Thanks Ry. Went with 1000W to leave expansion room. Considering another Asus/ATI 5870 if I hit the lottery.:D

Cuz. Yea, the card is huge. It is mostly copper fins. I think the fans have slowed becuase the new bios is controling them better. Had a monitor on last night and you could see the adjustment with the temps. So far the system idles at 38-40 deg C. When I was running benchmarks it never went over 68-70 deg. C. I think there's plenty of room for OC'ing.

This is wierd. When I first intalled the system, I updated only 2 drivers: chipset and Gpu and the Bios. With that configuration I was getting 19,940 3DMark06 scores. I then went back and installed all of the the Asus drivers, like the Realtek, etc for the Mobo. My scores on 3Dmark06 dropped to 19,190. Is this normal?

Ran into Cuz and Waffles last night. Can't believe how smooth BC2 runs. I want to go back and try COD4 so I have something to compare it to. BC2 never ran very well on my Dell.

Nice to be playing again. I will probably have vent up and running soon. Somebody wanna PM me the password info. I forgot it and my old computer is pissed at me for building a replacement so it is self destructing before I can get all my info off of it.

Sailus

Looks great Sail

Nice large case is the way to go, looks like now any trouble shooting or future upgrades will be a breeze the way you have the wires laid out.

I think the 1000 watt psu was the way to go as well, dual high end graphics cards need a lot of power.

I'd bet the chipset driver had something to do with the 3Dmark scores.... these things they are still so fickle.

You can overclock the mobo and gpu/gpu's for the fun of it and see what you get... just be very very careful of the temps. You'll probably see no real benefit as far as game play goes.... at least for the time being, maybe 4 or 5 years down the road when the pc gets a little older and the games are pushing the hardware... then you'll get the benefit.

Seems like it went pretty smooth for you, good quality hardware, good research and patience.

Nice job.

blindsided wrote:
Looks great Sail Nice large case is the way to go, looks like now any trouble shooting or future upgrades will be a breeze the way you have the wires laid out. I think the 1000 watt psu was the way to go as well, dual high end graphics cards need a lot of power. I'd bet the chipset driver had something to do with the 3Dmark scores.... these things they are still so fickle. You can overclock the mobo and gpu/gpu's for the fun of it and see what you get... just be very very careful of the temps. You'll probably see no real benefit as far as game play goes.... at least for the time being, maybe 4 or 5 years down the road when the pc gets a little older and the games are pushing the hardware... then you'll get the benefit. Seems like it went pretty smooth for you, good quality hardware, good research and patience. Nice job.


You were so right about reading. I think I spent 20>1 reading time to assembly time. Then there was the time online trying to save a few $$ here and there looking for sales. I am happy with the components that I got. As I learn about the Asus power management program, I have been able to lower the fan noise even more. It is incredibly quiet now. Even more so than my old Dell. I have it on auto power settings and when I am ready to game, I just flip it over to high performance. Then the fans power up a bit.

When I get the time, I would like to sleeve and reconfigure the wiring in the back but for now I have a sailboat calling my name. It wants to get into the water this year.

Moving slow and deliberate was the key in the construction. I caught a few mistakes before they happened by going over things a couple of times before I did an installation.

Thanks for the PM. I'll be on vent someday soon.

Sailus

NICE JOB SAILUS! It really does look great.

I finished my build about a month ago. I have pretty much the same parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHZ299DdKYQ

-i7 920 D0 step
-2x XFX 5870s in crossfire-x
-HAF 932 fulltower chassis
-EVGA X58 Sli le motherboard
-corsair H50 cpu watercooler
-Seagate Barracuda 1terrabyte HDD 7200rpm
-6gb OCZ Gold DDR3 12800 (1600mhz)

I didn't go Asus for the mobo because so many people go asus, plus i wanted to go all black.

Watch the video!! Don't mind all the selling stuff, unless you want to buy it! please.

By the way, the 1000watt is a bit of overkill for 2 5870's. I'm only usin a 700watt and they're fine at max overclock with the ati tool. Most of the time I have my i7 at 4.2 but im running at stock now so that i don't screw it up when someone wants to buy it.

Almost the same machine. Only difference is the water cooled CPU (nice temps), the dual cards and the small fans. Nice job! What is your stock 36Mark06 score with the dual cards at native settings?

The Haf case is a dream to work with.

Went with the 1000 watt for the future. Never know ... could go dual fermi's 480GTX if the performance is that much better. They pull more voltage.

Anyway, no more money spent on computers for awhile. My sailboat is getting jealous. Plus I need a new laptop for work (Acer 3820TG I7-620M/HD5650/160GB Intel x25-M SSD).

Sailus

For anyone going to buy the HAF case, I found it necessary to remove all of the small metal backing plates in the front of the case behind the individual DVD slot grates. From time to time, the harmonics in the case caused by the multiple fans vibrated the plates ever so slightly. It was madening. At first I thought it was the fans, so I checked all the mounts, etc. Then I put some pressure on the plates and viola!, it stopped.

Here's my question, are you supposto routinely take these out. I think the case looks better without them (you can see thru to the board, CPU, etc.) and there's no chance of vibration driving you crazy. Now, it's as quiet as a mouse.

With all of this hand wringing, wasn't able to load and get vent up till late last night, but I was on for a second.

Dam Blind ... cervical herination is a tough injury. Never had a herination, but I have had sprained a cervical disk before. I was amazing how long it took to recover? Cervical spine is kinda hard to injure ... car accident or rough sex?;)

Sailus

Edit: There is so much air flow in this case, with the fans it is usually cold to the touch.

Oh, and another question, is anyone from H2K still playing MW2. I was wondering if it was worth the trouble of installing steam and all of the interminable updates.

I Still play MW2 Sailus. I even still play COD 4 once and a while.

Cool! I'll load it up. I played COD4 and even though I am running in the 250 fps range, it is still choppy. Should I reduce the max frames to 100? Will it help?

Sailus

Start at 50 even to see if it makes a difference as far as game play.

The reality is that you will see no difference between 100fps and 250fps.

I think 70 or 80 fps is where is should be, after that I don't think it makes a difference.