PC Tech Heads - Check this beastie out

[StangFlyer]

Well, back about a year ago those who read the thread at the time may recall that I built a monster water cooled 3.06 Ghz P4 system that I run overclocked at 3.6 Ghz. Well, I am now building one that tops my current beastie... check out these specs:

Pentium 4 Hyper-Threading 3.2 Ghz Extreme Edition 2MB L3 Cache CPU
-- Plan to overclock to 3.9 Ghz

Corsair XMS PC4400 550 Mhz 1024MB (2x512MB) DDR RAM modules
-- ThermalTake Active DDR Memory Coolers

Radeon All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro Video Card
-- Will overclock to 425+ Mhz
-- Tweakmonster BGA RAMsinks
-- Twin 80mm side mount card cooler

(4) Maxtor 160 GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache 150 MB/s SATA Drives
-- Run in RAID 0+1 configuration

Lite-On 16x DVD-ROM Drive

Lite-On 8x DVD+-RW Drive

Mitsumi 3.55" Floppy Drive

ABit IC7-MAX3 Motherboard
-- 800 Mhz FSB
-- Intel 875P / ICH5 RAID
-- Dual Channel DDR Memory
-- Support Intel CSA Gigabit LAN
-- Supports Dual Channel DDR 400 with ECC function
-- Supports Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT) function
-- Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI)
-- Supports 4 DIMM Dual DDR 400 memory.(Max. 4GB)
-- Accelerated Graphics Port connector supports AGP PRO 8X/4X (0.8V/1.5V)
-- On board Intel CSA Gigabit LAN
-- 2 channel SATA 150MB rate with RAID function (0/1) via South Bridge
-- 4 channel SATA 150MB rate transfer rate w/RAID (0/1/0+1) via SI PCI Chip
-- 6-Channel AC 97 CODEC on board - Pro digital audio interface
-- Supports IEEE 1394a at 100/200/400 Mb/s transfer rate
-- etc...

Koolance PC2-650BK Black Mid-Tower Water Cooling System
-- 550W Enermax Power Supply
-- Variable Speed RheoBus v2 Blue Neon Fan Controls
-- CPU-300-H06 CPU Water Cooling Block
-- GPU-180-L06 Chipset Cooler Block
-- GPU-180-V06 Video Cooler Block
-- HDC1-A01 & HDC2-A01 Hard Drive Coolers (2 pair)
-- Enermax 550W Power Supply
-- Dual Blue Cold Cathode w/Side Switch
-- Blue Power Led
-- Red Hard Drive Led
-- Blue UV sleeved wiring throughout
-- (3) 80mm 9 LED Blue/Red UV Case Fans
-- Blue UV Rounded Floppy/Sata/HD Cables

This was about the baddest specs and components I could come up with for a single physical processor desktop system. What do you, that know what all this means, think...?

[tireburner163]

sexy




Got any spare parts layinga round?, I'm still pimpin the 350MHz PII, 64 meg Gateway circa 1998



-Josh, aka the tireburner

[xxxBlakexxx]

That sounds like a real beast.

My brother has a special MAC with THREE 3.5 Gig processors and a 2,500 Meg of RAM. He also has TWO flat panel, very large monitors set up side by side. He has a video production company and he uses the machine for editing and making music videos.

Sorry for my PC lingo being bad...not my strong suit.

[mustardjohn]

Sounds almost impossible from a 2 years back perspective. almost 4 gig processor... wow

Abit mother boards are great, reliable components.

ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 is one of the very best video cards and with special cooling to boot!

Maybe I missed it but you don't say much about your sound system. Do you have a separate card or is it on the mobo? What about the speakers. Got to get some Klipsch's or equivalent

Hope those 4 hard drives are 160 gb and not 160 mb drives, lol. The raid array will give you a very safe system.

Solid power supply.

Case sounds like it has some neat eye candy too. You ought to post a pic with side off.

[StangFlyer]

tireburner163 - I have extra components laying around... but, mostly server parts...

mustardjohn - Yeah, it is pretty amazing how far CPU's have come in just the last few years... Yet, just think of where we'll be in 10 more years!

You are right. The ATI Radeon AIW 9800 Pro is the best card out there at the moment. I'll also be overclocking it about 100 Mhz, and the GPU will be watercooler, have DDR heatsinks, and dual 80mm fans cooling the card as a whole also.

The sound system is built onto the motherboard. It's in the specs I listed under the motherboard above, but it's an onboard 6-channel chipset supporting digital sound and EAX 2.0. You are right about the SATA hard drives, I mistyped the GB as MB... they are all 160 GB drives. With the stripping between the two pairs it'll be blistering fast, and the on-board RAID chipset has its own processor, which takes all the load off the CPU.

Here's photos from my current system, which is very similar... It's a P4 HT 3.06 Ghz based system overclocked to 3.6 Ghz, same watercooling set-up, ATI Radeon AIW 9700 Pro OC'ed @ 410 Mhz core, Gigabyte SINXP-1394 Ultra motherboard, 1 GB XMS Cosair DDR3200 memory, and four 120 GB ATA133 8 MB drives running in RAID 0+1 mode.

I'll post photos of the new system after it is complete... probably within the next two weeks.

[Crazy Horse GT]

dan, wish you could help me with my pos dell, lmao.

[mustardjohn]

Those Pictures are just too cool....love that neon!!!

Hope you will do all the MadOnion/PCMark testing on the PC and video card while you have a brand new clean system. Right after you install the operating system and components. Then again after you overclock. I bet your scores will blow the roof off!!!! Should post up one of the highest scores on the board at madonion.com. Let us know if you do the benchmarks we'll be rooting for you.

Thinking of water cooling a computer has always made me nervous. Wonder what cpu temp you will see under heavy use. I don't have a really powerful chip (AMD 2.2 GHz) but mine stays in the low 40 C range most of the time and will run up to ~50C with heavy graphics use. I use a Thermal Take fan and heat sink.

I have the ATI 9000 Pro which the cut down version in the All-In-Wonder 9000 series targeting peple who want al ot of the features without the higher price. Probably about 30% less speed with many/most of the other features

I use the Abit KR7A-133R motherboard and its been a gem so far.

[StangFlyer]

Crazyhouse - yeah, everyone in their brother (especially family) is always calling me for computer help. It starts driving you nuts after a while. Especially when I format and rebuild my one sister's whole system (several times now) and she trashes it within a month because she is so clueless... it never fails. Last time she somehow changed all the file system security permissions to a non-existant user and then her PC was almost useless.

mustardjohn - My current water cooled system, overclocked, runs at an average of ~30 C, with a plus or minus of about 3 or 4 C depending on load and what mode I operate the heat exchanger fans at (setting 1 is slow, 2 is variable based on temp, and 3 is continuous max speed). Regardless, it never goes over 95 degrees F even under full load gaming or video processing using mode 3.

[302 LX Eric]

...sure beats the crap out of my old Comadore 64...

Seriously though, the liquid cooled part would scare the crap out of me. What if it ever leaked? I have no clue about computers so I'm sure I'm overlooking something and they've probably throughly thought out ways to contain the coolant.

E

[AVGxp]

What Core is it?

[StangFlyer]

Originally posted by AVGxp
What Core is it?

Both my current P4 3.06 and the new P4 3.2 EE are Northwood cores.

[StangFlyer]

Here's an update... All the parts for the new system, except the motherboard that I'll have late this week, have arrived. In addition, I've also just completed a new 2 Ghz Athlon XP 2500+ system that I built for someone else. Here is the specs and its bechmarks:

ECS KM400 Motherboard
-- 333 Mhz Bus
-- ATA133 IDE
-- Up to DDR400 support
-- AGP 8x
-- USB 2.0
-- OnBoard 6-Channel RealTek Sound

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ processor
-- ThermalTek Volcano 12 copper heatsink / 75 CFM fan

Corsair XMS 512 CAS2 DDR2700 memory module

Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB video card

Lite-On 16X DVD-Rom / Mitsumi Floppy

Maxtor 7200 RPM 120 GB 8MB Cache ATA133 Hard Drive


CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
Dhrystone ALU: 6901 MIPS
Whetstone FPU: 2871 MFLOPS

CPU Multi-Media Benchmark
Integer aEMMX/aSSE: 17201 it/s
Floating-Point aSSE: 18368 it/s

File System Benchmark
Hard Drive Index: 48 MB/s

Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
RAM Bandwidth Int Buffered aEMMX/aSSE: 2310 MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Float Buffered aEMMX/aSSE: 2146 MB/s

Cache and Memory Benchmark
Combined Index: 3657 MB/s

3DMark2001SE: 8224

3DMark03: 2340

3DMark04: 3020

I'll post the bechmarking on the new system once it is complete next week. I know it'll be some extremely impressive specs. My current water cooled P4 3.06 Ghz OC'ed at 3.6 Ghz more than doubles all these benchmarks listed above on this AMD system.

[mustardjohn]

Those are very decent benchmarks on the 2.2 system. I got a 7276 on 3D Mark 2001 SE with a AIW 9000 Pro and a 2.2 AMD chip on a KR7A-133R board. Probably could have gotten a little higher if I had done it on a clean system. Doubt I could have got above 8000 though. 9600 sounds like a pretty good board and very reasonably priced I bet.

[StangFlyer]

OK... Here are my initial results from the new watercooled monster PC buildup. This is just in stock form and a respectably stable overclocking (from a watercooled system anyways). However, I am hoping to get it to run at or near 4 Ghz in a stable fashion, but I am not sure if it'll do it yet due to the processor core. It'll take a lot of playing with it to max it out and also find where it's acceptably stable. Also, these are real world figures... in other words it's just a standard install of Windows XP Pro with no mega tweaks to make the system only for games, or streamlined, etc...


Watercooled 3.2Ghz HT P4 Extreme Edition (No OC - Radeon 9800 Pro @ stock 378 core / 337.5 Memory)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
-- Dhrystone: 8585
-- Whetstone: 4021 FPU / 7088 iSSE2

CPU Multimedia Benchmark
-- Integer: 24673
-- Floating-Point: 33940

File System Benchmark
-- Drive-Index: 100 MB/s

Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
-- Integer: 4859
-- Float : 4786

Cache & Memory Benchmark
-- Index: 10502 MB/s

3DMark2001SE Score: 19468

PCMark2002 Score
-- CPU Score: 7841
-- Membory Score: 13971
-- HDD Score: 1271

3DMark03 Score: 5919

PCMark04 Score: 5129


Watercooled 3.2Ghz HT P4 Extreme Edition (OC @ 3.68 Ghz - Radeon AIW 9800 Pro OC @ 405 Mhz / 351 Mhz)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FSB: 230 (3680 Mhz)
vCore: 1.675
N/B Strap: PSB800
DRAM Ratio: 1:1
AGP Ratio: Fixed (66/33)
DDR Voltage: 2.8v
AGP Voltage: 1.65v

DRAM Timing
- CAS : 3
- Act to Precharge: 8
- RSA to CAS : 4
- RAS Precharge : 4

PAT (Game Accel): Auto
- Refresh Cycle: Auto
- Read Delay : 5 Clocks
- tRDA : Disabled
- CPC : Disabled

* System runs at 30 C max under full benchmark load per Koolance display and 45 C per BIOS monitor, but I understand this motherboard typically shows about 10 C higher on the BIOS readout than it really is supposedly.


CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
-- Dhrystone: 11333
-- Whetstone: 4620 FPU / 7699 iSSE2

CPU Multimedia Benchmark
-- Integer: 28363
-- Floating-Point: 39017

File System Benchmark
-- Drive-Index: 100 MB/s

Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
-- Integer: 5580
-- Float : 5537

Cache & Memory Benchmark
-- Index: 12054 MB/s

3DMark2001SE Score: 22406

PCMark2002 Score
-- CPU Score: 9037
-- Membory Score: 15324
-- HDD Score: 1273

3DMark03 Score: 6327

PCMark04 Score: 5850


With Radeon AIW 9800 Pro OC @ 432 Mhz Core / 378 Mhz Memory
-----------------------------------------------------------

3DMark2001SE Score: 22448

3DMark03 Score: 6705


These are just my initial configurations. I tried setting the FSB to 240 initially, but couldn't get it to boot with current settings. Like I said, I am hoping to get this thing to run stable at or right on top of 4 Ghz, but don't know if it'll do it or not yet.

Photos soon!

[mustardjohn]

Don't apologize those are incredible scores!!!! 3x my score on 3DMark2001SE That is fantastic!!

[StangFlyer]

Yeah, if you compare the scores from the 2 Ghz Althon XP system I whipped together last week verses this bad boy it just crushes it. Not even a comparison... the difference is massive. But, that's the difference in what you can do with ~$800 versus ~$3000. That's actually a helluva good price for what this thing is... you can't even buy a PC pre-made like this really. The only thing even close would be the top end Alienware system, and it'd run you $4 to $5K plus wouldn't be watercooled or have a four drive SATA RAID 10 array (or be overclocked the way it comes).

If you really shop (I had crap coming from at least five states!) online and find the hottest deal on each component from around the country you can build a lot more PC for less money... if you are so technically / mechanically inclined to do it all yourself.

[StangFlyer]

Ok, here's the photos:

Monster 3.2 Ghz P4 Extreme CPU PC Buildup Photos

[mustardjohn]

Whoa..... way better than your last one.

Love the case.

Also didn't realize you were cooling your hard drives or at least that is the way it looked.

[StangFlyer]

Yeah, it turned out really nice. It's really hard to keep it uncluttered though once you hook up all the power/drive cables. Oh well, it still turned out good. Any ways, yeah... there are copper cooling blocks on the CPU, motherboard chipset, and Radeon GPU... plus, a hard drive block sandwiched in-between each part of SATA drives (one right side up, one upside down). You take an encapsulation material you mix together and spread onto the motor and circuit board area on each drive. Then bolt the block on (the second drive just has a thin metal plate. Then you bolt them all into place pressed together in the drive cage. The material is non-conductive and dries into a molding that transfers the heat to the block. It's pretty slick and the drive stay nice and cool, instead of getting really hot like they normally do!