Hey folks, it's been awhile! Canada Computers rudely decided to take advantage of my complete lack of impulse control, so I decided to buy stuff, and upgrade my main rig! Like several of you who have multiple machines, you know what this means. Multiple builds going on simultaneously! In my case, two. I have two rigs operating at any one time, just in case one dies. After all, a geek can't be PC-less. My current daily driver is the following:
AMD Ryzen 2700X (aka Big Rig)
Asus Crosshair 7 Hero mobo (EK Monoblock)
4 x 8GB G.Skill TridentZ RGB (3200 CL14)
Zotac 1080TI x 2 (HeatKiller blocks)
1TB ADATA SX9000 960GB SSD
2 x 2TB SSD in RAID0, 2 x 3TB HDD in RAIDO
That all sits underwater inside a large box of radiators, also known as the Case Labs (RIP) Magnum M8. It is rather large, and only LAN-party-capable if you are The Hulk:
Still rocking the GPU back plates made by our own resident modding guru, EZs PCs:
Now the second rig sadly doesn't get used unless Big Rig is down for maintenance. I say sadly because it's the prettiest soft tube system I've ever built (see my "backup build" thread). It *used* to look like this:
That was a Ryzen 1700 on an Asus Crosshair 6 Hero, with 2x8Gb of FlareX 3200 CL14 RAM, on a ThermalTake Core P3 snow edition. I sold those guts to a buddy of mine with two babies who can't afford a decent rig, because apparently babies are expensive. I kept the Radeon VII GPU and the case though, since buddy already has a 1080 on air plus a case. So he got a great deal on some awesome guts, and I went bananas and bought this:
That would be a Gigabyte Aorus Master motherboard, a Ryzen 9 3900X, and a Corsair MP500 PCIE4 SSD. My credit card cried like a little girl, while I laughed at it.
So step #1 was to tear down the pretty purple pixel eater, put an air cooler on the 1700 (gave my buddy the Wraith Prism that came with my 2700X, it's beefier than the one that came with the 1700). Got that done yesterday, and buddy is over the moon and happily ignoring his family while testing his new toys.
Step #2 was to mount the new gear on the white TT Core P3 case for testing:
So it works, passes tests, PCIE riser seems to work fine, etc. New gear ain't broke, sweet. So now the real work begins, and that's starting this evening.
The New Grand Plan:
Step 1: drain Big Rig, the one I'm posting from.
Step 2: get 2700X board mounted on pretty purple pixel eater 2.0 with the Radeon VII; all AMD 2.0 FTW!
Step 3: once PPPE 2 is up and running, rebuild new Ryzen 9 into M8 with dual 1080TI's.
Step 4: marvel at the length and girth of my new ePenis. Estimated length: 29 inches.
I'm not sure what the "end game" for tubing on either rig will be, but considering I bought Daz' last 16 EK 16mm hard tube fittings, PPPE 2.0 will definitely be getting acrylic hard tube, and the coolant needs to be WAY more purple. As for Big Rig, I'm undecided. That rig USED to be hard tube, with red coolant, and looked way more awesome than it does now. But then I broke my acrylic pass-through floor plate, and had to improv something (that ugly light panel you see in the pics above). Once that happened, I switched to soft black tube, just to be goth / emo. I may go back to hard tube for Biggy, and back to translucent red coolant. Plus that Barrow Boxfish reservoir needs to GTFO. The people who designed those things never considered dual pump rigs like Biggy. I had to unplug a D5, since two was just too much turbulence for that box res. That will be replaced with a Heatkiller 200mm res, already purchased, with red struts. It's gorgeous. More to come on that later!
Much more to come, stay tuned!
AMD Ryzen 2700X (aka Big Rig)
Asus Crosshair 7 Hero mobo (EK Monoblock)
4 x 8GB G.Skill TridentZ RGB (3200 CL14)
Zotac 1080TI x 2 (HeatKiller blocks)
1TB ADATA SX9000 960GB SSD
2 x 2TB SSD in RAID0, 2 x 3TB HDD in RAIDO
That all sits underwater inside a large box of radiators, also known as the Case Labs (RIP) Magnum M8. It is rather large, and only LAN-party-capable if you are The Hulk:
Still rocking the GPU back plates made by our own resident modding guru, EZs PCs:
Now the second rig sadly doesn't get used unless Big Rig is down for maintenance. I say sadly because it's the prettiest soft tube system I've ever built (see my "backup build" thread). It *used* to look like this:
That was a Ryzen 1700 on an Asus Crosshair 6 Hero, with 2x8Gb of FlareX 3200 CL14 RAM, on a ThermalTake Core P3 snow edition. I sold those guts to a buddy of mine with two babies who can't afford a decent rig, because apparently babies are expensive. I kept the Radeon VII GPU and the case though, since buddy already has a 1080 on air plus a case. So he got a great deal on some awesome guts, and I went bananas and bought this:
That would be a Gigabyte Aorus Master motherboard, a Ryzen 9 3900X, and a Corsair MP500 PCIE4 SSD. My credit card cried like a little girl, while I laughed at it.
So step #1 was to tear down the pretty purple pixel eater, put an air cooler on the 1700 (gave my buddy the Wraith Prism that came with my 2700X, it's beefier than the one that came with the 1700). Got that done yesterday, and buddy is over the moon and happily ignoring his family while testing his new toys.
Step #2 was to mount the new gear on the white TT Core P3 case for testing:
So it works, passes tests, PCIE riser seems to work fine, etc. New gear ain't broke, sweet. So now the real work begins, and that's starting this evening.
The New Grand Plan:
Step 1: drain Big Rig, the one I'm posting from.
Step 2: get 2700X board mounted on pretty purple pixel eater 2.0 with the Radeon VII; all AMD 2.0 FTW!
Step 3: once PPPE 2 is up and running, rebuild new Ryzen 9 into M8 with dual 1080TI's.
Step 4: marvel at the length and girth of my new ePenis. Estimated length: 29 inches.
I'm not sure what the "end game" for tubing on either rig will be, but considering I bought Daz' last 16 EK 16mm hard tube fittings, PPPE 2.0 will definitely be getting acrylic hard tube, and the coolant needs to be WAY more purple. As for Big Rig, I'm undecided. That rig USED to be hard tube, with red coolant, and looked way more awesome than it does now. But then I broke my acrylic pass-through floor plate, and had to improv something (that ugly light panel you see in the pics above). Once that happened, I switched to soft black tube, just to be goth / emo. I may go back to hard tube for Biggy, and back to translucent red coolant. Plus that Barrow Boxfish reservoir needs to GTFO. The people who designed those things never considered dual pump rigs like Biggy. I had to unplug a D5, since two was just too much turbulence for that box res. That will be replaced with a Heatkiller 200mm res, already purchased, with red struts. It's gorgeous. More to come on that later!
Much more to come, stay tuned!
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