My New Q6600 & 8800 GT SLi Build (56k No Way)

[Van_Dammesque]

I have upgraded my computer to a Q6600 G0 and 8800GT (PoV) in Sli with 4Gb (2x 2Gb) of OCZ memory. All on a 680i EVGA board! With a 620W Corsair PSU. (EDIT: also in between the GFX cards is a Creative X-Fi Xtreme gamer)

All fitting into a Super LANBoy case!!!

I am reusing my watercooling setup. With the fans I had which could have the lights turned off and the speed of the fans were also controlled.

Feel free to ask questions!

First the computer at stock to test it:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000008-800.jpg
Note the messy wires and the rheostats at the back!

Next the CPU watercooler as I took it out:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000005-800.jpg
This shows the cooler is a standard Asetek Antartica (s939), which I will mod to fit the Socket T motherboard.

Now I stripped the gfx cards:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000018-800.jpg
the cooler:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000021-800.jpg

I used an EK fullcover watercooling block for the GT's:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000020-800.jpg
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000019-800.jpg
The waterblock is nice and shiny, but I could not lap it since the main GPU part is at a different height to the rest of the ram and power converter chips.

Now I had lying around some ram heatsinks so I had the idea of using them to cool the MOSFETS on the GFX card, here they both are:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000034-800.jpg

Going by this pic I used Arctic adhesive to attach the heatsinks:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/zalman1-800.jpg

The next step was to lap my CPU and CPU heatsink, I'm glad I did as when I started it clearly showed that both were far from flat!
1st the CPU cooler:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000011-800.jpg
Then to lap it:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000032-800.jpg
As you can see the shadow in the middle a bow stick out!

[Van_Dammesque]

The prept CPU:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000046-800.jpg
Again not very flat as seen by this half way stage pic:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000049-800.jpg
Don't be concerned about the wetness, all parts were thoroughly covered with a robust piece of plastic and the masking tape was replaced several times during lapping to make sure nothing was seeping through!
Now both together after lapping!
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000056-800.jpg
The CPU heatsink was still curved but not in the region were it covered the CPU so I was happy with that.
You can also see hack-sawed piece on the CPU to enable the cooler to fit around the components on the motherboard!
The DIY mounting is shown here:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000029-800.jpg
This showed it needed to be moved to the left a touch. The CPU heatsink is mounted onto bolts which are then attached to acrylic oblong-shaped spacer (hack-sawed from my chipset cooler block :D), which in turn are mounted upon four bolts on the motherboard! Doesn't look great but gets the job done and you can not really see it when it is fully built! The bottom left corner is fixed with a standard asetek bolt.

I used two rads in my last build and had one spare so I implemented the third and mounted it on the outside of the case:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000026-800.jpg

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000038-800.jpg
The pipes were fed through a dedicated PCI-bracket to make things nice and neat! You can also see the cable tidying compared to the first pic!

After separate leak testing it was all powered up:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000060-800.jpg
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000063-800.jpg

[Van_Dammesque]

Fan lights turned off:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000069-800.jpg
Pic of the door panel open with the Zalman controller (unfortunately when I purchased the SATA drives, no silver ones were in stock, nevermind!)
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/947817/IM000066-800.jpg


Preliminary results:
After some failing with the overclocking the CPU (needed to flash the bios to P31) I'm at 3.3 GHz (Vcore 1.33 underload), the Gfx cards are 685/1745/1050. The temps are:
CPU Idle (35 C) and load (55 C, with a very hot room so the ambient temps are high!).
For the GFX: Idle is 38 C and load is 42 C (!!!), so plenty of head room to go! (and I will look into volt modding the cards)
My 3D Mark 06 is 17200!

[breathemetal]

Looks nice =]

BTW. What the hell is lapping? I hear it all the time. Never done it though.

[Van_Dammesque]

Looks nice =]

BTW. What the hell is lapping? I hear it all the time. Never done it though.
The idea is to flatten the cooler and cpu thus maximising the contact and hence better heat transfer. This is achieved by sandpaper on a very flat surface (piece of glass) and using harsh grit then down to very fine sandpaper (hence the shiny result, although not that necessary).

Some people report an average of 5 deg C drop in CPU temps. (I was too impatient to test and went ahead anyway!)

[Feyy]

Nice setup looks great.

Lapping job seems perfect too :D

[breathemetal]

Any guides to lapping out there? Or tutorial vids?

[Zapablast05]

Any guides to lapping out there? Or tutorial vids?


Guide: http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=82

I don't think there are a lot of videos, seeing that lapping takes quite a while and a lot of patience. Just crack your CPU like me :).

[ASUSEN7900GTX]

those fans are so cool one looks like a dragon on it where can those be found or can they be found like Sweden or so or do i have to order them and are they specific for water cooling?

[Van_Dammesque]

those fans are so cool one looks like a dragon on it where can those be found or can they be found like Sweden or so or do i have to order them and are they specific for water cooling?
The dragon one was bought about 5 year ago, havent found any since, but they were bought online from a normal comp shop, such as:
http://www.thecoolingshop.com/index.php/cPath/100_83

[trivium nate]

pretty sweet!!!