[Sponsored] Temple of Fusion - All Your Transistors Will Bow to Me - Page 25

Sorry for going dark for awhile. My health turned south and was not doing well. I had to take another leave of absence from work again. But there is a silver lining to this dark cloud. By chance, I found a drug that turn everything around. Also it took care of the pain. The doctors are still trying to figure things out, but a least we have a major clue on what is happening to my health.

Now that I am feeling a little better, I finally got the computer up and running with the water cooling. It took about 13-14 tries to get everything working. Murphy, I hate your damn law. About half of the tries were my fault, but the other half was due other problems I had no control over with. In the end, I found a nice way to get all the air out of the system and the computer is working great, excepted for one of the 1TB drives is dieing. Also I have to get a 90 degree USB cable for the liquid cooled controller, so I can put on the brass cover.



You can tell from the pic, I took a lot of the brass off. It was getting scratched up and dirty. While I wait for a new HDD and USB cable, going to clean up all the brass. I have the top in the garage. The brass is all re-polished, and just need to but it back on. Hopefully I should have everything done in a couple of weeks.

Stay Tuned

Thanks.

Quick Update: 12/18/2011

One of the 5970 cards had a fault or short in it. It blew out the motherboard, which sucks. I had to tear everything down again. I got a new 5970 card, and luckly found the same model of my Gigabyte 790fx motherboard. The board allows the SB to be water cooled, while having two 5970 cards. Also I got the two new 20A 120V circuit wired up. Plus ran a CAT5e cable from the router/switch for fast internet. There is nothing better then wired internet for a desktop.

Hopefully I will get some pics up soon.

Slowly Making Progress - 2/24/2012

Sorry for taking a long time for the update. My medical conditions are taking a large toll on me. The pain has been significantly been reduced, but still is a problem with the stimulator. However, chronic fatigue has been a major problem. With the stimulator, I was able to get off the pain meds, but the fatigue was still there. Originally we (doctors & I) thought the fatigue was a side affect from the large amounts of pain killers I was on. But getting off the pain killers, the fatigue got worse. The doctors do not know what it is, but guessing it is fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue syndrome. Because of the fatigue was so bad, I couldn't return to work. With no return date to go back to work and being on medical leave for so long, I finally had to go onto total disability. I have filed for social security disability and got another year through my long term disability insurance. The good thing is that if I get social security disability, the the long term disability will cover me until I am 65 years old. So I am extremely happy with my coverage. It has been very hard on me, especially giving up my job at AMD. I really loved my career and will miss it greatly.

Anyways, lets get to the update on the case. With the fatigue, it has greatly reduced my work on the case. But the good news, I have the computer running with all the water cooling. In the last update, one of my 5970 cards died, so I got another one off the internet. The bad thing was it was defective, and I had to deal with returning the card through eBay. The eBay seller dragged his feet every chance he got, and it took almost 2 months before I got my money back. Then I bought another second card again, and it has been working great.

I have been doing some overclocking of the CPU, GPUs and memory with some good success. The CPU never gets above 35C and the GPUs never get over 40C. So I have really been happy with the overclocking. Also games look amazing with the two 5970 cards.
The bad thing is that the brass has tarnished a lot during the multiple computer tare downs and re-builds. I finally took all the brass pieces off to clean them and re-polish them. Currently I am almost done cleaning all the brass. Then can move on to the re-polish, which is much faster. Also, I got the top done, but need to re-assemble it.

Here are some pics of the computer in its current state. You can see the computer with all its brass. I had to cut some of the peripheral tops to make them fit. Also, you can see the case with all the outside brass taken off. Looks bare, but it should look awesome again with all the shiny brass.

Thanks for the kind words on the build. This adventure has definitely tested my patience and strength (mentally and physically).

The stimulator has been working great, but has a limited on how much pain it controls. The pain goes through cycles, and the stimulator can control it when it is low or med. It has been the best thing for pain so far. Being on pain killers sucked. I do feel like a cyborg a little. Also, I will say hello to the Sarif guys (just start playing Dues Ex).

One thing with the medical industry, it takes a long time to get anything done. Sometimes it takes months to see a specialist. It took almost three months to get a spinal tap test done and get results. I have great health insurance and great doctors, but it is just the process of scheduling and medically billing.