PC70/120.3/Mach II - Lots of pics

[cinOxen]

Hey all,

I've been a lurker here for the last couple months finding the info I've needed to build my rig. Here are some pics and a mini work-log.

But first the specs:
Athlon64 4400 X2
DFI nf4 SLI DR
XFX 7800
Silverstone Zeus 650 Watt

Cooling:
Mach II
Thermochill 120.3 with 6Xpanaflo
Swiftech MCP655
Acetal MAZE4GPU with 172 Watt peltier
Powered by Meanwell sp-480-15 at ~16.5V
Koolance CHC-A05 on NB

Bling/extras
Fan-o-matic Pro fan controller with 3X Micros
Crystalfontz CFA-634 4X20 LCD

The PC70 naked:


The plan was to place the thermochill 120.3 on it's side. I wanted a push-pull config with a decent amount of space on either side of the rad. This didn't seem possible to do with the space between the power supply and the top of the case. To place the 120.3 on its side I had to cut away the power supply cage and main support beam.


The mobo tray was pretty weak after this so I added a piece of angle bar to strengthen it. The PS also rests on it taking off stress from the back of the case.


Added a piece of sheet metal mainly for looks.


I had a piece of sheet cut and broke at a local shop. This is the rad shroud basically. Also cut part of the drive bay cage as it wouldn't fit anything large in it anyway.


Work in progress - cutting out the fan holes


Holes cut


Covers cut


Added a couple output fans on the bottom


Preparing for motherboard - cut out holes for cables


Took a long break from taking pictures. The rig is basically done. Back wiring:




Rad box


Wiring. Sleeving is UV reactive and there are a bunch of UV LEDS up here making it glow at night.


Inside:






Leds are from a combination of sources. First 4 are the diagnostic LEDs from the DFI, second 4 from the Mach II. The rest are controlled by the fan-o-matic


Power supply was re-sleeved with metal and ferrites were added.


GPU:


6 Hard drives. All yellow sleeving represents sensors. These go to the 3.5" bay sensors.


Mach II was also sleeved with the same colour-codes and windowed with the UV reactive molding




A few night shots:










Issues:
Hardlocking. At first I was getting the occasional hardlock. Then, last thursday, I decided to post these pics here. As I was writing a post I got a hardlock. Unfortunately a simple reset didn't work - the computer wouldn't boot and all 4 DFI diagnostic LEDs were on indicating the CPU. I went away for the weekend and now it seems to be working. I suppose I might have a bit of moisture around the CPU. I was ready to rip it all apart today but might let it run to see if it happens again first.

Overclocking.
Due to hardlocks I haven't spent a lot of time overclocking yet. The freeze-ups seemed to occur more often when the cpu was overclocked. I thought that the cause was a bad bios flash. I had flashed it 3 times without going through the long procedure of clearing the CMOS. After doing that and re-flashing to 704-BT things seemed very stable - it didn't freeze in a couple weeks. I was just about to overclock again before the CPU decided to take a couple days rest.

Previous results were 3150 at 1.7 volts which seemed stable other than occasional freeze-ups.

The 7800GTX has been disappointing. The core runs at -12 C idle but the highest I've gotten it without reboots/corruption is 530 so I run it at 527. I'm using the modded bios by Victorshen. There seems to be an issue where the card is throttling or something. Performance sometimes goes to about 50% until I reboot.

If you got this far thanks for reading and good luck overclocking.

[crmaris]

Very impresive job!The pics speaks by themselves!!One question,what is your temp at idle and full load with the 4400 X2 at 3150 with 1.7 volt.? Because i dont think that a normal mach 2 can hadle a x2 with 1.7 (you will definately see positive (and high) temps at full load)..

[eva2000]

wow very nice... i'm jealous

[Elisha]

very nice. best i've seen yet.

[cinOxen]

Thanks!

I can't remember all that well. I think it was around -6 Celcius idle by the Mach II sensor, 5-10 with the mobo sensor and +10 over that under load.

If there are no problems over the next couple days I'll try it that fast again.

[crmaris]

Thanks!

I can't remember all that well. I think it was around -6 Celcius idle by the Mach II sensor, 5-10 with the mobo sensor and +10 over that under load.

If there are no problems over the next couple days I'll try it that fast again.

as i thought the temps are pretty high. If the mach sensor which is very optimistic shows only -6 at idle and you havent changed its original position then you have very high temps(i wonder how the mach doesnt shut down the system by itself for precaution reasons,you must have set very high the shutdown limits). In full load you must have big problems with temps.. I think this is the reason for the instability you have..An unmodded mach simply cannot hold the watts of a X2 at 3150 with 1.7 vcore..

great job again for the whole built..

[cinOxen]

The shutdown temp wasn't changed, it is still at 0 Celsius so I guess it never went over that temp in the evaporator because it never shut down. My memory probably didn't recall the right temps (it's faulty ), maybe those were the temps under load.

I only had this overclock going for a short time (few days) and as I said the only effect was that I got more hardlocks than at stock. It still had hardlocks when everything was at stock. I still think they were being caused by the bios/cmos because the last time I cleared cmos and re-flashed the bios there has been only the one problem. Before it would hardlock every couple days.

The strange thing as well was that all the hardlocks occurred at the desktop while I was browsing the internet - they have never occurred during super-pi, 3dmark or gaming. Maybe something to do with the ethernet controller. I changed to the marvell so maybe that could have solved the problem too.

[[XC] leviathan18]

pr0n all those naked pics OMG this should be closed xD J/K

i like the UV photos they are so sweet it was esay to fit the rad????

pretty nice setup

[cinOxen]

was esay to fit the rad????

No!

Well not too bad actually. I knew there was room even before ordering parts but wasn't sure if the fanholes would align properly. You can see that on the side covers the moulding is almost right to the edge. There is only about 3/16" of metal there. Luckily it is doubled-up so there is still some strength to it.

Thanks for the comments

[b|gf|sh]

w00t, that's a hardcore rig you've got there m8!

pld

[[XC] leviathan18]

i ask cuz im goig to buy a lian li 1200 and put a 120.2 inside but i dont know if it fits