Black Mamba

[Twotenths]

Hi there everyone. I'm new here but not new to computers. I have built, upgraded, repaired, hundreds of computers over the years. Up until now they have all used AIO cooling units. There was no such thing as starting kits during those years so I never took the leap until now. My new build was actually started back in Dec '12 - Jan '13. It has been a real struggle for me and I have never had to RMA as many components in my entire life. In fact the amount of RMA's for this build is pretty well equal to all the RMA's I have ever done. By the way I don't do this for a living but it is my hobby. Needless to say I could actually do this for a living if I were so inclined but it would be a large cut in pay for me.
To start things off I was looking to build the ultimate computing system that was a real workhorse and also an exceptional gaming system at the same time. I already have an Asus RIVE system and that is what I'm using right now. I did a lot of research looking for all of the right components to give me the best of both worlds.
We'll start off with my list of hardware:
ASRock X79 Extreme11 MB > has integrated LSI chip for 8 extra 6Gb/s sata ports > All PCIe slots are 16X Gen3 supports 16x/16x/16x/16x 4-way crossfire or sli compatible.
Intel LGA 2011 3970X CPU > newest Chip just out.
G-Skill RipjawsZ 64GB 2400 twin Quad set F3-19200CL10Q2-64GBZHD > designed for X79 systems
Enermax Fulmo GT Full Tower case > very big and lots of bling for something really different
EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Classified x4 > The 690 was just released at that time and was equivalent to dual 670's per card
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB x2 Raid0, 4x 1TB (Raid10), 2x 2TB, 1x 4TB, WD Cav/Blk drives. running Acronis bi-weekly backups.
EVGA NEX1500W PSU > biggest one on the market at that time.
Corsair H100i AIO CPU cooler > Just before all the newer competition came out.
13x Enermax Apollish Vegas 14cm fans, 4x 18cm Enermax Apollish Vegas side fans.
NZXT Sentry Mix controller > 50w /ch x6 channels
NZXT RGB lighting package.
LG 16x Blu-ray R/W BDXL, M-DISC 3D optical drive
Samsung S27A850D x4 native 2560 x 1440 res > Rotateable, Next Generation PLS Better than IPS colour correct monitors. 5ms GtoG

[bungwirez]

Welcome TwoTenths!! thanks for sharing this amazing BEAST

Let us know what we can do to help you make the big jump into watercooling.

[alex5389]

Welcome 2/10ths. I must say those 680's are lookin mighty thirsty..

[Father Fuzzy]

twotenths

the case looks damn interesting please show more

lots of room for watercooling and like alex says those 680's need some hydration

[Twotenths]

With that now out of the way I will continue...
I have never had so many problems during a build in my life. There are some firsts in this build, the first of which is moving away from my always problem free Asus motherboard platform. It was a gamble for me but there was nothing out there to compare to the features of the ASRock MB. I've been over the years mainly an AMD GPU user. I've had a few NVidia cards but the large majority are all AMD/ATI. I've been using G-Skill for the last 5 years or more with nary a problem. Equivalent Corsair memory is highly over-priced in comparison. Their 64GB sets are rediculously priced. I could buy 2 sets of G-Skill for the same money. Timings are almost exactly the same between the two.
That being said I will continue on with my disastrous build. It took me quite a long time to get all of the components together buying from several companies. Getting the extra Enermax fans was probably the most difficult of all the parts to aquisition. It was a totally new case and parts were not yet readily avialable.
I carried on with putting it together during my wait time. After 2 months I finally had it all set to run and had triple checked everything. I finally hit the switch. Click and a puff of smoke with a burning plastic smell hit me in the face. I immediately shut down the PSU. It seems that the NZXT fan controller is just too powerful a unit to split only two fans on a connector. It burnt out 50% of all the fans' led's. Furthermore (one thing that I failed to mention) the Corsair fan controller that sits in a standard 3-1/2" Sata HDD drive bay can handle umpteen fans. I searched high and low throughout the entire internet for more detailed specifications on the unit. There are non at all even on the Corsair site itself. Lots of hook-up manuals etc but no electrical specifics. All of the fans connected to that link system went up in a puff of smoke. Not the fans but every fan controller bus connector burnt up. It turns out that each connector can handle any 120mm .25A fans but my fans were all 140mm and were rated at .4A and .37A. I tossed out the whole unit (well I removed it from my system). That was when I bought the NZXT 50W/ch unit which turned out to also be a problem. With all of those repairs and hardware updates made I tried my second attempt at firing up the system. Click... nothing. Checked out every connector in the system and everything was perfectly wired up correctly but still no joy. I finally began removing each component one by one and installing each of them into My RIVE system. I isolated various component failures and removed them. I took working items from the RIVE and switched them to the new system. Very tedious and time consuming. I finally had the entire list of bad parts. Motherboard was cooked..., 2 out of 4 video cards also cooked. Ram, CPU, and everything else worked fine. RMA time = 3 months for all three components. ASRock was the worst offender because of their strict overclocking policy they don't cross-ship. They insist on fully testing the old board before they issue a replacement. It was a brand new build and I never even got into the bios to make any changes. They don't care.
After the 3 month wait I was all ready to go. I gingerly hit the start buton and it fired right up. I did the usual OS install and bios updates and settings. Everything was working fine except that no matter what I did the bios would set my ram up at 2400 but CPU-Z would report it running @ 2133. I played with all the settings but it was a non successful endeavor. I did on the other hand manage to lower the timings quite well and went from 11 to 9 on the main clock speed which sort of made up for the difference.
Now it was O/C'ing time and I went to town on the system and tweeked it for all it was worth. I managed a 3D Mark11 Extreme score of X12953. I was having some problems with voltages so I went out and bought a Belkin Watt meter to see what kind of power I was pulling. It worked out to 1349W from the wall. I checked out the efficiency of my power supply and found out that at that level of draw I am getting 87% efficiency. That works out to over 1550W from the power supply. Not good. For short periods you can pull that amont of power but you shouldn't exceed more than 80% of the rated power output for any lenth of time.
That brings me to the next step which was adding a second power supply to supplement the existing one. I bought a 650W unit that I set up to run one of the video cards and all the peripherals. i.e drives, fan controller and a few low draw connections. I turned the system on and it worked fine... for a week. One day I turned it on and I was getting the black screen drive error message. Back to checking... The new 650W unit was dead. More RMA time needed. Now I'm into August '13 and I can't continue because all of these RMA's keep costing me shipping and time. I am broke now so any further improvements are at a standstill. Furthermore installing a second PSU has cost me the space needed for my H100i.
I spent the next few months ignoring the compter knowing that at years end I would receive some extra funds to continue. I spent that time trying to come up with a solution which would give me the best bang for the buck. >> lowest dollar fix to the problem. There was only one real solution... buy a new case.
Come January I had been looking at dozens of cases and I wanted something that would do the job but not beak the bank. CaseLabs are more than adequate but pricewise didn't fit the bill. Mountain Mods don't do anything for me either in price or in options for the build that I'm doing. I looked at Cooler Masters Stacker series and I could have fit my system into it with two of the stacking units but the width of the case versus the height makes it easy to knock over if bumped into. My final choice was the Corsair 900D. Lots of space, wide profile for stability. Very watercooling friendly. The only con is the large window which is great for viewing but doesn't add too much in the air flow throughout the case. Large areas of open grating makes a positive pressure almost impossible to attain. Running Dual PSU's will take up half of the bottom opening leaving room for 2 fans per side or 2x 240 rads.

[Twotenths]

twotenths

the case looks damn interesting please show more

lots of room for watercooling and like alex says those 680's need some hydration

Unfortunately that particular model has been discontinued. It is too bad because it really is a great case.

[Twotenths]

Well now I am in a conumdrum. They no longer make waterblocks for the GTX 680 classified non reference cards. I've had my name on their list three times already but I don't always check my email every day. I would get an email that blocks were in stock but by the time I logged in they were all sold out. It happened three times and now they don't make them at all anymore. They stopped making them back in the summer of '13. I'm out of luck in that way. The second problem is that they don't make any MB waterblock kits either. None of the major manufacturers really ever did but there were a few people who made custom blocks for it but there are way too many people waiting in line for them and several have paid for them but after 3 months are still waiting for them. It seems that he works on them after hours at work and has had to make several modifications to them for different applications. The general design won't work for me because I am sporting 4 video cards and the connector ports will be covered by the cards. The normal connection area for motherboard blocks is covered with various electronic components i.e capacitors, resistors, diodes etc... and leaves no room for 1/4" NPT connectors. My southbridge seems to be handling the heat very well but the mosfets do need cooling. I can't find any mosfet blocks for this board either. This is one super tricked out motherboard and has more on it than the new RIVBE board does. But it's not made by the big motherboard manufacturers so they are not supported by the big watercooling companies i.e XSPC, EK, Swiftech, Koolance etc.., . I have scoured the internet looking for VGA waterblocks but any that I find come with the card as well and are too expensive. I don't need the card just the blocks & backplates.

[Twotenths]

I do have a RIVE MB for which I can get waterblocks but it doesn't have 14 Sata ports and the PCIe ports will run @ 16x/8x/8x/8x rather than the full 16X accross the board. Seeing as I can't cool the GPU's, is doing the MB really worth it? The new Black Edition has these features (somewhat limited) but if you read the overall motherboard specs they have taken some of the functions off the board to accomplish it. What they have taken off is now on the hand held OC Key connector. That will be something that will continually be hanging outside of the case. You can mount it in a 5-1/4" bay but doing that will disable half of the functions included on this unit.
I don't see the purpose in upgrading when all indications are that the X99 chipset will come out this fall. There are some major cons to it. The first being that it is not backwards compatible to older CPU's and will only support Haswell-E CPU's and anything newer coming down the pipe. The second con is that they are changing to DDR4 memory modules that have more pins than the 240 pin DDR3 sticks we are using now. I believe that the new sticks have 248 pins. It will be a very costly upgrade because you will need state of the art CPU's which will come with the premium pricing along with the memory which will also demand higher prices and the latest chipset which will also be the most expensive to buy. That is a trifecta in price points and the combination of all three will be costly indeed.

[Twotenths]

The only solution that I could find for my video cards is to buy EK VGA supremacy bridge edition universal GPU blocks and buy mosfet and chip heatsinks. If it was for a pair of video cards I would probably go that way but putting it on 4 cards means a lot of heatsinks to be purchased. One of the heatsinks would interfere with the GPU block so I can't put a heatsink on it. It would also mean that I will need 2 extra 240mm rads along with a separate pump and resevoir. Fittings will drive the price even higher. I did a rough estimate and I'm looking at $700-$800 to do it. For that price I should just sell all of the cards and buy 2x 780 Ti O/C cards with waterblocks included. The only thing that is stopping me is that there are tons of 680 classified's on eBay already and the competition is pretty stiff. I paid $800/card when I bought them. They have less than 200 hours running time on them. I have 2 with EVbot connections and 2 without. One reason why I want to keep them is because I will be driving several monitors and 2 780Ti's aren't enough. (using displayport connectors)

[Twotenths]

Welcome 2/10ths. I must say those 680's are lookin mighty thirsty..

Thirsty yes but nobody carries waterblocks for them. They are non-reference pcb's.

P.S. Truth is I am a Tool & Die Maker / Mechanical Design Engineer and Consultant (Automotive). My Moniker is actually my personal accuracy tolerance. As a Toolmaker measurements are in thousandths of an inch or .001"(.025mm). That is the base standard of measurement in the automotive industry. My personal standard is 5x that which is actually written .0002". The full version of that number is two tenthousandths of an inch. Having an established standard of thousandths of an inch you can remove the thousandths part of the name. It is a given and referred to as thou (pronounced thow). My accuracy was legendary and they nicknamed me twotenths. It is a badge of honour in my trade and I have always kept that name.

[bungwirez]

LOL... everybody got a story

[Twotenths]

The main issue with my original build was lack of power. The real time power consumption is greater than the 1500W PSU unit when O/Cing. The case I have will let me install 2 PSU's but at the expense of losing the radiator space. It has forced me to buy a Corsair Obsidian 900D case. With all the added space I've gone to a full water solution for my CPU only at this time. I have ordered another PSU with much better quality. EVGA has come out with a new line of PSU's called the G2 series. JohnnyG gives it a 9.7 rating for the 1300W unit. It was on sale and less than the 1000W unit. I plan to pair it up with my Corsair AX1200i unit and tie them together using an add2psu adapter. They will both run in the sweet spot of efficiency between 90 - 93% using a 70% load value / unit. They are both superb units with excellent power regulation and ripple supression accross all three voltages. I have with the help of Daz put together a modified starter kit.

Raystorm CPU 2011 waterblock >EK Supremancy was preferred but the raystorm has a really good bling factor.
XSPC EX480 radiator w/Koolance 120mm x 38mm pressure fans 5mm/H2O x4 (already have a bag of 100pcs 6-32 screws for 38mm fans)
XSPC Photon 170 D5 Vario Pump/res kit.
Bitspower Black sparkle flow meter, thermal sensor, 4-way G1/4" cube fitting, 7x 3/8 - 5/8 compression straight Black
1x 90 degree (45+45) triple swivel fitting & 1x Black Stop Plug Fitting - G1/4",(for bleed port on rad mounted in top of case). 1x Koolance M&F QDC (for drain Port), Fan vibration absorbers, open mesh fan finger guards.
Feser One fluid, Feser UV Blue dye, Feser VSC Performance booster, 6ft clear UV Blue 3/8ID 5/8OD tubing.
Lamptron F5C V3 6x 30W fan controller w/ volt/rpm/temp onscreen reporting on each channel & alarm function.
2x 5mm Spacer Extender Adapter - G1/4 Male/Male
3x 12" ( 30cm ) Dimmable Rigid LED Strip V2 - UV, 2x 3-pin QUAD Radiator Standard Fan Power Y-cable Splitter
3ft 4:1 Adhesive Heat Shrink Tubing 6mm, XSPC Sleeved Dual 5mm LED Module - UV (need to mod to 1 led)

So far that's what I have. I figure I'll need a few angled fittings and 1 or 2 extentions but until I've layed it out in the case I won't know what I need and how many. Due to the Photon's 50 degree C max res temperature threshold I will be running the res just after the rad instead of pump> rad > loop >res >pump it will be pump >loop >rad >res >pump. I guess that I should put the thermal sensor on the rad to res connection to assure that the temps into the res stay within tolerance. The res is tempered glass not acrylic and is Stain proof.

[SeeThruHead]

Curious why you would choose the 900d. Not a great case for 2 psu + multiple radiators IMO. You'd be much better off with a caselabs or LD. Assuming you haven't already bought it.

[Twotenths]

I need to do some modding to the motherboard as well. I find it rather dumb that the board is built for 4-way video but beside the last slot all the USB2 port connections are in an upright position. If I use anything in those plugs then the last video card won't seat properly and rides on top of the USB connectors. I purchased a dozen 90 degree connectors that are 10 pin so I will just cut off the pin that should be missing on each connector. I can use the same connector for the HD front audio port as well and just cut off the proper pin for that connector type. Then I can remove the old connectors and put in the new ones. I have a soldering station so it shouldn't be too difficult to swap them over.

[Twotenths]

Curious why you would choose the 900d. Not a great case for 2 psu + multiple radiators IMO. You'd be much better off with a caselabs or LD. Assuming you haven't already bought it.

I did take a look at CaseLabs cases and they cost nearly double the price of the 900D cases. I also noticed that the stated prices were for the standard case and options cost extra. If I went in that direction then It would curb my watercooling budget. I can always buy CaseLabs at a later date when I have more funds but the 900D services all the problems associated with my current case. I have a few ideas on how to increase the airflow in the closed off main compartment. I will most likely use Black duct tape to close off some of the overabundance of open mesh in the case to help create a positive pressure environment. I'm still undecided on where I will mount the pump res kit. I was thinking to mount it above the video card slots which will also close off a large section of open mesh. The hidden open mesh areas I can definitely close off with tape against tape (from the inside and from the outside to make both surfaces Black. If I had access to the shop at work then I could make some metal panels and screw them in place but I don't have that access anymore.