My new rig, finally

[sandness]

Here's my new rig

Gigabyte 965P-S3 mobo
E6300 @ 3.15GHz (so far)
2x1GB G.Skill HZ series PC6400 ram @900MHz
old nVidia 6600 gpu @ 550MHz core and ram
old Audigy 2 sound card
320GB Seagate SATA2
500w Fortron psu
Swiftech watercooling (2x120 rad, 6000 series cpu block, mcw30 gpu and homemade northbridge for now- more on that later)
Antec P180 case

Rig so far


Here's the story on the homemade chipset block. I bought a Zalman chipset waterblock along with some Coollaboratory liquid metal TIM a few months back. Having waited 2months for my cpu to arrive, I forgot that you shouldn't use this stuff with aluminum. So anyway, I apply the paste to the northbridge and mount the cooler. I prepare some other stuff and I hear a plick


Grrrrrr. Well, I can cobble a bracket together and make that work yet. Or not-


I see cracks, and a lil blackened oxidation where the contact piont was made. I honestly don't think that 2mins. of contact with the gallium in the Coollaboratories TIM would cause such cracks. But I may be wrong.


That was after 15mins. and having tried to clean off the surface with some acetone. The other tab on the oppisite side fell off just from handling it. Sorta acted like really cheap pot metal. I plan on writing Zalman a bad letter, as I don't want another Zalman block even if their warranty would cover it (which I doubt as the terrible oxidation was my fault.)

I guess I've learned my lesson. I shouldn't have saved $5 on the aluminum block and just went with another Swiftech block in the first place.

Since I wanted to get it built before christmas, I was able to cobble something together with hardware store goods. Here's my brass block (ugly, but does the trick)



I just got my Swiftech MCW60 block from newegg, but I'm going to hold on to it for a while. Although it would look a lil better, this seems to work fine and is solid. I dread the idea of draining my system and removing a bunch of crap just to swap out the block right now, after just getting it up and running.


As far as overclocking goes, I've got more I think. Currently it is running 450x7 @1:1 with the vdimm at 2.1v, everything else stock. I tested the ram and it goes to 1000MHz (500x6 @1:1, same voltages as above, 8.5hrs Orthos large FFT stable). So I need to read up on what to do next. I've owned too many Intel boards so its been a few years since I've even tried overclocking. So any tips would be appreciated.
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•Asus P5K SE •Q6700 •4GB G.Skill •BFG 512MB GeForce 8800GT
•Swiftech MCW6000 CPU block •MCP350 pump •MCW30 chipset block •2 x MCR120 rad
•Audigy II •Fortron 500w •24” Acer LCD •320GB Seagate SATA2 •200GB Maxtor SATA2

[Google]

[sandness]

She runs nice and stable right now at decent timings. I may have to work on kicking the timings down as I can't seem to pass 450x7.


Temps are definitely a huge improvement over both my old 3.4GHz P4 and 2.8GHz Pentium D.
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•Asus P5K SE •Q6700 •4GB G.Skill •BFG 512MB GeForce 8800GT
•Swiftech MCW6000 CPU block •MCP350 pump •MCW30 chipset block •2 x MCR120 rad
•Audigy II •Fortron 500w •24” Acer LCD •320GB Seagate SATA2 •200GB Maxtor SATA2

[Xal]

Looking pretty good dude, I woud just put on the stock nothbridge cooler again untill you have a new block for it, that brass thing doesn't look all that safe to me
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Phenom II x4 955 @ Stock
Asus M3N78-EM
4gb Corsair XMS2 DDR2 667 @ 800
1gb Powercolor Radeon HD 5850 @ Stock
X-fi Extreme Audio PCI E
Nexus 600W Silent PSU
Nexus Fans
Custom case

[2old2care]

I used that Coollab silver paint crap......every block I put it on has had it's surface "etched" for lack of a better term. Re-polishing a block versus the minimal performance gains, sent me straight back to good old AS5.

I think perhaps the fact that those blocks are cast instead of machined extruded aluminum may be the reason for the cracking, instead of just screwing up the surface.

Looks good, the use of the two rads is unique.
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Liquid-Cooled Q9450 and an EeePC
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