New Intel Build Since After Waiting Six Years

It is the Mountain Mods U2-UFO. He mentioned it briefly in the first post...

Awesome case with plenty of room.
 
Protip: Use Imgur next time instead of Photofuckit. Hell. Even Dropbox would have been an improvement.
 
techrat said:
Protip: Use Imgur next time instead of Photofuckit. Hell. Even Dropbox would have been an improvement.
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Imageshack is pretty good too. They have a very handy uploader desktop app that will even resize the images on the fly. If you use the app, you don't have to go to their site at all and it logs you in automatically.
 
I'm curious as to why 2 x 590's when 1 x 590, 2 x 580's, 1 x 6990 or 2 x 6970's would do the exact same thing plus allow for overclocking????

and also change your pic hosting. Photobucket is saying that you have exceeded your bandwidth limit so i can't see anything... :(
 
Awesome work. I'm installing my first watercooling kit in my case this weekend, but am still jealous of your super clean build. I know mine won't end up looking that nice.

What I am actually interested in is that desk you have. I've been looking for something like that for my music setup. If you could share what it is and where you got it, that would be appreciated!
 
Nice Rig, I have now built 4 high-end watercooling systems in the Mountain Mods rigs. I actually backed down on my new rigs now and use more conservative rigs. Still, I really like the MM cases. My main problem is that I don't have as much space for them and its a pain to carry to LAN parties. The one I designed for my friend uses the Duality case with quick connect fixtures. I don't know what life was like before the quick connects, so much easier to organize the cooling loops. I tend to get higher powered pumps in serial for them though to make up for the slight added resistance in the water loops.
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I too was thinking about quick connects, but I don't change out my loop very often (maybe once our twice per year), and in which case I think it's a better tradeoff for high water flow + low head pressure with no quick disconnects. I was also thinking of using a higher pressure pump, but in the end of the day, it really doesn't make a difference on your temps. The only major impact on your CPU temp is thermal drive through ambient delta. For example, if you want to operate your CPU at 80C load, you can through ten rads at it with fans spinning at max, and it will never go below 80C - and that's because of thermal physics. If you want it to go lower, you need to drive down the ambient temp ( either by making it snow in your room or chill your liquid loop ).

is that a joke? the AMD Radeon HD 6970 series really rocks.
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No joke. NVidia > AMD / ATI. The hardware is better, the software is better, the company is better, the people are better, the marketing is better, the community is better. Not sure what else to say about it. But things can change in Silicon Valley, it's just taking AMD a long effing time to turn things around.

Very nice system. What is the case you are using? It's the only thing I didn't see in your list of parts. Thanks for the great build pics and progress.
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Mountain Mods U2-UFO with the Opti-1203 front panel with horizontal MB brace and standard triple back.

why did you go with the p8p67 pro? it is a great mb (i have one), but you are running two 590. why not something with nf200 chip?
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It was the best board which was completely compatible with the OCZ RevoDrive 3. The FPS gains between 8x and 16x for the games I play are insignificant.

i cant find it..what case is this???
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Mountain Mods
 
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I'll RE-UP the pics very soon. I hit my bandwidth limit on Photobucket!!

You'll have to wait a month before the pics are back =(.
 
Okay pics should be back up. Might take awhile to clear it past the proxy caches.
 
What I am actually interested in is that desk you have. I've been looking for something like that for my music setup. If you could share what it is and where you got it, that would be appreciated!
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It's a Hard OCP workstation favorite - the Ikea Jerker. Unfortunatley his exact model has been discontinued. But IKEA still has very similar designs under a different name.
 
jpongin said:
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My setup (sig) has the same idle temps with only a Dark Knight. I would think there would be some benefit to idle temps with a full wc setup, right?
 
Hostile said:
My setup (sig) has the same idle temps with only a Dark Knight. I would think there would be some benefit to idle temps with a full wc setup, right?
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It kind on how the WC is set up, but yes. All things equal, it should be quieter and have lower GPU temps. The OC ceiling should be higher as well.
 
My setup (sig) has the same idle temps with only a Dark Knight. I would think there would be some benefit to idle temps with a full wc setup, right?
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You're correct. At idle, most components are "resting" at the same temps on any WC setup. However at load, that's when your surface area begins to matter. For example, If I have a single 120mm rad trying to transfer heat from 4 GPUs and 1 CPU loaded, my room better be snowing or my fan better be powerful enough to throttle a small Cessna because my surface area is so small. However, if I had 4 triple 120mm rads, my surface area to transfer heat is much larger, so I wouldn't need much power to push air - my build can be near silent. In theory, if you threw enough rads (surface area) at your loop (say 50), you wouldn't need any fans at all - convection should be enough to dissipate the heat to near WC ambient ratio.
 
Great looking machine! Quick question - the acrylic you have on the front of the Mountain Mods case covering the drive bays, is that custom or from Mountain Mods? I don't use any drives in those bays on mine and have been wanting to cover that with acrylic as well.

Thanks! Great work!
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Thanks! Yes those are custom order from Mountain Mods. The internal bay covers just look too ugly. It's about $20-25 depending if you are near or far from the west coast.
 
So quick update after breaking in this rig for a couple of weeks:

2600k Overclocking
I followed Juan's guide ( http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1578110 ), who's the ASUS technical specialist, on overclocking the 2600k and was able to clock it at 4.9Ghz 24/7 stable with these settings:

VCore - 1.50
Multiplier - 49
Base Clock - 100
Temps - 35C idle / 75C load

I did push it to 5Ghz, but Prime95 died after about 2 hours.

GTX 590 Quad SLI
Unfortunately I couldn't play BF3 at Ultra Settings Preset on my 30" @ 2560x1600 native resolution. The main culprit was MSAA. The VRAM is simply maxed beyond 1.5GB when MSAA is enabled. Any other lower resolution worked fine. After talking to a few people, BF3 demands at least 2GB VRAM to play at those settings on a 30" native res. I had to disable my MSAA and instead use NVidia's post FXAA for smoothing out the edges - although I would've liked to use both, it just wasn't meant to be.
 
Very informative thread. I just read through it all. I am starting my Mountain Mods Plateau build today. It won't be as big of a beast as yours but none-the-less, a stout lil desktop HTPC / Gaming Rig. I got the exact same black wrinkle powder coat finish that you have. Mountain Mods FTW.
 
DisrupTer911 said:
I thought dual GPU cards like the 590 couldn't SLI?

Am i wrong in that thinking?
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Yes. You can SLI up to 4 components, but its up to the MB how much bandwidth is allowed for SLI so generally they only allow Double or Triple cards. That being said the 590 acts as a single card, so there is enough bandwidth to run 2 of them in most SLI MBs. Which gives you a Quad SLI setup.
 
Very informative thread. I just read through it all. I am starting my Mountain Mods Plateau build today. It won't be as big of a beast as yours but none-the-less, a stout lil desktop HTPC / Gaming Rig. I got the exact same black wrinkle powder coat finish that you have. Mountain Mods FTW.
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Nice! Love the black wrinkle powder coat - and it's cheaper than the blander black brushed aluminum.
 
Yeah so far I'm super happy with the performance especially with NVidia's latest drivers for the 590s. I'd say the Xonar Sense w/ the Sennheiser PC350s and the RevoDrive 3 are my favorite components... oh and the case.

I think the next game I'll throw at it is Crysis 3.
 
Upgraded my audio from the Xonar Xense. I love the Xense, but it's time for me to move on to the Beyerdynamics DT 880 Pros 250 ohm with the Magni / Modi Schiit stack

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Very nice work in making the watercooling setup clean and simple looking. That u3011 is so beautiful!
 
Well, just ordered a pair of these bad boys to replace the 590's... you guys were awesome, but it's time to find a new home.

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* New GPU's! The EVGA GTX 780 Hydro Copper SLI - It's time for BATTLEFIELD 4
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Well, at 2560x1600, the GTX 780 SLI's absolutely destroy BF3 (64/64 intense firefight choke points) and Bioshock Infinite. I'll be redeeming my free copy of Metro: Last Night and re-install FC3 to test it out there again too.

**UPDATE: You cannot redeem a copy Metro: Last Night with the purchase of any 700 series because dropping $1700+ on graphics cards is not enough to qualify you as an enthusiast gamer who should be aggressively marketed to.

I can tell you that @ 2560x1600 VSync'd 60Hz, PCIe 2.0 doesn't matter. I have the GTX 780 Hydro's 2-way SLI on an Asus P8P67 Pro w/ 2600k @ 4.6Ghz, and they are destroying anything I throw at it.

The one exception is Far Cry 3 at 8xMSAA the game's FPS dips to the mid 50 FPS range. I had to crank it down to 4xMSAA (while leaving everything else at highest settings) for a smooth 60FPS. Vram was around 1.5 - 2.0 GB, so it wasn't a Vram issue.

Bioshock Infinite ran completely smooth throughout - there were some parts of the game where Vram hit 2.5GB. This concerns me a bit because it makes me wonder if 3GB Vram will be enough for next gen titles like BF4.

Overclocking: Using Precision X, I was able to max my overvoltage and power without any issues. I was also able to bench 3DMark FireStrike at core 50+ offset and mem 50+ offset all day long. HOWEVER, it was completely unstable in real games. Far Cry 3 was especially unstable to any overclocking. So for gaming, it's best to just use what EVGA clocked it at.

The arrival and unpacking - so much power in such a plain brown box.

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The angle shots. They are as long as my 590s... just oozing with cuda cores.

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Disconnecting the backside, and moving The Rig out to the middle of the room for easy swapping.

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Removed clear acrylic panels and assessing the best way to drain this thing.

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Awe yeah, using New Castle to cool my digestive system.

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590's are out. It turns out that the original SLI compression fittings will not fit the Hydro Copper blocks since they blocks make the gap between the two connections narrower. Luckily I purchased SLI water block connectors during the original build, and one of them works!

780's are in!! I had to select a different SLI tubing path, but it works and it fits. Leak test passed... can't wait to fire these babies up!

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Firing up!

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And cleaned up my desk to focus more on gaming since I have very little time to do it - so when I do... I want to make sure it's intense.

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shadyqwerty said:
I didn't think Metro Last Light came with 700 series?
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I did not =(. I just checked... I *assumed* it did since the actual copy stated, "Dominate Metro: Last Light with EVGA GeForce GTX, get the game free."

Misleading much?
 
After buying two hydro copper 780's you can probably afford to buy Metro LL lol.
 
rofl...still, AMD offers 2 top tier games for a $200 GPU. These things are what? $800? The least they can do is give him some games.
 
AMD wasn't offering free games when the 7970 first released and how much did it cost? Just saying. :D
 
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