My new system.. with "how-to" on building/putting it together.. in progress..

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Here's the core of the build:



So.. lets check out that i7 965EE stock heatsink I won't be using for more than a few days.. an all-copper base with pre-applied thermal paste:

..and half-copper/half-aluminum heatsink fins:

..and here's the mobo:

..opened up:

..with SLI connectors and LED-lit backplate..

..and accessories.. LED poster, heatsink fan, 6x SATA cables, IDE cable, USB/Firewire plate, thermal sensors, and voltage test leads for a multimeter..

..a shot of the ports on the sound card that I won't be using. It's not a true X-Fi - there's no hardware processor. It emulates X-Fi functionality by using the CPU..

..and a shot of the card plugged in..

..here's the mobo with the EK X58/ICH10R and mosfet heatsinks hovering over their locations..

..12GB of Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600C8.. physically the same as DDR3-1866C9, so they're capable of extra speed quite easily..

..and the optical drives: an LG Blu-Ray burner / HD-DVD reader / DVD burner / CD-burner.. and a basic LG DVD burner with Lightscribe..

..the Corsair 1000W power supply.. with a TON of connectors to choose from..:

..and the back ports:

..and a comparison to a generic 300W power supply I'll be using to power the cooling/lighting systems..

..the battery backup for 4x monitors and 300w cooling/lighting power supply.. the main system battery backup (900W 1500VA) hasn't arrived yet..

..the 2x 300GB Western Digital Velociraptors to be RAID0'd..

..and the 2x Samsung 1TB hard drives..

..and the Lian Li hard drive racks with anti-vibration screws..



..here's the aftermarket top to the Laing DDC-3.2 waterpump (haven't received the pump yet), which will increase flow..

..and the EK waterblocks.. 2 smaller ones for the mosfets and a large one that covers the X58 northbridge and ICH10R southbridge..

..the radiator with a fan for size comparison..

..8x 120mm Yate Loon 2200rpm fans.. for now, 4 for the radiator and 4 for the case.. 0.3A/4W each.

..coolant.. blue & UV reactive..

..the Scythe Kaze Master fan controller / temp monitor.. able to handle 1A/12W per channel, so 2-3 fans per channel.


..the Scythe Kama Reader 45-in-1 media card reader.. and Bytecc USB/Firewire/eSATA hub.. both 3.5" bay devices..

..various electrical stuff for the case and dual power supply system..


- military switch with cover & blue LED: controls entire system power by turning on 300w power supply, and through a relay, allowing the 1000w system power supply to be powered on. The cover prevents accidentally shutting the entire system down, and the LED indicates the 300w cooling system is on.
- 2x 16mm vandal resistant button switches with blue LEDs: the computer's power button & power LED, and the computer's reset button & HDD LED.
- ATX power jumper: jumps the 300w power supply so it can be turned on without a motherboard attached to it.
- ATX power extension cable: extends the 1000w power supply cable so I can hack into it without damaging the main PSU cable.
- 12v 30A relay: relay the power-on signal from the 300w power supply to the #4 wire (green) of the ATX extension cable.
The reason for the wiring system is to keep the cooling/lighting system on a separate power supply so I can keep cooling components after I shut the system down.

[pinotnoir]

I have that CM HAF case and its pretty amazing. The best case I ever worked in. One thing you may take note of is the rampage motherboard only does raid once you set it to use a raid. Older stuff let you setup a raid and have regular drives too but now the raid controller only does raid once you set it to raid. I had to call asus about that. So it looks like your 1t drives will be raid0 or raid1. I have not started to overclock anything yet. Once you do that I would be interested in hearing the results.

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I have that CM HAF case and its pretty amazing. The best case I ever worked in. One thing you may take note of is the rampage motherboard only does raid once you set it to use a raid. Older stuff let you setup a raid and have regular drives too but now the raid controller only does raid once you set it to raid. I had to call asus about that. So it looks like your 1t drives will be raid0 or raid1. I have not started to overclock anything yet. Once you do that I would be interested in hearing the results.

The 1TB drives aren't intended to be RAID'd at all. I'm going to use one as a media drive and another for my terrain database compiling. The plan is to RAID three more 1TB drives once I purchase the 3ware 8-port RAID controller card.. and run 3 separate RAID arrays off this hardware RAID controller - 2x 300GB Velociraptors in RAID0, 3x 1TB Western Digital Black drives in RAID5, and 2x Intel X25-M SSDs in RAID0. One Samsung 1TB drive will be going into my media PC at that time, and the other may stay in this machine or migrate to the media machine as well. At any rate, the only RAID array now will be the 2x 300GB V'raps in RAID 0.

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I have that CM HAF case and its pretty amazing. The best case I ever worked in. One thing you may take note of is the rampage motherboard only does raid once you set it to use a raid. Older stuff let you setup a raid and have regular drives too but now the raid controller only does raid once you set it to raid. I had to call asus about that. So it looks like your 1t drives will be raid0 or raid1. I have not started to overclock anything yet. Once you do that I would be interested in hearing the results.

This isn't the way the ICH10R works with the Asus R2E.. I just tested it. Like all motherboards I've worked with, you have to change the IDE mode to RAID in the BIOS if you plan on using any RAID arrays from the on-board chipset, but that doesn't prevent you from creating two separate arrays of different type. I just configured my Velociraptors in a 600GB RAID 0 array, and I made a RAID 1 array from the 1TB Samsungs. You *can* do both. Or I could have created a 2TB RAID 0 array from them.. that's one huge logical drive. My main problem right now is the limited number of SATA ports. I'm going to just keep the one array of Velociraptors since I've also got 2 SATA optical drives (Blu-Ray burner & standard DVD burner), plus an SSD. For now, I'm going to leave off one of the optical drives until I get my media backed up, then one of the Samsung drives is heading to my media server.. so all 6 ports of my motherboard will be in use: 2x 300GB Velociraptors, 1TB Samsung, 64GB SSD, a Blu-Ray burner, and a DVD burner. I may end up purchasing that 3ware 8-port SATA RAID controller card sooner than I thought, especially since I've discovered the setting in the Asus R2E BIOS to manually configure the 2nd and 3rd PCI-x16 slots as either x16/x16/x1 or x16/x8/x8. Since the RAID controller is an x8 card, I don't want an x16 videocard dropping my hard drives down to x1 automatically. In case I can't make it clear enough.. I absolutely LOVE this motherboard. 12GB of memory at 1600MHz 8-8-8-24 is working smooth, settings that aren't defined as being possible in the manual. And I haven't even started overclocking. I'm holding off on that until the rest of my watercooling gear arrives.

From what I've been reading about various X58 boards and 12GB of memory compatibility, I'm extremely happy with Asus/Corsair for giving me no problems here.

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Crap. Forgot something. The military switch with cover that I had planned on using as my main power switch won't work, since it'll just be switching on the green->black power supply jumper, which uses very low voltage. That means the switch would technically work, but there won't be enough power to light the LED when the switch is on. So I'm adding something quite cool to *ensure* the cooling/lighting power supply doesn't get turned off on accident - something much better than just a cover.. a key switch!:


I'll use this to "enable" the main power supply, then the covered switch will turn on the relay to allow the main 1000w power supply to turn on. I'll post a wiring diagram eventually.

[sqeaky4100]

Few questions:

1) How much total did everything cost roughly? I mean damn, you got the BEST items in each category possible.

2) Which sound card do you plan on finally switching to? I'm planning on this one because it makes front audio a very simple solution, and the red glow of the card inside the case will be cool:

http://www.amazon.com/Express-Blaste...2186890&sr=8-4


3) What Mouse/Mouse Pad do you use? Along with my new build, I'm upgrading these 2 items... Ive been thinking about the new Razer Mamba mouse, but I can't decide on what Mouse Pad to use.

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Few questions:

1) How much total did everything cost roughly? I mean damn, you got the BEST items in each category possible.

2) Which sound card do you plan on finally switching to? I'm planning on this one because it makes front audio a very simple solution, and the red glow of the card inside the case will be cool:

http://www.amazon.com/Express-Blaste...2186890&sr=8-4


3) What Mouse/Mouse Pad do you use? Along with my new build, I'm upgrading these 2 items... Ive been thinking about the new Razer Mamba mouse, but I can't decide on what Mouse Pad to use.

1. Enough. Although I do have a few connections to heavily reduce prices on a few components.

2. I'll be moving my PCI X-Fi Elite from my Q6600 machine to this one. Eventually, if I end up going with the Killer M1 NIC, I'll put the PCI X-Fi Elite back in my Q6600 and get an X-Fi Titanium Champion.

3. I'll continue using my G15 rev.1 keyboard, G9 mouse, and Steelpad S&S mousepad. Without a doubt, I'd buy these 3 all over again.. especially the mouse.. I love the weight system and wide grip.

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Another box arrived:

IC Diamond 7 thermal paste..
Lian Li dual PSU bracket..
Koolance 200mm 550mL 4xG1/4" port reservoir with mounting brackets..

So far, I've been very impressed with the quality of the EK, Feser, and Koolance products. They definitely have that made-in-Germany feel over a made-in-China feel.

I'm currently running this new rig in my old Lian Li PC-70B case temporarily.. going very smooth with no issues so far using 12GB of RAM at 1600MHz and 2x 300GB Velociraptors in RAID 0..

The current plan is to test the entire water system for a 24-48 hour leak check without being installed in a machine during this coming week once the pump, fittings, tubing, and cpu block arrive. Unless I have to work overtime, I'll begin the case build next weekend.

[sqeaky4100]

When you raid 0 2x Velociraptors, are you getting 600gb, or 300gb?

Because earlier you said 600gb, and it had me a bit confused... because I thought you only get 300gb

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RAID 0 is striping for performance. There is no loss of space. RAID 1 is mirroring for redundancy.
So 2 drives in RAID 0 = the size of drive A + B. (since you're not using extra space - you're splitting data between two drives)
And 2 drives in RAID 1 = the size of one drive. (since everything you write to one drive has to be copied to the other drive)
My 2x300GB Velociraptors are 600GB in RAID 0, or 300GB if I chose to RAID 1 them.

Since KB, MB, GB, TB all use base-2 numbering (instead of our standard base-10), the GB "display" of space for what is "labeled" as a 300GB drive is more like 275GB. 2x300GB Velociraptors in RAID 0 are sold as 2x300GB drives, but technically they're around 559GB in RAID 0. This has nothing to do with formatting or RAID.. it's how numbers are converted in binary. When you purchase a drive, it usually says on the box why they're labeling the drive as "300GB" by stating that 300GB = 300,000,000,000 bytes.

Here's an example on a small level:
Since a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes and not 1000, a "1 KB" drive (1,000 bytes) would only display as .976 KB (1000/1024). The same goes for MB, GB, and TB. So, depending on the definition, 300GB may not be 300GB. Since all drive makers go by the 300GB = 300,000,000,000 bytes way of thinking in base-10 (decimal) numbering, there's nothing unexpected here when Windows is calculating 300GB in base-2 (binary) numbering. This is why my 1TB Samsung drives only display 931.51GB total space in Windows. It's calculating GB in base-2 (binary), not base-10 (decimal) as described by the drive manufacturer.