My new Cosmo S

[gabe]

I have been building this rig for some time now. I have to say the cosmos is a real pleasure to work with. I installed two rads: the MCR320 up top, a no-brainer, and an MCR220 Res in the front. I bolted the front rad to the hard drive tray, and hung /bolted the MCP655 underneath the tray, using the existing pump bracket with a slight mod. The entire assembly slides out for easy maintenance.

Since I wanted quiet, I insulated with Akasa Paxmate everywhere I could, and I am using scythe SFF21D S-FLEX throughout (at 70% speed). The Q9650 runs stable and reasonably cool at 4275 (1.42 CPU, 1.52 FSB termination). Edit: need to qualify that: running OCTT, Furmark, while listening to my favorite French music

As you can see from the pics, I started the build with a GTX280, then switched to an HD4870X2 as soon as the Caldera's arrived this week (yes it's about to release finally, safe for a last minute screw up on LED wire length that we have to fix..). Other than that, the Intel 80 Gb SSD makes Vista 64 load in a few seconds, while photoshop CS4 loads in less than 3 seconds, and 8 gigs of mid-range G-Skill (some work needed on the o/c on that one) complete the core build.

With the space I saved by using no reservoir, and hanging the pump under the tray, I could have easily found space to build a dual pump loop, but decided against it. As it is, the CPU is running in the mid 60's at full load, which is more than adequate for this overclock.

This rig is about to find a spot under my desk very soon now!