My latest voodoo projects

Just tell me when.

Does it have duel 80mm fans or is it the single fan variant? I am trying to pick out some components but voodoo made it with 2 different rear fan configurations apparently.

It never fails to amaze me how much dust builds up in the omen compared to my lian li v2000 system. Yesterday when I had it apart for its cleaning. I think I fixed that annoying vibration (again because it returned after 3 days last time) It turns out that the screws that hold the plastic hdd rails to the metal were too tight which for some reason was vibrating with my hdds. I loosened the one side I could easily get to and hand tightened it and it has yet to return. We will see though in a few days.

Looks like twin fans.

Honestly, you are going to find some substantial dust in mine. I have not cleaned it out in some time. Granted, you are going to be gutting the case anyway.

Up until I stopped using it, I used to dust my Voodoo inside and out at least once a week. Yes, I have issues . . .

So do I. I am lazy.

Thanks, Now I know I can fit 2 duel 80mm rads. One on the duel intake fans in the front and another in the back. While id still prefer duel 120mms or even triples I think 2 80mms should be able to cool a cpu and hopefully sli. Maybe L_C would be kind enough to give me his thoughts if hes still active.

I should take some pictures of the front and back panels for you.

Iago wrote:I should take some pictures of the front and back panels for you.

Yes, Yes you should. Does anybody around here have any experience with ek water blocks? I have heard some good things about them but I was wondering out of ek, swift tech and danger den which is the best brand. I will have to google for a comparison before purchasing anything.

I've used EK blocks on a cpu and gpu before, about a 1.5 years ago. no problems, good temps.

God help me, but you know; I kind of like Koolance a lot.

Trying to wish the koolance plauge on me are you?

The last thing I heard about koolance is that they use narrow barbs on there products which restricts flow and leads to higher then necessary temperatures. The only thing that scares me more then koolance is cooler master.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRLEOg0R7HU

I am not going to lie and say that is all cooler masters fault. That guy is an idiot for running the cheapest kit he could find.

The water block was half plastic (It doesn't take a genus to figure out that after a number of heating/cool down cycles it will start to warp ever so slightly until it forms a leak.) I like the part when he formed asumptions about water cooling based on the cheapest kit he could find. I am not going to lie and say that I think water cooling is 100% leak proof or that mine will never leak. It is the equivalent to buying a watch. You can't bad mouth rolex because you were stupid enough to buy one of those cheap Chinese rolox knock off watches and it died in a months time. The only person that claimed using a half plastic water block was a good idea was cooler master. If this was my system you can bet that cooler master would either pay to replace all of my components or I would start writing in to all of the pc enthuest magazines about my experence with both cooler masters products and support and how no fault of mine they took out an otherwise respectable pc.

I know what you guys are thinking the voodoo desktops use to leak all of the time. We could point the finger at those monkeys that delivered it to our door but I happen to of one that leaked from the seam on the water block (The one that's spectacular failure sealed its fate becoming mine) So defective higher end components are manufactured I guess it comes down to the luck of the draw.

I did draw the usual conclusion from my rant. Go with the company that offers the best warranty on failed components and damage caused by said components. Thanks PO.

On an unrelated note I got around to trimming the chrome sheets to fit my logos last night when I was cleaning my system. It looks awesome.



Not bad looking for a stripped out gaming pc with burned wiring. Now if I could just get some white led lighting in there my voodoo experience would be complete.

You said blocks, not fittings I mostly use Bitspower fittings.

Well I tore down the vigor d900k last night. The motherboard looked a bit charred in one area but it turned out to just be dust as the person that owned this thing did not believe in compressed air apparently. I did find all of the missing video card standoffs inside of the laptop when I tore it down but after I got the board out I noticed another problem. The standoffs were originally soldered to copper pads, When the stand offs got torn off so did the pads. Therefor what did the previous owner do? They tried to reattch them to the motherboard with glue. In order for this thing to have any hope of being right I am going to have to drill the positioning holes for the original standoffs a bit bigger and install desktop standoffs using a nut to secure them on the other side (I believe I stole this idea from k-tron) It took me a while but I scraped all of the glue off of the motherboard. It amazes me that some people out there are so stupid they think that super glue is going to hold a heatsink this heavy in place. I might as well experiment with this board before writing it off and pulling the dc jack off to fix my 5.3.

The k came with another sata hdd cable which is good because the one in my 6.2s is damaged and only sees 1 hard drive. So far I used the cable to set my 6.2s up running sata raid with 2 toshiba 160gb hdds. Now for the big news. I tested the 7950 gtx and it works great. I swapped the 7800 back in for now because I need to pick up some more thermal compound. The video card must have been replaced a long the way because the po never peeled the protective tape off of the thermal pads before installing it. Lucky no damage was done to the card as a result of their stupidity.

I will continue to mess with the board once I get the standoffs in place. I am feeling lucky after pulling the working 7950gtx out of it.

Well long story short I did a quick mock build this morning to see if I could get any signs of life out of the board before wasting time working on the standoffs. I had to keep pressure on the video card during testing to keep it seated. The K did post but no matter what I do it will not see the raid controller. The cpu fan also continued to run after the power was turned off via the power switch. Both of which are symptoms I am all too familiar with from messing around with dead d900 boards. I think that this one is done...

I just finished looking at the service manual for the k and I find it odd that they do not have the raid controller chip identified like they do in the t service manual. I know for a fact that this board is suppose to have raid though. There is even an option for it in the bios.

I was just investigating it further and the t uses promise fasttrak raid where as the k uses a via raid chipset. None the less there should be firmware menu to configure the array. I will have to look into this more Mainly because this is my first k.

Silly question, but if you suspect the board is dead, why even fuss the RAID issue?

The board is seemingly working. If I could get the raid working it is just a matter of repairing the broken video card standoffs.

I have been down this route before though. Somebody gave me a d900t v6.1 board for free that also would not see the raid controller. I stared at that board for many hours with a magnifying glass and a multimeter and and I could not find the source of the problem. I ended up biting the bullet and getting a brand new 6.2s which is still working great to date.

I got thermal gel for the 7950 today and installed it into said 6.2s earlier today and so far its working great.

Did you use the Diamond?

Nope I have to order more since apparently the reason I cant find it is I finished it. For now I used thermal take compound.

And here is some stuff from when I tested it

https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img535/7787/dsc01687l.jpg

https://s383.photobucket.com/albums/oo279/ss87622/?action=view&current=MOV01690.mp4

Speaking of Guybrush its almost TLAPD 11'

Just a quick update. I reflashed the bios with R09 and now the k is seeing the raid controller. Now to fix the video card standoffs...



That will show it to mess with me...

East wrote:
Speaking of Guybrush its almost TLAPD 11'

Terrytown, Lousiana Area Police Department, division 11? What do they have to do with Guybrush?

Just a quick update before I go to bed. I know I already told you guys I got the motherboard drilled out but I never posted the photo:



After the standoff threads are trimmed down so that the palm rest fits on the laptop I will install them back on the motherboard and solder the nuts to the copper pads so that they are grounded. I may even tighten up the standoffs and put a drop of solder on the threads so that they do not back out although it is probably better not to in case somebody tries to tighten them in the future...

I am going to call the motherboard saved though without further addo here it is running on its own.



I bought what was suppose to be a parts machine and resurrected it at no additional cost. That is one of my favorite things to do when I can pull it off. And no I didn't stop there I went ahead and resurrected the dvd burner that was suppose to be dead. Turns out it just needed the lens cleaned.

I still need to trim the standoffs down so the palm rest actually fits and attach the heat spreader standoffs. I was going to solder them but upon closer inspection they appear to be plastic. I think I know just the stuff to reattach them with though so we will see.

I am quite satisfied with this purchase. What is a broken parts machine to somebody is a fully working pc to others...

I take it ADOR is eagerly awaiting for me to finish repairing the board. I have to admit I am kind of attached to it now after the dermal experience and all

Well if I don't get it, it will be ok. lol. I have seen a string of alienware dt9's pop up on ebay though I think bestbuy 13 outlet, they have several 12,13,14 etc. They take machines that are turned in from companies and pull drives, do a quick test and re-sell them, I got my toughbook cf-30 from them for 271, they usually go for right at a grand on ebay normaly. So I know they won't be trying to hide anything, just bulk resale of lease, old pc's from companies and goverment. The dt9's have been going for 78 to 130 bucks each with no harddrives. The have sold at least 30 so far and have about 10 more up, thinking of snagging one if you didn't decide to sell that board.

Looks good, East. By the way, I will post a review of my Digital Storm laptop this weekend. I am going to be pretty busy with Village Board activities (we are hiring a new administrator) but I want to make time.

I have seen the d9t's you speak of. Most of them have a 3.8ghz cpu as well. If you decide to go that route I would try to get one that says Alienware on the lcd bezel such as this one. Those were part of the final production run and thus should have higher revision motherboards.

I know you said that performance is not that big a concern of yours but it would be nice if you could upgrade video cards down the road without rebuilding the entire laptop.

I watched that d901c parts machine end yesterday but ultimately decided not to rebid because it was going for way more then it was worth. I have seen somebody trying to sell a perfectly working one for $600 buy it now. By that logic a non working one with a dead video card and a probably dead motherboard is not worth $320 despite the stack of untested mxm video cards...

Its too bad too because I thought that the d901c finally fell to the point where it could run most modern games but was cheap enough to purchase and piece back together. I guess that would still be the t/k series.

I think I will keep an eye out for a K model even if I do get one of these, What video cards were available for upgrade so I can start looking for those too. I have a M9750 with a single 8700 so I do have a good newer machine at home. The reason I am not pushing that hard for performance is there is a lot of games I have missed through the years. I didn't even play Halo CE until about 3 to 3.5 years ago and now it's one of my favorites games, haven't played half life any. Haven't got that far in FEAR yet. Just got a lot of catching up to do.

I just listed my d870p parts machine as part of my effort to clean out some older stuff I no longer want. It will be interesting to see if there is still a market for 1st gen clevo parts machines.

If it dose not sell I may try and list the lcd off of it but ultimately it will probably end up down in my basement for future spare parts. I like how every clevo built to date seems to use the same screws through out most of the laptop.

You really missed out not playing half life. I would recommend playing them in order just so that you can follow the story but I will be the first to admit I loose patients with the original one quickly. I really enjoyed hl2-ep2 though. I really wish they would release ep3 or just save it and make another really large game like hl2 and call it hl3.

It is pissing me off that valve seems to have shifted there focus away from single player games to these stupid coop multiplayer games like left 4 dead. Don't get me wrong I do enjoy a good game of l4d but they are few and far between. It is to the point that I only play when I am invited by a friend to be on his team. Joining public games just to get mic spammed or have some toolbag jump off the building at the start of the map gets old quickly. I really miss single player gaming and developers that actually took pride in there games such as rareware. These days it is all about spewing out a piece of crap every year and expecting people to blindly pay $60 for it. (Activision's Call Of Duty and EA's NFS series are 2 great examples of this)

I really feel that with the introduction of such advanced hardware the focus of game developers have shifted from making a fun playable game to trying to make an ultra realistic simulation. While its all well and good to have good graphics I feel that the developers need to realize that without a decent game behind it its pointless. If you notice games keep getting shorter and shorter and the price keeps going higher and higher. I think its time for the game industry to experience a 2nd death and rebirth (The atari 2600-NES being the 1st one)

Ah, Half-Life. I enjoyed the original and I only find it a bit stale now because it is dated. Still, it was revolutionary for the time. Half-Life 2 and its sequels are still fun. Portal, of course, rocks. I've never played the Left 4 Dead games.