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[Buildlog] Stick's Monster 900-ZFX (900D) Crossfire Rig

8K views 76 replies 23 participants last post by  Nikola-Tesla 
#1 ·
Hello OCN
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Firstly before I start here there are a few things I want to say.

Cheers to all of you guys (and girls) here on OCN you have been so fantastic and welcoming to me since I have joined this site, this really is a great community and this worklog is a one way I would like to give back.

I would like to say thank you to a few folks who have helped me immensley, You should all know who you are
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1) The fantastic chaps over at Heatkiller/Watercool who sent me over a whole new set of bolts all the way from Germany for free after I discovered that some of the bolts were not usable due to being formed incorrectly. You guys have absolutely amazing service
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2) The awesome guys over at Performance PC's who put up with my endless (and most probably annoying) emails for several weeks and responding to every one of them very quickly and answering all my questions, I know I would have gotten quite annoyed if I were on the recieving end of those emails so I think a sincere thank you is in order here
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3) My local PC store TMG for setting my up with my hardware and fantastic service over the years (remember that tired old pc years ago
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) Thanks Guys, you have been so awesome.

4) The entire time my pile of parts was sitting on a shelf (5 months) I had been fretting over which PSU I should buy, I annoyed many people with myriads of very specific and annoying questions but I sincerely thank those people that I pestered for helping me with my PSU selection and for setting me straight when I got my silly ideas.
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5) Also if anyone who I borrowed a camera off (or who took some pictures for me) is reading this I thank you very much for your kindness.

6)And a thank you to Corsair (and corsairgeorge), for just being awesome and making awesome things
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No this is certainly not a corsair fanboy here, nothing to see, move along everybody, oh hey everybody look over there it's is a juggling dog in a tophat, how interesting.
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Now this is my first watercooled build, in fact it's my first full build I have ever done, so I have certainly jumped in the deep end here. I have had months to research this very thoroughly however we shall see how theory translates to practice so If you spot anything that I could improve (or something doing completely wrong
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) or have any pointers/tips I'll be very grateful for them
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Lets start with a little story

Ahem...

Now once upon a time a young lad walked into a local PC store to put together his first PC as he yet knew hardly anything about computer but liked to think that he did. Well, he left, computer in hands feeling quite chuffed. He thought this computer was very powerful. He much later learnt that by OCN standards a flattened loaf of bread would to be able to run a game faster than his rather half baked PC. This PC survived off kind donations and other hand-me downs as upgrades. Now by this point it could probably perform as well as the flattened loaf of bread, maybe even as good as an intact loaf if it wash pushed!

*

Specs of that PC as of now:
PSU: Coolermaster Silent Pro M 1000W
CPU: AMD Phenom X4 9550 CPU
MOBO: ASUS M2N MX-SE PLUS
RAM: 4GB Generic DDR2 800Mhz
HDD: Western Digital 650GB Blue
CASE: Generic
GPU: Sapphire HD4870 (was originally a nVidia 9500GT)

Well to be fair I actually got it to play Crysis 1 and GTAIV at playable Rates so it's actually pretty reasonable
I sort of forgot about PC's for quite a while. Then a good friend of mine built a pretty decent rig (what most of us on OCN would call a mid ranged build), that convinced me to get back in the scene so I started in january with buying a rather modest $600 Mobo/CPU/RAM upgrade. I then started looking at getting a closed loop cooler and bigger case to go with it (the Cosmos II). Then around this time I joined OCN and then I caught the custom watercooling bug, there was no turning back.

I did much research, I looked up chemistry charts, looked at the metals and design of waterblocks, Looked at what would be compatible, tube sizes, flow rates, temperatures, I researched almost everything there was to find out about watercooling.I must say that I now know infinitely more about watercooling and other related subjects than I did before. In fact completely coincedentally some of my research on galvanic corrosion for this water cooling loop appeared a month later in one of my exams. Winning
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I then started aquiring WC parts, and visualising the build in my mind. To arrive at what we have now

Soooooooooooo that is how a $600 upgrade has turned into this monster PC that we now have here.

Specifications of Build and Parts used in this Build
SPECS:
CPU: AMD FX-8320 8-Cores 3.5Ghz
GPU: Two Sapphire HD7950's 21196-00-20G Model with 7970 reference PCB
MOBO: ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z
RAM: 32GB G.Skill 1600MHz Ripjaws-X
HDD 1: Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB (Apps and OS)
HDD 2: Western Digital Green 2TB (Storage)
PSU: Corsair AX1200 1200W
CASE: corsair Obsidian 900D (well worth the wait)

WATER COOLING PARTS
2x MCP655 pumps (Laing D5)
Bitspower POM (Acetal) Dual D5 pump top
2x Bitspower Shining Silver Mod kits
4x Bitspower Double Rotary 90deg Shining Silver adaptor
24x Bitspower 3/8"-5/8" Shining Silver Compression Fittings
4x Alphacool G1/4 Bulkeads (not used as I forfeited the midplate)
2x Bitspower Shining Silver 45deg adaptors
4x Bitspower Shining Silver 90deg adaptors
1x Bitspower Shining Silver T-Block
4x Bitspower Shining Silver Stop Fittings
5x Bitspower Shining Silver Extenders of various lengths
1x Bitspower Shining Silver Small Adjustable SLI Link (Connect Reservoir to Pump)
2x Bitspower Shining Silver male to male Extender (well one is black nickel actually because they ran out of stock)
1x Bitspower Shining Silver rotary male to male extender
1x Phobya Valve
1x EK X-RES 3 250
1x EK Supremacy CPU Block Nickel and POM(Acetal)
1x EK C5F-Z Motherboard Block Nickel and POM(Acetal)
1x XSPC RX480 Radiator
1x XSPC RX360 Radiator
2x Heatkiller 79X0 Nickel GPU-X3 Waterblock
2x Heatkiller 79X0 GPU Backplate
1x Heatkiller GPU-X3 SlI/X-Fire Bridge
7x Corsair SP120 Quiet Edition Fans

OTHER
2x Bitfenix 30cm White LED Strips
1x Mod my toys Red Reservoir LED
2x mod my toys 8-way Molex to 3-pin Splitter Boards
1x Custom X-Fire Bridge Cover

Enough talking let's get started with the building; here are some pictures for your patience

Enjoy
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I only took a photo of one of my shipments:



Who likes math? 20 layers of black plastic and sore fingers later we have this:





Everything minus a few parts still in a parcel somewhere over the pacific:





The Fabled 900D
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It's quite massive

You could probably fit your average family home in this box, your murder victims.... or whatever other illegal contraband you please
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in this instance however we just have a 900D so no suprise there.


Turn it upside down


Wow!, I was looking at the box thinking that's got to be at least %50 foam but the case is nealy as big as the box itself


If anyone is thinking about getting this case I would say hands down you won't regret it, It's stunning and I must say quite large and from the limited time I have already spent with it it's extremely well made with some pretty smart features. I had heard about issues with the Plexi window getting damaged during shipping but I am pleased to say mine seems free of any defects so far.

Some more shots of the case:




I saw some nice macro shots on the 900D thread and I was pleased to find a macro function on the camera so I tried a few of my own.




I thought they came out pretty well
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Feel free to comment, I would love to know what you think.
 
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29
#2 ·
Unboxing the PSU:

Well Corsair would have you believe that the PSU is massive with another box that big enough to fit a house, yet the unit was smaller than I expected. Here we can see there are a nice selection of cables and fancy bags to put your PSU in, though I honestly see no reason as to why you would ever need a bag to put your PSU in seeing that it's going to spend it's life inside a PC case. I really appreciate how they actually used black cables instead of the multicolour madness on cheaper PSU's








Those cables ties are a nice addition so you can tie up your murder victims.... ahem..... cables

I tried some macro shots again, If you can't tell by now I really like these.




Mods, If there is anything that I shouldn't be putting in my posts let me know and I'll be happy to remove it.
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#3 ·
Sorry if splitting the posts up is annoying but it makes it miles easier for me to manage what I'm posting. Forgive me

So I then started assembling the parts on air cooling and plugged everything together:


A table of pure awesomeness





Nice of them to include this cable labelling kit but I really don't want to dirty up the look of my case :/




Ew get me a new pair of eyes Arrrrrgggg




Double the fun!


Did my first ever bios update which was suprisingly easy

I'll be checking the GPU's one at a time before I crossfire them


IT LIVES!
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Ohh lookie it lights up!, I have heard that that is for the shielding of the sound processor but I have doubts that the LED's actually do anything

MOAR MACROS! I really hope you like these pictures by now because I seem to be better at them

















Time to install windows since I don't have an SSD it's going on a 2 year old HDD that I used to use in my old computer, I plugged everything up and the windows installer booted, it was all dandy and fine until...

... "Windows could not detect any hard drives"
what's up windows you're being a pain again.
I loaded a bunch of drivers onto a USB and tried again... Still didn't install.
I then looked at the HDD and then realised I forgot to plug it in to the PSU. elementary
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Problem solved
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Not bad so far for a first build I reckon, more testing and assembly tomorrow
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I really appreciate it if you read all of this, if you didn't though I completely understand as it is quite long. I hope you enjoy this build, there are plenty more updates coming soon
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#6 ·
ooooooooooo this is insane dude. definitely looking forward to more!
 
#17 ·
Looks good! I'm surprised you were actually able to buy 2 reference cards at this point, they're very hard to find here in Europe, when I sold my GTX680 SLI and wanted to move to 2x HD7970, I had a very hard time finding them.
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I'll be subscribing to this build to see how it ends.
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#19 ·
Wow! this took of pretty quickly, but be assured there will be plenty of updates as I'm on holidays and there isn't a huge amount of stuff for me to do so I can focus on the build. Cheers for checking this out everybody
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kcuestag View Post

Looks good! I'm surprised you were actually able to buy 2 reference cards at this point, they're very hard to find here in Europe, when I sold my GTX680 SLI and wanted to move to 2x HD7970, I had a very hard time finding them.
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I'll be subscribing to this build to see how it ends.
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I was pretty lucky to get them, I got them from an Australian Retailer but it was still difficult to get them here, every week or so they would go out of stock then they would have only a couple of cards which would then disappear again after a few hours so it was a bit of a juggle to get hold of them, After I bought mine they dissappeared and I haven't seen them in stock since then
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nikola-Tesla View Post

subb'd

(for Great And Powerful 900D, that doesn't trust wheels)
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#22 ·
UPDATE #2


Got both cards running
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They both have a bit of coil whine, the card in slot one having a little bit more, I might swap them over to reduce the load a bit on the whinier one, I was aware that there might be coil whine with these cards when I bought them so not too concerned.

This doesn't come without problems though, I had several issues.

The PC suddenly had a BSOD when I was looking away, no programs were running at the time and it was just sitting on the windows Desktop, This was when one GPU was installed.

BSOD error

Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 3081

Additional information about the problem
BCCode: a0000001
BCP1: 0000000000000005
BCP2: 0000000000000000
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1

The cards seem to be working fine though

Another Issue I had was GPU-Z and CPU-Z were not detecting the details about the GPU like the number of Transistors, Memory, Fillrate, Shaders etc. they are not being displayed, Also GPU-Z was telling me that Crossfire was disabled yet It was enabled in the drivers and I still saw framerate nearly double in Furmark when I added the second GPU, I reinstalled the drivers and rebooted but no difference.


The AMD 13-4 WHQL drivers and Catalyst 13.6 have both been installed what's going on? I cannot seem to pinpoint the issue. I would appreciate it if anyone could help me out

CPU-Z won't tell me anything about the RAM or GPU either??


Furmark results, It's a small resolution but framerate seems on par to me
One GPU:


2 GPU's:


I want to sort out any issues before I go ahead and put waterblocks on everything, Once I can get this rectified I'll go ahead and put the waterblocks on.

If anyone has any solutions to any of my problems I would greatly appreaciate it.
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stickeelion View Post

It could be, I'm going to check with a newer version tonight but CPU-Z was giving me nothing on the GPU's too
These are versions from 2009, 7950 was launched in 2012
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Edit:
If it's not a freshly installed Windows - maybe try to test it on new system with stable drivers and updated monitoring tools.
Also I've heard so many urban legends here about furmark burning cards.. (but imma superstitious chicken)
 
#26 ·
coil whine can be worked out......

load up a screen on a game that pins the fps' really high.... (or one that just makes your cards chokes scream like a banshee)

leave it for a cppl days....

thats it.....when you come back you should notice the chokes are sooooooooooo much quieter.....

ive done this twice with no perceivable issues on an hd 7770 (an HIS passive cooled) and a ref. 6970
 
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