SimSamurai

Hi Crew ! You have all been enlisted to help me cool my advanced flight sim station! I am not quite an overclocker yet but I think I have been having screen hangs/freezes/lock-ups (requiring a hard reset) due to overheating and am now wanting to re-engineer my PC (soon to be 2) for my 8 monitor flight simulator. I currently have one well built PC with 3 20"inch widescreen monitors and an overhead projector for an 8ft diagonal front view.

I live in San Diego and it has been running fine for months now while my indoor house temp has been between 65-75 and then the past few days it has been about 85-90 here, thus our summer heatwaves are beginning. My desk digital thermometer is reading 85 right now indoors. Needless to say after running the sim with all 4 screens up today I got a lock-up after about 30 minutes of flight. I can only assume this is a heat issue and am now writing this from my small laptop !! Ugghhh! The server is too hot!

MY PC
Tower -Thermaltake Xaser III
Power - BFG 1,000 watt PSU
Mobo - Gigabyte Quad Royal (has 4 pci-e 2-16x and 2-8x)
Chip - Pentium D 3.4ghz (emt64 enabled)
RAM - 4 gigs OCZ Gold
OS - Windows XP Pro X64
Drives - 2 x 250gb SATA-2 7200rpm Maxtor (In a RAID stripe array)
Video Cards 2 x BFG 7900 GTX 512MB (using all 4 outputs for 4 monitors)

I plan on building a duplicate system for the other 4 monitors and wish to build a water-cooling system that can support both CPU chips and all 4 video cards rather than have 2 independent systems. Placing the cooler in its own large case is fine and that would sit it the middle between the 2 pc's.

Lastly, I may want to switch motherboards. I bought the Gigabyte Quad Royal because it has 4 PCI-E slots. However the 2 x16 slots are right next to each other such that if I had both video cards in the 2x16 slots they would be sandwiched right against one another and thus the top one would get no airflow. Therefore I have the top one in the #1 PCI-E 8x slot to space them and unfortunately this causes both cards to only run at 8x (even though card 2 is in the #3 16x slot) Likewise if I actually put in all 4 cards then all 4 would run at 8x each (all sandwiched together) and as tested to date I think this would tax my CPU too much anyway, and would obviously not work with just standard airflow as no air could circulate to their fans properly.

Thus this why I am just going to build a second identical machine and wish to water cool them both. In the end I want 2 identical machines each running 2 video cards at full x16 capability and get them thinking they are vacationing in Alaska.

Again each system will display 4 monitors each and I want a single PHAT cooling system that pipes into the 2 PCs. Please recommend cooling solutions, capable motherboards, and large table-top or rack mount cases as also plan to go with table style cases for the 2 computers as this will fit better in my ****pit set-up. The cooler case however would need to remain a vertical tower style. (the table-top PCs will go in front of the pilot and co-pilots knees respectively with the cooler in the middle behind the throttle quadrant.)

Lastly, yes I am a real pilot..CFI multi-engine. I just also have a sick sim habit! I will also send pictures of my set-up to anyone willing to lend advice!

Thanks all - captannemo@earthlink.net

Black Magix

OT: You know if you can get your flight sim approved you can get log hours played on your sim right?

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trueg50

Here is a very easy one.

Replace that Pentium D with a Quad core Q6600. tons more powerful, and it should be a bit cooler.

If you want a custom cooler, than look no further than CyberDruid, send him a private message and he can be you a very high-quality station for the two computers.

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Cable manage and liquid cooled Thermal take Armor

Synergy (G5 case mod)

i_ame_killer_2

1. I want pictures!
2. As suggested replace the Pentium D with a Q6600 or a 45nm Quad, it runs cooler and will give you way, way more power.
3. Welcome to ocn.net!

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SimSamurai

Thanks for the first tips on chips guys. I will look into maybe switching when I get a new motherboard. Again, I need one that has 3 PCI-E x16 slots that will run all 3 at x16 in non SLI. However I will most likely only use 2 cards in each computer, again with each PC running 4 video outputs as I do now. (3 LCD's for aircraft panel instrumentation and one InFocus projector for the main front view)

As far as FAA registration that is an end goal of this however I will use it mostly for personal and student training as the allowable hours you can log in any sim are hardly worth the expense of building one. (unless you are a flight academy that uses one alot with many students) I won't go into detail on the many types their are and each condition for registry but there are about 4-5 and allowed loggable hours with a supervising instructor are only about 10 for your IFR rating.

Anyhoo, I tax my system pretty hard as I build my own custom panels with realistic payware gauges so there is ALOT going on with all 3 monitors and the scenery on the projector to boot. So once again... Water Cooling? and HOW-WHAT-WHERE???

Duma

Well first you need to get a mini fridge....... Just kidding.

how portable/quiet/inexpensive do you want it to be??

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Building a Water cooled system one block at a time!