Stacker 830 - Please help noob!

[jonicadalton]

Hi everyone,

Please forgive if I'm breaking any ettiquette rules, new to everything (forum, oc'ing, modding, etc..)

I just got the 830 and am new to building computers from scratch. Worked on computers though for several years (putting in cards, memory, etc.. since the 286 days - yes I'm that old!) but never cared a darn about overclocking or gaming. For some reason HL2 woke me up again and made me want to set my HP763n on fire and get a real computer after finding out it had a 200w power supply and various other lame issues I won't go into.

So after several months of research and educating myself, I now have the 830 and some real equipment.

I just bought 2 more 120 fans over the stock setup since I got them free w/rebate. Ironic isn't it that I get a free rebate on a fan yet break the bank on the 830. Luckily my wife hasn't got the bill yet!

So, where should I put these things and what direction should they go? One fan is lower speed and one is normal. I'm figuring definitely one on top but the other not sure if I should use fan bracket and push air out or mount in drive area and push air in?

Should I use the motherboard fan jumpers for all of the fans? I've heard about fanbus, etc.. is there a good cheap one available - I don't need the fancy temp sensor drive bay stuff, just the base bus inside. Or maybe mobo is acceptable?

Major TIA for any help or suggestions. Here's my setup, much of which is still in boxes or on it's way...

a8n32sli deluxe, liberty 620w, corsair twinx2048, evga 7800 gt (no sli yet), Zalman CU cooler, AMD 4200+ DualC.

[ProphetX]

Nice build. Im expecting my Stacker 830 anyday now. How many fans in total would you have?

[Makubex_GB]

How many fans come with the case (stock fans)?

If you got 1 stock fan and 2 extra fans I suggest you leave the stock fan at the back for exhaust, and put both your extra fans at the front intaking air, one on top of the other starting from the bottom.

If you got 2 stock fans and 2 extra fans then I suggest you put 2 at the front, for intake, and one at the back and one on top. Both the one at the back and top for exhaust.

[jonicadalton]

Ok, I did find another rebate freebie so I actually have 3 now... Here's more details on exactly what I have.

The case has two 120mm fans stock, one at the back (guessing this blows outward as that seems to be the norm) and one fan that comes with the 4-3 module that blows over the hard drives.

Here's the new fans I bought - all coolermaster:
SUF-S12-EB 120mm - this is the slower one.
TLF-S82-ER LED Red - this is 80mm - higher speed.
TLF-S82-ER LED Green - another 80mm - higher speed.

On a side note, I put the power supply in yesterday and noticed the design on this case for dissipating power supply heat is very good. There are vent holes for the fan on top of the psu that direct the air into a chamber, then there are slits in the front for it to vent outwards. Even if hot air goes the other way towards the middle of the case in the chamber it's funneled right into the bottom of the fan on top (assuming you put one there). So there's no way any psu heat can get even close to the mobo. Again I'm a noob so that may be a common thing but I can tell at least for this case that any psu heat is a complete non-issue.

[Istasi]

Ok, I did find another rebate freebie so I actually have 3 now... Here's more details on exactly what I have.

The case has two 120mm fans stock, one at the back (guessing this blows outward as that seems to be the norm) and one fan that comes with the 4-3 module that blows over the hard drives.

Here's the new fans I bought - all coolermaster:
SUF-S12-EB 120mm - this is the slower one.
TLF-S82-ER LED Red - this is 80mm - higher speed.
TLF-S82-ER LED Green - another 80mm - higher speed.

On a side note, I put the power supply in yesterday and noticed the design on this case for dissipating power supply heat is very good. There are vent holes for the fan on top of the psu that direct the air into a chamber, then there are slits in the front for it to vent outwards. Even if hot air goes the other way towards the middle of the case in the chamber it's funneled right into the bottom of the fan on top (assuming you put one there). So there's no way any psu heat can get even close to the mobo. Again I'm a noob so that may be a common thing but I can tell at least for this case that any psu heat is a complete non-issue.

Does the 830 even support 80mm fans?

[[XC] leviathan18]

yes in the side thing.... it supports 80mm 92mm and 120mm


but if you want the best coolign performance with low noise go 120mm front intaking fan back blowing air out top the same and side intaking air thats the way to go hope this helps...

use the PSU molex for the fans some fans cosume too much Watts and the mobo doesnt give that so you can kill the mobo afaik

[jonicadalton]

Probably a dumb ? but if I go the PSU route for the fans does this mean I don't even connect the 3 pin connector? Looks like the fans I have have both a 4 pin connector and a 3 pin connector. I wasn't sure if the 3 pin was just for speed control or if it also supplied power.

[[XC] leviathan18]

it supplies power but if you only have to use the 4 pin molex from the psu is the best way to go as you dont know how much can stand the mobo


hope you enjoy your case post some pics :P

[jonicadalton]

Yep, built it yesterday. Tried using my old IDE hard drive and windows blue screened. My CPU is 34c and mobo 33c at idle, don't know if that's good or not? Didn't like the zalman 7700 cu install, seemed like as soon as I felt it was solid it would give a little and I'd need to tighten it some more. I kept thinking what if I had stopped there?

The PCI slots don't line up exactly but so far I've been able to get the cards in after playing with it a little.

I'm hoping to use my old Promise IDE raid controller. I know I should get the new SATA drives but these IDE drives are new and run pretty fast in raid 0, even on my 4 year old HP.

My evga takes up two slots for all intense and purposes.

That's an update, once I get a fresh xp install (assuming popping in the ide raid doesn't come right up) I'll see if get on the net and get to the point of posting a pic.

[BSill]

If you plan on going water cooling in the future (which the stacker 830 has plenty of room for, even without modding) you could cut out two circular holes in the bottom of the case so that you can eventualy throw a radiator down their. It will allow better airfow pulling from the rad for better cooling. In the mean time it could help pull the heat away from which your videocard produces. Just a thought.

ps: its always good to see somebody excited about putting together a new gaming rig and ACTUALLY going through with it. Nice work!

[jonicadalton]

Thanks for the kind words and the nice support thus far. I was so focused I was getting ragged (no shower, hair looking patchy, eyes glazed, etc. Should have taken a before after picture, not of the computer but me instead!

Got it properly running yesterday for the first time. Had nightmares trying to get my old drives to come up with the promise raid controller. It would only come up in safe mode, one of the 150 drivers had an issue. In error mode it was pointing to the lan... Of course the error message was real helpful - stop x00007 or something like that. Geez, can't microsoft just list something useful... No windows installer in safe mode so I had to dig around on the cd manually installing stuff, plus I couldn't un-install anything without playing around w/the registry and manually deleting dll's.

About 400 reboots later, I finally caved and just did a fresh install, then everything worked perfectly from then on. The only glitch after the fresh install is the asusupdate program on the cd reported 'not an asus mobo', interesting, maybe it only works on other brands .

So I ran the video test on steam and I'm pleasantly overjoyed, nice reward for all the work, can run high res everything maxed and it reports 140 frames a sec. Plus I did a defrag, decompressed a 2 gig file, downloaded css, and browsed the internet at the same time! I haven't hit 100 cpu yet! Excuse the excitement but this is night and day from old piece of crap I had.

I still have to setup everything in the bios (oc'ing, memory timings are default, no oc on video card yet, etc...). Ugh, it never ends, but now that it's running the stress is over and this is all gravy now.

I have a boatload of ?'s on oc'ing but let me browse the faq and stuff so I don't bore you guys. I guess one question I'll sneak in, knowing my setup should I use that AI Boost software - ah, let me read the faq... Hopefully it will tell me where to get all of the benchmark software as well.

Once I get office running and get my email going I'll post a pic or two. As far as the water cooling goes being a noob (maybe I'm not now?) I like the symphony, it looks easy to hook up and I like the fact the heat is out of the case not inside. Just a preference I'm sure if I studied it more I might go a different route. No money now anyhow, maybe around xmas I'll go water cool and get the second vid card???. Right now I think another vid card would probably be a waste of money since I can't set anything higher then it already is. Apologies for the long post but being offline I had a lot to report!

[[XC] leviathan18]

nice to see you have your rig running....

for oc i hate the ai booster i use clockgen (i have asus mobo too) a64 tweaker for the mem timmings in windows and cpu z are you best friends for OC

benchmarks

spi mod 1.4
3dmark03
3dmark05
3dmark06

what kind of monitor you are using? or better what resolution are you using? im using right now 1920x1200 for day of defeat source with a 7800gt 512mb and i get 80fps of couse i just have a 3500 and 1gig

[jonicadalton]

Sorry for the delay, about 7pm last night i finally got around to running the asusupdate utility and I got a 'hard error'. When I rebooted my bios was ok, it was still on 1009. However, my promise ide raid controller reported raid 0 'offline'.
Now unless my fairly new drives just happened to fail at that moment the asus update utility probably got confused and either tried to write to the raid controller rom or the HD Rom (if there is such a thing).
So, I noticed only drive was out, so I rebuilt again last night this time going raid 1. Wasn't too big a deal but very deflating as I had just got everything running.

I can't remember what I was running w/CSS test, I think it was 1 or 2 options higher than 1024X768. It's probably the dual core, I notice both cpu's are much more active than expected. I'd heard the 2'nd one is barely used which I know now is not correct. I think there's been some patches and changes from the older reviews I've read.

[jonicadalton]

I posted my old computer as well just to give it a formal send off

I need to do a lot of work to optimize the cabling etc... First I need to figure out the overclocking. I'd like to overclock the standard 10% and leave it at that.

BTW, raid 1 very slow compared to 0 as you all know. I'll probably rebuild this weekend to get back to 0. I've been spoiled now. Raid 0+1 is in my future when I make the jump to SATA.

[phelan1777]

who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks

[jonicadalton]

Yep! Going to rebuild today under raid 0.
Also, looks like if I just want the standard 10% OC, I can set AI Overclocking to N.O.S. and set the CPU FSB Frequency to N.O.S. overclock% to 10%.
This is the easiest way to get a reasonable boost with limited knowledge, correct? Of course I'll use probe to check temps and such but from what I've read 10% is conservative for my setup. TIA.

[Steensen]

Nice machinery you've build there.
Earlier someone saud, that you shouldn't use the fanconnectors on the MoBo, but the Molex connectors from PSU. This is not nessesary, since a 80mm fan only draws MAX 0.1A fron +12V, witch the MoBo easely can supply, even with 5 fans, så dont worry about that. You can easely use the MoBo for your fans.

Your MoBo is one of the bad boys, when it comes to big OC (50%+), with a lot of bugs (dun'no if there has come new, better BIOS and drivers since mid feb.), but as long as you "only" gonna clock 10-15%, then there's no/minimal problems.
But beware of the chipset temp, since the NF4 in general is a hot chipset.

Since you have already lost your data, then I would surgest that you use one of your PATA hdd on the onboard IDE controller, and install XP there, go DL the newest BIOS and drivers, and update without your Promise RAID controller installed. Then install the Promise controller, and go se, if there is a new firmware for your Promise controller, and if there is, upgrade it.
When that is done, then you can go back to your RAID0 arrey on the Promise controller.
Remember to have a Firewall and Anti Virus installed and active, before going online, or even having the modem connected to the computer.

Wow that was a long one. But hope you gain some good knowledge from it.
'Grats.

[jonicadalton]

I had similar ideas. I'm sure if I do a bios flash with the promise controller I'm asking for trouble so I was thinking along similar lines.

I'm wondering if I do the boot from floppy stuff in the manual if it will work without any hard drives (just pull the promise controller only and leave it hanging with the drives still connected to the controller).

This way if they have a new bios later I don't have to do the hard drive switch each time.

For now I was thinking of staying on 1009 since it didn't look like much difference in the description.

I'm assuming to watch the NF4 I'm looking at the mobo temp in probe? What is considered high? Maybe 44C? Currently I'm at 40C CPU and 40C mobo after basic computing for about 3 hours.

[jonicadalton]

Thought I'd post an update w/some OC results since it's been quite awhile since I built my machine:

7800 OC 500mhz from stock 475
FSB = 252 from stock 200
CPU = 10X
Voltage = 1.45 in bios, probe reports 1.42 - 1.44

Temps = 45C at idle, 49C after full load (super pi on both cores)

Can run HL2 at max settings and get about 120 fps. Just a side note - I did not apply the dual core registry patch mentioned on this forum as I'm not experiencing any gaming issues.

The Asus NOS led me astray, got oc failure at 5% so I hit the forums and educated myself and went manual. Much less stress since you are controlling what's happening.

Not educated on memory OC'ing and don't think I want to mess with that, looks like exponential trial and error is required. Running 2T right now. I did adjust basic timings to be correct.

Overall conclusion:
I think I could hit 2.6 on my 4200 fairly easily as I'm not hitting 50c and my cpu fan doesn't even come in until I acutally do some processing. From what I've read going 2.52 over 2.2 is pretty good and 1.45 is a good day to day voltage.

[jonicadalton]

Left a couple of things out in my last post.

I may have screwed up and installed the wrong chipset

I installed 6.85 which I now notice today on the nvidia site is listed under AMD Nforce4 x16 not AMD Nforce4 SLI!

The latest SLI looks like 6.7 and the asus site shows a 6.82

My systems been working fine but that may be because I only have one video card. I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this?? My bios is still 1009 BTW.

Changing subjects to fan configuration:
All fans now are 120mm:
4 blowing in in fan swing door
2 in front blowing in
1 on top blowing out
1 on back blowing out
one slot placeholder removed next to vid card so the only way for air to go out at the bottom is via the open slot next to the vid card.

Thanks for hanging in with my long posts! Now that I'm more OC aware I can be a much better poster

[[XC] leviathan18]

mess with the timming specially that 2t try 1t amd on die memory controller benefits from tighter timmings and speed so you will see a nice boost if you mess with your mem....

[jonicadalton]

If the memory can't handle 1T what happens? Do I get the 'overclocking error' message on boot?

Are others running 1T on Corsair Twinx2048C2PT? If so I'll give it a shot.

I need to download software called prime correct? To test it out. Any recommendation on where to download and version that's best.

Thanks for any help!

[Entity_Of_One]

I need to download software called prime correct? To test it out. Any recommendation on where to download and version that's best.

Thanks for any help!

Prime95? I assume that's what you're talking about. It's a form of testing the stability of your system once you've OC'ed, it's a stress tester. Just google Prime95 and plenty should pop up. Furthermore, I haven't read through this whole thread so bear with me if any of this is a repeat, but I recommend clockgen and A64tweaker for doing your OC'ing.

[ineedaname]

Just to let you know on my case the top fan doesn't actually help much. I have a fan controller and multiple temp probes and even with the top fan on high blowing out it didn't even lower my temps 1C. What i think it did was it actually sucked up the air that hasn't even traveled over the mobo and parts.

You're better off putting the strongest fan blowing outwards towards the back close to the CPU.
Also like Makubex_GB said put two intake in the front.

If you're looking for results tho I found that putting one fan inside the case blowing at the mobo from the side greatly reduces your overall temps. Pointing at the vid cards.

The trick is to keep playing around with the fan positions and keep monitoring your temps. I found many postions that I THOUGHT were good actually made the temps go up. Your best bet is to keep the general airflow in the same direction and make sure what you're doing doesn't disrupt that.

[jonicadalton]

I have the setup you describe. The stacker 830 has a fan door which I have 4 120 mm fans blowing directly on the mobo. I also have a 120 on the back near the cpu and 2 120's blowing inwards from the front. I have the big zalman 7700 cu for the cpu. I did try reversing the one on top and it was slightly worse w/my setup but it's probably negligable I can't remember now what difference it made but it was enough for me to reverse it back and send the air out vs. in.
You are right about experimenting. With 9 fans if you include the cpu it took some time to balance it all right. With the varied fans speeds w/asus q control it adds yet another dimension of testing to it to balance noise/performance.