will see

+: Lots of other misc fun things like matrix orbital typhoon gx lcd and all mdpc-x black sleeving, every part where possible will be black, only other color in case is blue tubing.

I originally planned to do this build in an 800d but ran out of room and decided why skimp on case size if I'm not skimping on anything else. My inspirations for this project was first:
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?h...mpage=3#163677
and then:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=110
these are both awesome and the second one totally sold me on the tubing size/color

I am totally annoyed when people start a build log and there are no pics on the first post/day, I was dying to start this for weeks but held off until things got ordered and started arriving, everything has been ordered except 2 c300s, crucial only lets you get 3 at a time and I've ordered 6 so far 2 more in a couple days.

*whew* long!

Finally, first pic to start us off, pics are with nexus one so my apologies for clarity, much better camera in a few days:
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y.../slowpoke1.jpg

Just a quick question, why not grab an i9 when they come out? and maybe a classified board? would benefit you more than the i7 and gigabyte board... :shrug:

i will stay tuned to this one though! :up:

Quote:

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i7 920 (for a couple weeks or so until i7 980)

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980 = 6 core gulftown = I guess this is i9, I don't believe intel has ever said for sure they're calling gulftown i9, (I'm probably wrong), either way, the answer to your question: I am. I will. Don't worry.

Also, gulftown is 1366 and is supported by most (all?) i7 motherboards with a firmware flash.

Edit: I assumed you meant classified because it supports i9? If you just think it's better than ud7. why? I'm all eyes/ears.

Impressive list of kit! Been wanting to see some stats on the Crucial SSD's so I'm sub'd and looking forward to your progress. :up:

Thanks, I'm definitely excited, it's more than a little frustrating staring at the 3 crucial drives and not being able to do anything with them yet. :/

Look forward to seeing another Ascension take form.
Your budget certainly should make one mean machine!!

I doubt mine will be nearly as good as yours, are those 2 sunbeam 6 channels you have powering the fans? they work well for you?

You MIGHT notice a small diffrence in performance when you switch to your new righ. Just might...A bit of diffrence... :shocked:
:welcome:

Very impressive list so far, Im looking forward to how this build will develop! :yepp:

Yeah, I'm subbing this.

Looks epic. No budget FTW.

Good luck!

small update today, almost everything comes tomorrow unless it comes while I'm out then I'll have to pick it up thursday.. Here is the MM case partly assembled waiting for parts..
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y.../slowpoke2.jpg

only 2 small hiccups total with this project..
1: mountain mods didn't have my front panel in wrinkle black only glossy but it's not near as bad as I thought (I'll still be ordering the front as soon as it's available)
2: apparently the lp2475w is super backordered/sold out/practically discontinued as hp tries to free up parts/space for a new line of monitors (which I would gladly buy one but their release date has slipped from feb to possibly as late as mid april and I can't wait so I'm grabbing a dell u2410, seems like it's pretty close

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mbreslin

2: apparently the lp2475w is super backordered/sold out/practically discontinued as hp tries to free up parts/space for a new line of monitors (which I would gladly buy one but their release date has slipped from feb to possibly as late as mid april and I can't wait so I'm grabbing a dell u2410, seems like it's pretty close

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nice dell monitors rock! :up:

i have had my dell 24" for a year and a half now... very happy with it still :)

Subscribed.... Can't wait to see more! :up:

Bulk of the stuff came today.. some wc stuff tomorrow and the rest of the ssds on friday, then I'll have everything until 980 comes out and I decide on atis or fermis:
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y.../slowpoke3.jpg

eww... those Rheobus Extreme controllers look out of place in that pile :shrug:

what's wrong with them? :/

thats a nice assortment there~! cant wait to see how this pans out, bookmarked!:up:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mbreslin

I doubt mine will be nearly as good as yours, are those 2 sunbeam 6 channels you have powering the fans? they work well for you?

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Actually there Lamptron FAN-ATIC 5-Port Military 3-Way Switch baybus

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/laf5mi3swba.html

They worked very well! I actually had most of the fans turned off believe it or not. I had 23 fans and realized that I could turn half of them off and all temps stayed the same.

Wow, insane!

If it's not too much trouble I think it would be very very interesting to see the RAID0 scaling on the LSI. With "perfect" sequential read scaling you'd be getting 8 x 355MB/s = 2.77GB/s!!! I don't imagine you'll get anywhere close to that, but it will be nice to see where it tops out. Random performance should be pretty stellar, though. How much were the c300s?

I got 3x on the first day when only crucial had them, 3 more a few days later when they were still only available on crucial.com so 6x800$ then the other 2 from newegg for $759 each, tax and shipping for all 8 was something like $6900. (hurts just typing that)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mbreslin

I got 3x on the first day when only crucial had them, 3 more a few days later when they were still only available on crucial.com so 6x800$ then the other 2 from newegg for $759 each, tax and shipping for all 8 was something like $6900. (hurts just typing that)

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:shocked: I wish I had that to spend on a computer... I totally would if I could too haha. So 2TB of SATAIII SSDs... that's freaking intense! I guess that's half the cost of your build right there isn't it? I'm envious, can't wait to see how this turns out! :up:

Wow, dude, I am extremely jealous.

Wish I could blast nearly 7k on SSD's, I will be watching this build closely mate, it sounds really interesting. :)

Quote:

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So 2TB of SATAIII SSDs...

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2tb but all are for raid 0 so almost $7k for 256g (that hurts to type even more haha)

some pics before I go to sleep:
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y.../slowpoke4.jpg
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y.../slowpoke5.jpg

Very nice =) But isn't RAID0 the stripped arrays and RAID1 the mirrored?

OMG WTF BBL

I just fainted and woke up. Then fainted again. My pants are dirty back and front. Subscribed!

I think you might get a slight performance boost over your old P4 rig LOL :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mbreslin

My favorite part of hardware list, Storage!
boot = Crucial c300 256g 8R0 with lsi 9211 or 9260 (whichever I wind up liking better) and maybe the areca 1880 if it winds up better than the 2 above.
storage = samsung spinpoint f3 2tb


I am totally annoyed when people start a build log and there are no pics on the first post/day, I was dying to start this for weeks but held off until things got ordered and started arriving, everything has been ordered except 2 c300s, crucial only lets you get 3 at a time and I've ordered 6 so far 2 more in a couple days.

*whew* long!

Finally, first pic to start us off, pics are with nexus one so my apologies for clarity, much better camera in a few days:
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y.../slowpoke1.jpg

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I was just looking for a pair of these in a raid 0 setup and your doing all of these wow...:eek: What are you trying to do make a time machine.. :p: subscribed :up:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mbreslin

2tb but all are for raid 0 so almost $7k for 256g (that hurts to type even more haha)

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Unreal!! You just have to love a "cost no object" build!

Just a quick note...it sounds like you are thinking your boot array will only be 256MB. Not so! RAID 0 stripe will be the sum total of all your drives. You will have a 2TB SSD drive! The beautiful thing about that is there is no need to split data storage to a hard disk. Put OS, apps AND ALL data on the SSD drive, then just use the hard disk as a backup drive for your data. That way you will have the benefits of the SSD for everything! :up:

Awesome setup dude! Can't wait to see how everything turns out.

A small suggestion though: You better start individually testing those SSD's. There's always a good chance one might be DOA. If you test them now, at least they will be ready by the time your finishing up.

YES!!! Test those SSDs... I ordered 4 for my build and didn't get around to getting them running for a few months and when I finally did, one of them kept dieing but it was out of the return date so I was SOL... Get them individually hooked up to another rig and run HD tune on it for a few hours to see

Wow pretty sure I crapped myself as I read everything.




Yep smell confirms it I shat everywhere.

Cant wait to see this baby going.

Should be interesting, although I'm a bit concerned if all those SSDs will fit into that Ascension ( ;), of course )

7G's on SSD... Impressive!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mbreslin

Bulk of the stuff came today.. some wc stuff tomorrow and the rest of the ssds on friday, then I'll have everything until 980 comes out and I decide on atis or fermis:
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y.../slowpoke3.jpg

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Nice pRon shot!!

Slow going today this turned out to be more actual work than I thought, the good kind of work I guess. :)

ssd pron:
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y.../slowpoke6.jpg
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y.../slowpoke7.jpg

I'm sure you wouldn't notice if ONE went missing? :D

You've probably already read this but maybe it will help you decide on the raid controller? :shrug:
Also have you considered the 9750-8i? It's a bit more expensive but since you've already dropped that much money on SSDs it only makes sense to have the best controller you can have for them. I'm only worried you'll be performance limited by your controller.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'd seen the 9750, I bought both the lsi 9260-8i and 9211-8i, judging by this post from Tilt I should be fine:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=246384

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oj101

I'm sure you wouldn't notice if ONE went missing? :D

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Or two, maybe three... :D

the 9750 would not be a good fit for his machine. that card is optimized for multipath enivironments, aka VMware setups. not good for desktops.

@MBRESLIN the advice to run hdtune for several hours that was made up there ^^^ is the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard. do not do that. ssd do not have a shelf life that they have to be used within. benching a drive for hours straight to see if it is functional is one of the most retarded things i have ever even heard.

I planned to just scan for errors I don't really know how long that would take with an ssd as I've never had them or even used hdtune, I would just like to know that my drives are fine individually before building/rebuilding arrays.

Any updates?

Seriously where do people get the money for all this stuff. I dont even wanna count how much those SSD's cost. :ROTF: I cant even be arsed to buy one because thery are so freaking expensive :D

mbreslin......it's ok to take a break and pillage the orb...BUT WE NEED UPDATES OVER HERE!!!!! MOAR PICS PLEASE!!!! :D:D

@elpy: I have a money tree.

@everyone else: sorry I haven't really updated. I don't have a lot of time and what little time I have I've spent benching and trying to get the most out of my c300's. The build is like 90% done.. (I'm posting from it now)

3 loops..
pa120.4-->i7 920
pa120.3-->5970
pa120.3-->5870+mb nb/sb
3 loops is a logistical cluster....

My psu fan has an intermittant rattle that makes me want to throw it out the window. I guess it has to be replaced. Well done enermax. :/

I have a 980x on order and after that cable sleeving and this thing is done. I will edit this post in a bit and post some pics.

nice build... thats a few SSDs :)

Super nice build so far. Can't wait to see the finished product.

No update?

Hope the cops didn't get wind and raid your place...and take all your "money trees".

Not that kind of money tree! (I didn't even think of that when I made that comment)

Here is something recent, I will go into detail soon, still waiting on a 980x and a new non cold bugged 5970, also I planned to paint the frame of the noctuas and just said screw it and got 20 s-flex's so sometime in the next 10 days or so it should be nearly complete minus a bunch of sleeving.

http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y...OKE/recent.png

Are those filters or are the fans already really dust? :rofl:

They are filters that are already dusty! Gross to see just how much dust is in an otherwise clean house. Hope compressed air blowing from inside out will help?

^^ It happens. You know your filters are working though. The compressed air can do the job, but nothing like taking it apart and cleaning it. A vacuum with a hose works too.

I find a rinse with clean water works best.

smallish update and some pics..
gpu area which I don't think looks too bad but will be much better when I get that new ek dual block:
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y...E/DSCN0041.jpg
and this mess which is why I'm ditching 3 loops, so horrible looking imo:
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y...E/DSCN0044.jpg
and some new fans today 20x s-flex "F" hopefully they push more air through dust filters then the poopy noctuas and don't run too loud when undervolted (noctuas make practically no noise I may have kept them since my temps are pretty good had they not been so ugly) (also presleeved thanks sidewinder!):
http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y...OWPOKE/037.jpg

S-flex F's are quiet and push a decent amount of air, but obstructed they do make noise, so beware. Btw, I love them, use them exclusively with 1 S-flex G on my TRUE.

I think you could use a d plug between the two gpu blocks, that would remove some of that tubing. And then you could probably use a couple 90's and a d plug between the mosfets/chipset

Basically it's just toooo much tubing, and for the gpus I'll be using the ek dual block so that will help. It sucks knowing I have so far to go until I get it like I want, if I could start all over I would have done a million things different, trying to fill every inch of this huge case was nuts. Also that awesome dual xeon board came out a few weeks later if I were starting all over I'd be going 2 8 core xeons for sure.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mbreslin

Basically it's just toooo much tubing, and for the gpus I'll be using the ek dual block so that will help. It sucks knowing I have so far to go until I get it like I want, if I could start all over I would have done a million things different, trying to fill every inch of this huge case was nuts. Also that awesome dual xeon board came out a few weeks later if I were starting all over I'd be going 2 8 core xeons for sure.

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Yeah, but then there'd be a 4P board :p:

Most of us make mistakes, but without them, we wouldn't have enough extra parts for side-projects :ROTF:

Yeah I need to stop complaining, the fact is this system is crazy fast and I haven't begun real testing/tweaking yet, waiting for my 980x and hopefully non coldbugged 5970. I play bfbc2 at everything maxed 16x aa/af and it never even hiccups. Pretty awesome.

Do those recently announced 8 core xeons have same socket as common i7/dual-p xeons?
As for non cold-buged 5970s .. is there any shure method of finding one? like particular vendor or particular PCB?

The xeons are 1366 but they won't work in x58 motherboards, if I read correctly. As for the 5970 there doesn't seem to be any safe vendor, I thought it was xfx then someone came on a day or 2 ago confirming their xfx card was cold bugged. I will find out tomorrow about mine.

Are you shure about non working with x58? I recall few lots on ebay of pretested for overclocking 6core engineering sample ones .. some of those were of xeon ES types instead of pre-980 ES, and for them such compatibility was claimed (after updating BIOS). IIRC those were samples of what are 6core x56{4|5|7|8}0 xeons (for upto dual cpu motherboards?) now.

tiny update.. last part finally here, build should be finally done in 2-3 weeks, will do big update at that time.

http://i787.photobucket.com/albums/y...owpoke3005.jpg