The real Green Machine (lots of pics, have fun 56K) - Overclock.net

Rayce185 · 07-09-09

Alright, so I finally got all the important parts for my new system delivered. You may have been following my "delivery progress" here: [Rave] First batch of packages arrived today!

Well, now that 95% of the stuff is here, we can begin.

The specs are:
-XFX 780i SLI
-Intel Q9550 E0
-4GB OCZ Blade Low Voltage DDR2-9600 (5-5-5-18@1.80V)
-2x XFX GTX 275 XXX (670/1404/1180)
-Corsair HX850W (single 12V rail @ 70A/840W, lowest efficiency: 89%)
-Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1 (PCIe)
-2x Super Talent UltraDrive ME 64GB in RAID0
-LG GGC-H20LRB BD-ROM
-TRUE + 2x Ultra Kaze 3000

No case yet. We'll get to that later.

Alright, so I prepped everything: got my tools, the item checklist, the procedue list and laid out the hardware for visual inspection. The last thing I wanted to do is waste hours on a built to find out that there was a noticeable flaw in the hardware. We all know the "bent pins" story.

Tools of the trade. Needed or not, it's good to be prepared.

The lists. Ordered part list (sorted by retailer) on the left, "operating procedure" on the right (split into hard- and software)

Probably the best DDR2 RAM you can buy.

Ultimate droolage. "I shall get you past 4GHz!"

nVidia reference board. Good enough for me.

Woo! No bent pins for me!!!

I absolutely LOVE the PSU's bag! I fill find good use for it.

The actual muscle. I hope the stock cooling is worth a damn.

The drives. Those SSD's look sexy as hell.

"The Rock"

Yeah, the TRUE is infamous for having a rough contact surface. This will definitely have to be lapped as soon as possible.

And of course the contact isn't ideal either. Not the best circumstances for a to-be OC system, but next to lapping the TRUE, I have a special treat for the CPU's IHS. More in stage 2.

Thou shall play along well with my Sennheiser HD600

What can't really be referred to as a "case". You shall see.

After all was checked and looked okay, I prepared the case (A+ GL-3) so I could install the mainboard by screwing in the supports. This is where the fun begins.

The case only came with SEVEN mobo supports! Awesome! How the hell am I to install anything if the manufacturer doesn't even fully equip their products?

But fear not: Ray was smart enough to save all the unused and reused screws over the years, and may have some identical supports in the box...

I was wrong. Not one single support had the same features as the ones form A+. Either the head was too long, the thread was too long, or two small, or all of the above.
Well, I decided to take two of the ones that came closest: the ones with the long heads, and whipped out the trusty Dremel.

So far, so good. They aren't the exact length, maybe half of a millimeter off, but that will do.

Then let's focus on the mainboard.
First, the stock heatsink solution must be removed, and some proper TIM (I use MX-2) has to be applied to all parts. So I get the isopropyl alcohol, a crapload of q-tips and a few leaves of toilet paper and start cleaning the old, useless mush off.

Fugly residue from mushy mushmush. It gets stuck on everything.

Alcohol (and q-tips) FTW!

Then apply the MX-2. I didn't have a small hard haired brush at hand, so I took one piece the loose packing styrofoam that came with the hardware, squished a tip onto it and used it so evenly apply a thin layer onto the mobo. This works way better than an old credit card (or similar) since those are too large and not flexible enough, especially when moving around the MOSFET's.

And since manufactueres mess up the TIM application everytime, let's redo the GFX cards too.
I never knew that GPU's have bcome so huge! Here's a picture comparison between an 8600GTS and a 62mm TEC unit.

As you can see in the above picture, there is lots of that ugly mushy TIM (or similar) on the heatsink, intended to cover the VRAM, shading unit and (probably) the voltage regulator. Unfortunately you can't remove most of them, since then there wouldn't be anymore contact between the chip and the heatsink. So I just did the GPU itself and the MOSFETs.

And of course, I repeated the whole procedure on the other GFX card too.

Rayce185 · 07-09-09

The rest is pretty straightforward: Install 60mm fan on MCP heatsink, install CPU, add TIM, install TRUE.... WAIIIIT a minute!
The TRUE is so large, that the 60mm fan (mounted slanted on the mobo heatsink) cannot fit. Great.
I guess I'll just use the standard fan adapter form the XFX board until my stage two cooling mod is ready to install.

Okay, next up is installing the PSU into the case. But something seemed fishy...

Great. There isn't nearly enough space for the GFX cards. This case is a nightmare. Thank god I didn't pay any money for it!
Ah well. Until I decide what case I' want, I'll just leave the system naked.

I installed a potentiometer for the two UK3000's on the TRUE, since they don't necessarily have to run at full speed (and volume) the whole time.

Unfortunately, I will later find out that this one tiny potentiometer cannot handle the power that is needed for two UK3000's, so I had to split up the line and use two of them instead.

As you may or may not see, the top GFX card is touching the sound card, which is never good. Just to be on the safe side, I did this rubberband mod to keep the cards straight:

So. Everything is mounted together (more or less neatly) and ready to be fired up. First and most importantly: update the BIOS with the bootable disc I burnt earlier today. The ISO was ready-to-use on the XFX website, nice.
Afterwards I used my bootable USB stick to let memtest run, as an initial stresstest for the RAM.

Well, I just let it run while I'm writing this, so this is how far I've gotten. I'll install Windows 7 x64 (build 7260) shortly and run more benches to see what the stock system is capable of. I'll keep you guys posted.