Gretings and introductions!

My biggest issue right now is how sexy Tri-SLi looks in this case... it is VERY hard not to pounce on some of the lower pricing of the 680 Classifieds (~$490 with mail-in rebate each, ~$1470 for a trio, just shy of 2x 780 Classys, more vRAM and slightly less cudacores)

But I think I can hold it together for another month.  

Regarding the odd damage to the upper corner to the MB:

http://img.gfx.no/725/725128/knapper2.jpg

Looks like no capacitor or diode at that location? unsure what those little circles on the MB are...

You had it right before, They are points for volt monitoring

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/ASUS-Rampage-III-Extreme-Motherboard/1006

So, this has been a comedy of errors - the latest issue is the thermal paste - Indigo Xtreme.

To use it, I need to burn it in - running 6 Prime95 instances and Speedfan charting core temps, with the pump OFF for 5 min, to watch the temps spike, then drop as the material flows, then rise again, before turning the pump back on and cooling the thermal material to set it.

This is going to be difficult, as I have not yet installed the OS in this new build...  


Looking to potentially setup a Live CD using UBCD4win (if I can find my WinXP install disk), which should come prepackaged with P95 and Speedfan, but its something I've never done before.


So, that's thermal issues with the new GPUs, the RP-950 springing a leak on dissasembly, the new RP401x2 needing to re-use the Pump's o-ring (and a new o-ring needed as a result), The wrong backplate shipped with the CPU waterblock, The beautiful sleeving of the 3-pin fan extensions making them impossible to run the way I want (will need 2 more), the new RP401X2 not being able to be inserted from behind the drivebays (front of res is wider than derivebays to fill gap in front) and now the thermal material needing an OS per-installed... oh, and the thermal material calls for the system to be on its side the whole time the thermal material is heating/cooling... so I'll need to build the water loop TWICE - once with the res outside the case to run the burn-in, then drain and re-route the lines to the final location in the drivebays, refill and re-run leak and pressure tests...

 

Well damn. Sucks you have to drain the res to mount it.

Good news:  Koolance said running the new res on its side will work (the old res would not have) - no building twice for me!

Great news: I was able to locate and set up a live (bootable) CD from UBCD4win that will run Speedfan and Prime95, so I can boot from the CD and not worry about fouling the Indigo Xtreme reflow process.

Typical News: Of course as I finished wiring I ran into the small issue of not being able to run the PCI-E power cables cleanly to the GPUs (not enough or large enough holes under the MB tray), but more importantly, The Rampage III Extreme has a low, sideways mounted Molex power connector that simply does not have clearance between the MB bottom edge and the floor of the MB chamber.  A 90-degree low profile Molex adapter is enroute from Frozen CPU - I expect at this point I have spent enough on shipping to have been able to get a new netbook too... *sigh*



Some minor modifications using a drill press:


Passthrough to make up for the R3E having less internal USB headers than I need plus a new location for the light switch!


Last night, finally looking like I made some headway.  Nice and clean, save for the PCI-E power cables (not in this picture):


Tonight: Pizza, beer, tubes, and distilled water.


This counts as making your own tools, right?


A clamp, a fitting, lets hope it doesn't leak!

gdmaddog wrote:

A clamp, a fitting, lets hope it doesn't leak!

Damn never seen anybody do that with ginger ale before

looks to be coming along nicely.

Hrm, as it sits and percolates out all the bubbles, I'm torn.

I had originally thought I would go with a clear ("Invisible blue" uv) fluid, but the crystal clear tubing is... boring.

Now I'm wondering if one of the Mayhems Pastel colors would work. I'm leaning a bit towards Black but White or Green might work, the former feels like "Android Blood" to me (thanks, Alien), and the green has that toxic waste feel... but Black really feels like it could tie this all up in a nice understated look without going so understated as to be boring, unnoticed clear.


Any thoughts?

over half the fan headers are failed, and its acting like the CMOS battery is dead if I with off power despite a new battery. Secured another used R3E and will swap them out next weekend...

Finished, but decided the Asus MB fan headers don't go low enough, with these fans only spooling down to 1800 rpm, so am now awaiting a new fan controller and temperature probe fitting.



Had to replace the MB with another used R3E, as the old one's damage killed half the fan headers.  Once the new fitting is in and the fans are under control, I'll OC it to 4GHz and re-fill it with blood red X1 fluid.



In the meantime... I've stuffed 4, 2TB 6Gb/s HDDs and a controller, another 2 300GB Velociraptors (6 drives total), and the old components from the Omen's former build into my Origen AE X11 HTPC case:


I swear the wiring is not actually as disastrously messy as it appears in this image...

That's an EVGA LGA775 MB, QX9800 (or QX9850? cant remember) CPU, 2x BFG 9800 GTX+ OC 1GB vRAM in SLi, an Intel 6Gb/s SATA RAID controller, an old SB Audigy 2, 4GB RAM, and drives a mentioned, plus an LG BD reader to start ripping to the RAID Array.

Just waiting to replace that manually controlled CPU fan with a PWM one before I button it back up.  Basically an Omen in a BAM Aria case, (without the full color screen).  Still need to software it too, trying to find my old XP Media Center install disk.

nice keep it up.

I hadn't noticed this post, Damn that is clean

That's what she said.

Spare time + energy = a wonderful thing.

I'd be happy with either!

cochino......

 

I think I'm nearly done with the Omen rebuild.  


Bleeding bubbles out of the new Mayhems "Blood Red" X1 coolant... which isnt quite blood red enough for me - dye in my future.


Dropped an Aquaero 5 fan controller into the bottom bay and added a temp probe to the loop - the Asus onboard fan controller simply didn't get the fans slow enough.  


A black Phobya probe-a between the silver EK compression fitting and the reservoir intake port on the right.  See?  no?  well... its there.

The probe is a nice coupler ring from Phobya with male/female G4 threading, fit snugly between the res intake and the compression fitting coming from the radiator out.  Using that temp to adjust the fans accordingly, though I have to play with the curve a bit.

Because the Koolance reservoir wouldn't fit up above where the res normally goes (its too sexy to hide anyway), and because its black, I went and found an appropriate Lian-Li BAM DVD door.  


Just waiting for a back-ordered replacement black bezel for the fan controller now.


Not 100% on board with the 2-tone look yet... maybe I can find a BAM omen front plate some day?  yeah, right.


I also found a very smooth mini LCD that can display all kinds of data I'm planning to put behind the glass.  Underestimated the length of wire I needed however by about 18", so I'm waiting on that before I do a final cleanup.


Does this LCD make my hands look fat? (yes, yes it does.)


All the new USB-driven hardware is running off an awesome little item I found - an internal header USB hub from NXTZ.  It has 6 USB 2.0 headers and 2 USB-A 2.0 plugs, and is powered by a Molex 4-pin.  Great find.  No pic though.

So, next steps for the Omen:

- New wire for the mini LCD, mount behind glass.

- Darken up the red fluid a little with some Mayhems dye.

- replace the fan controller bezel with a black one

- possibly rattle-can blackout the fan controller mounting arms - they're silver and a bit distracting on the sides


At some point down the road, when they finally release, I'm still planning to replace the overly-hot GTX 470s with a pair of GTX 780 Classifieds.




The HTPC is built and nearly ready, too. The hardware is mostly done, I'm planning on upgrading the RAM to 8GB in the hopes it keeps the aging former-Omen gear inside functional as a living room PC for a bit longer. Softwared it with Win8 (nightmare to do, as I had no OS installed and had only an upgrade disc, but got it done). Need to buy the Media Center pack from Microsoft, still. And play about with my old decoding and ripping software to get my DVDs onto it - unsure if I'll put any BDs on it, as I do have that oppo player.

I'm stripping the logos off the front with 100% Acetone, which seems to be leaving the anodization behind nicely but slowly dissolves the text.

I may try to strip the Omen's reservoir and fan controller bezel of their logos and text with this stuff.

Looking good, while you have the rattle can out you could do the optical drive as well. Give it a more stealth look.

East wrote:Looking good, while you have the rattle can out you could do the optical drive as well. Give it a more stealth look.

That wasn't as distracting from the side, as the drivecage is a close enough match, the silver of the fan controller is sadly visible between the case and the extended front panel of the Omen-R.

Of course, now all I can see is the damn optical drive... thanks.


 

Custom idle screen for the fan controller:


EDIT: grr, need to clean it up a little on that next to last 'O'

Minor update - Added some Mayhems Deep Red dye to my Mayhems X1 coolant (awesome results color wise), and now a week later I'm seeing fine, powdery sediment in the reservoir.

 


Wrote to Mayhem, but it may be a few weeks before I can do a teardown and seek the cause.

So it looks assuredly like that is a buildup of placticizer coating my reservoir... which is odd considering the hoses do not look hazy at all.

While I wait for new tubing, and try to formulate an attack plan for getting the placticizer out of my loop, I decided to dust off some of the pro-audio gear sitting unused in my video edit suite and re-purpose it for the gaming rig



The double stack of Auralex is standing in until I can locate a short, 10" stand for the Right unit.  The Left has its own 36" speaker stand, and there's a nice, big subwoofer underneath now.  

They are a pair of nearfield studio monitors and subwoofer by JBL, Series LSR4300.  These are the LSR4328P 8" monitors, and the sub is the LSR4312P 12" unit.  All are controlled jointly via an ethernet chain, and fed a daisychain of coaxial S/PDIF from an M-Audio Pro-Fire 610 - basically being used as a combo Pro-level firewire sound-card plus headphone preamp/DAC. The series seems to be designed to expand up to 7 speakers and 2 subs for some interesting arangements, though I'm unsure a single S/PDIF line would handle it.

These JBLs all have a rather amazing "Room Mode Correction" capability I am very much looking forward to using to tune this setup, particularly since its specifically designed to overcome the kinds of sub-ideal setups most home systems face -this one no exception at all!

Its more than a bit overkill for a gaming machine to go with pro audio gear, but I have a full setup in my Editing suite already, and while less capable than this, I'm not mixing sound, so the M-Audio bi-amplified 8" pair in a 2.0 setup is all I really need for basic monitoring duties back there. This is the computer I spend most of my time in front of at home now, anyway, since I went staff editor last year.

There is also a 6" LSR4326P version of these studio monitors which probably would be a better match for any audiophile-gamer with the money and the desire for perfect sound at the PC too, but I got these used in a good deal so I couldn't really be picky. Maybe at some point I can trade up to a surround setup with a used set of the 6" monitors and use these in partial trade.

Of course, the girlfriend got a bit miffed at these monsters suddenly migrating to our office area, but damn the sound is good in this here doghouse now.  

Nice, That will never do for FPS though. That is where my favorite sound peripheral comes in. The best piece of "pro audio" gear I own is the technics sl-q2 despite what lago thinks of DD tables and probably panasonic

Shame you have to drain the loop already. Its stuff like this that makes me feel LC is more trouble then its worth.

Probably right, though 3 more for a fully tuned 5.1 system couldn't hurt...

That said, like the headset!  Strange they went with open-air and not closed back though?  I suppose for marathon gaming it will stay cooler, but some of the loud-as-aircraft-cabin LC systems I've seen people run FPS on could probably use a more isolating headphone?

EDIT: That unit could work rather well in concert with this M-Audio Pro-Fire 610 and its 8 analogue outputs... (plus the s/pdif for speakers). I may need to see if they can be discrete sources, selected from within Win7.