After several weeks of getting parts together, the beast is just a few short hours from coming to life.

Here are the specs

Intel QX6700 processor
4GB Corsair PC-2 8888 dominator memory
2 Asus 8800GTX cards
Asus Strike Extreme 680i MB
2.25 TB of hard drive space
Sony Blu-Ray drive with upgrade firmwarm (hd-dvd drive to be added when avail)
Thermaltake Kandalf LCS case
Thermaltake 850w SLI ready power supply

The last remaining upgrades are in the mail.

2 Danger Den 8800GTX water blocks with 3/8 barbs and SLI set up.

I have loaded XP pro because there are no current 8800 drivers for vista but when avail along with dx10 should be interesting.

The QX6700 with cooling should be good for at least 3.3 ghz or more.

Will post back in the next few days with overclocking results and pics

dayum.. I'd love to see pics of that monster. Very nice system :D

What games are you going to start playing?

HL2 and MS Flt sim come to mind right off the bat. I am sure all of my recent games will get a re-review to see how much I can throw at this thing :)

Your gonna love that striker! damn fine board, not 1 problem with mine yet and overclocks like a dream!

I havent OC'd yet. Can you share some of your settings, tips and tricks?

Beast is right. Awesome machine. That's pretty much exactly what I'd build given more free cash flow and higher wife acceptance factor. What about the drives? Any Raptors for the system? I don't see how you could pass them up in this build.

well right now I have 3 750gb drives. I have a raptor 150gb but not sure if I am going to install. the over 2tb of storage seems to be enough at the moment :)

You probably already know this but I'd put your OS on the fastest drive, and aim a speed-controlled 120mm fan at your HD cage.

all three 750gb drives are sata 300. I may install one raptor 150gb and use that for OS install

I would, especially if you already have it on hand. This is a top performance rig and even though there's more than enough storage, not throwing your OS on the Raptor in such a setup....

Have you thought about any enclosures for the HDs to mount them in the 5.25 bays? I've been considering something like this for my next build. The ICY DOCK products look neat (I think they have 3-5 drive setups) but I would probably go for independent setups if the space was available: http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=43&page=1

Nice system Suzook.

first run without any oc and I got a futuremark score of 14,100

Jeeshh What a Beast!! :)

more to come. Futuremark score with overclock at almost 18000

Awesome. I'd be excited to see what you get in FPS tests.

I can't tell from the photo. Did you water cool the 8800s? I'm interested to know what the noise output is with just the stock coolers on both of them and if it's worth the hassle of putting blocks on both just to save some dB.

thats next on the agenda. I have the Danger Den blocks and I am just waiting on the right size barbs. Only thing I am not sure now is how to rout all the tubing???? first I thought it would come off the cpu block in the vga coolers but then thats hot liquid so how efficient is that? I have a query into DD for more thoughts on that.

thats next on the agenda. I have the Danger Den blocks and I am just waiting on the right size barbs. Only thing I am not sure now is how to rout all the tubing???? first I thought it would come off the cpu block in the vga coolers but then thats hot liquid so how efficient is that? I have a query into DD for more thoughts on that.

so how is the noise level from both those cards as it is? Given the power available I wouldn't be interested in adding liquid cooling to overclock those cards, but if routing all those tubes cuts out a large amount of noise I was thinking about it with a future system.

Although I would have the same configuration questions you have so I'm interested to see what DD recommends.

Well the fans on both cards are pretty honking loud but not overbearing. Combined with the lack of a CPU fans definately a tad quieter. However, I can still hear it pretty well even when I am downstairs from the loft where the computer is. I send the blocks will make a very good reduction in sound and of course allow for a little more performance. I will let you know what DD says and post back.

cheers

My understanding is that it won't matter. The water/liquid is flowing and being cooled. This is a large amount especially with the resevoir. If you've ever boiled water, you realize it takes A LOT of energy to change it's temperature significantly. BTW this is called the specific heat of a substance (amount of energy required to change it a degree), and this is why people like to live near the ocean as it's more stable than the air (it is warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer and affects the climate close to the shore). Anyway, the processor isn't that hot so flowing water isn't going to get too hot from a single cycle through it. In addition water does conduct decently so the higher volume of water in the system the more energy you need to heat the whole thing or a single segment of the whole thing as it conducts and transfers that heat to the rest of the water.

Long story short. As long as the water is flowing and you have it set up right you are cool. Then again, considering the rest of your rig, maybe you want to go for one of those hyper cooling things where they use the equivalent of a mini A/C unit to super chill the processor and components.

WOW..........well thats makes me feel 100 times better and a 100 times more stupid than I thought :) I am going to see what Danger Den says but I tend to agree with Chris.

WOW..........well thats makes me feel 100 times better and a 100 times more stupid than I thought :)

That wasn't my intention ;). I know a bit about water, atmosphere, temperature etc... from other hobbies and I'm reasonably good at common-sensing stuff down. Your line of thinking is totally logical and it's one that everyone goes through. It's just a matter of the properties of water (as well as total heat being disipated and total amount of water in the system) and few people really think that out or know a lot about it to apply it to their train of thought. But once you get the basic idea you see it everywhere from watercooling pcs to real estate prices. Actually another example is humidity, the increased water in the air doesn't allow the skin to cool itself nearly as well (by evaporating water/sweat off it to disipate heat) and thus you feel hotter and this is also why when it's humid it can feel "oppressive" as if water and atmosphere are just sitting on the skin.

Neat stuff if you are into it.

Well by all means continue the lesson, I am very interested in learning stuff like this :) By the way I installed Windows Vista RTM with the new 8800 drivers that finally came out and my 3dmark scores fell off the side of a mountain. Guess the driver will mature in the next few weeks.

Screw all this talk, answer the question everyone wants to know:

How fast can it run QUAKE 2..>?<

=)

How much did all your equipment cost when you bought it?

well the DD blocks are installed. Time to get with some serious over clocking MOO HA HA HA

http://www.pbase.com/aleicgrant/image/73285163

http://www.pbase.com/aleicgrant/image/73285161

ok can someone tell this moron (me) how to insert picture into the actual post and not as a click to view. THANKS

Sorry, I've never been able to figure that out. I think there's some html code like

address

[ img ]http://www.imageshack.us/yourpic.jpg[ /img ]

without spaces

What was the overclock on the QX6700? I'm really thinking of upgrading to one... I think I could hit 4ghz on my Vapochill.

right now I have it up to 3.6 and stable. Going to see how much further I can go over the next few days.

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o82/aleicgrant/CIMG0845.jpg

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o82/aleicgrant/CIMG0846.jpg

cable routing and clean up next

you should almost put on the fan that comes with the striker, every bit counts.

Put the stock CPU fan? where would I put that????

Pics look awesome. Those are some honkin' video cards. Cool look to the water system too.

Are you water cooling the drives too? Did you ever put in the Raptor for the OS?

Thanks I appreciate it. I am running Vista Ultimate 64 bit right now and need some more mature drivers but they will come. I cant wait to see DX-10 games on this thing. Rapor is now in place for my main drive and humming like a top. Drives are not current cooled but maybe in the future.

#1 reason drives fail is because they weren't cooled properly. This is one of the first things DIY'ers overlook. Ever since I had a 120gb Maxtor fail on me that was full of files, I made sure my drives were adequately cooled and haven't had a problem since.

Yea I'm trying to scare you :) but it's for your own good!

MS Flight Sim? why aren't you playing X-Plane, the real man's sim? :)

wow, what do you do for a living?

this is looking very cool!

Is the Thermaltake PSU standard size or one of the extended designs?

Thanks to a poor case design decision, my Cooler Master 830 won't fit an extended PSU so any power upgrade path I take is going to have to work with a standard PSU.

its a Thermaltake Kandolf LCS. Case has tons of room without being obnoxiously big. Its my first LCS and thus I wanted to take it easy and this does the ticket. I am sure down the road as I gain experience I will upgrade to a higher capacity LCS but for now it does the trick

Is the Thermaltake PSU standard size or one of the extended designs?
.
The 1000w and 1200w Toughpowers are extended. But the 850w and lower are standard size ATX.

sorry forgot to answer the question. I got the Thermaltake 850 sli approved psu and it is standard. Nice psu

sorry forgot to answer the question. I got the Thermaltake 850 sli approved psu and it is standard. Nice psu
Check the voltages and monitor them. I went thru 2-3 750w Toughpowers that wasn't stable with some rails dropping below % acceptable for ATX standards. The probms I had was mainly with the 12v rail dropping below 11.7v. Just hope that the 850w is better. Just a friendly caution... :D

congrats on the beast :cool:

a few years ago, I would envy it badly, nowdays I can pace myself with a simpler, more quiet/silent unit that gets the job nicelly done, while saving some $ and still not buzzing on my ears 24x7. (I used to run 5 machines at home, on those crazy Seti@Home days when I crunched units round the clock).

noise is what gets on my nerves, but if I could still put up with it, I would definitivelly itch to make one kind of like this, enjoy.

I hear you because the hum of computers bothers me to no end and thus why I went with water cooling. Tucked in the corner (but still open) I can barely hear it which is PERFECT

btw, this is what I have just finalized (or almost):

. Intel - Core 2 Duo E6600;

. Intel - BOXDG965OTMKR (G965 LGA 775 DC MAX 8GB DDR2 1066MHZ MATX PCIE16 GBE);

. Kingston - 2 Gig - KVR800D2N5/1G; (will upgrade to 4 Gig in the next couple of months);

. Antec Fusion - Case;

. BFG nVivida 8800GTS (I would have to modify the mATX case to fit in the 11" GTX monster)... not worthed, saved the diference for upgrading to Vista Ultimate;

. BFG 650W power supply;

. Logitech G15 keyboard & G5 wired mouse;


Have you looked into making a PVR out of your HTPC, recording HD TV quality ? Can you recomend any hardware for that matter ? I am dying to put my hands on Vista next week (will take a day off just for that). :D

I remember when I first built my OC'ed 3.0Ghz Northwood. Bumped it up to 3.6 on air. Not a bad overclock.....but then I added Vornado...92mm. Holy Crap I could hear my machine 3 floors up in my house. It was like I turned on a hairdryer inside my case.

I chucked it immediately and replaced it with a panaflow quiet fan....dropped the o/c down to 3.5 and was fine. I have no idea who on earth could run fans that loud in *any* fashion.

yeap, if anyone here is facing noise issues with CPU cooling, I would recomend one of this (I couldn't post as a link, not sure why).

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/News/ThermalSolution/News_List.aspx?NewsID=1149

I had a P4 3.06HT running on a 950EMVR Intel Mobo, and that thing was ridicullously loud. I simply could not stand it anymore. One day I found this $27 piece of art that is way worthy. (might be a bit hard to find).

If your looking for a speedy cpu for gaming why not get the core 2 extremex6800? Yes its only 2 cores as opposed to 4 but it runs much faster and you won't use 4 cores for gaming.Nice rig BTW!

Intel core 2 extreme x6800
gigabyte GA-965-DQ6
corsair TWIN2X2048c4 PC6400 800MHz 4-4-4-12
X-Fi elite pro
BFG G8800 GTX
thermaltake750W psu
air cooling