The Compensator 2.0 - ABSOLUTELY No Compromises PC Build Log
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
2,697 words · ~13 min read
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welcome to the build log of the compensator 2 it's been a little bit
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over a year since the original compensator video was released and there
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have been improvements across the board in terms of CPU cores graphics card
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performance memory speed tons of different stuff and we have it all here
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the idea of the compensator is that there are no compromises in terms of any
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of our components as long as you can just buy them on a shelf and throw them
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in your computer this video isn't as crazy as it used to be because now it's
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fairly common place for us to have like 30 or 70 or even more thousand computers
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but compensator 2 let's
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go thanks to gskill for helping make compensator 2 possible check out their
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gaming mouse and keyboard down in the video description I do need like gloves of
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some sort do we have gloves that moment when you need gloves because even your
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RAM has brushed alum on it that moment when they also don't fit 128 gigs of
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gskill trident said or Z or whatever you
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want to call it 3200 MHz so on our last
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build we had the Leon Lee
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PC8 this is the Leon Lee
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pc9 so I guess we'll see how different it is while the PC8 says that it's
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compatible with triple Reds it's only like kind
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of and uh I have the same cooler again
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so hopefully it goes better this time oh
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look at those feet it smells new seriously friend smell
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this what uh there's no air intakes on this
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side of the case so the Kelvin will go
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up here I guess or right here this looks pretty
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cool
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so just like last time they have some included LED strips for the dials on the
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back first I'm going to remove these fans so I can try to line up the cooler
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at all and then we'll go from there now I want to thank fractal Josh I guess
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real quick sort of didn't realize the fact that we didn't have a Kelvin
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s36 uh yesterday so contacted Josh and
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was like hey man I need one of those literally tomorrow and I mean he came
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through it's here now I don't know if this is going to work I'm going to run
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this back this way oh Brandon does that look
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cool with fan without fan next up I'm
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going to remove this big Drive cage which I don't really need at least
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yet and then I'm going to try to figure
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out how you're supposed to pipe this
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water block if I cut a line down from that no
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one would ever know I was thinking of cutting a line
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right here uh so that I could bring this up feed the tubes up through the line so
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they can get up in here hold this up vertically and then install them mother
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board cuz yeah what it looks like is that they're like there's no way anyone's going to use an AIO in this
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case yeah but then I did through there
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immediately yeah oh
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okay so we're going to solve our little radiator problem um by cutting through
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our extremely expensive brand new case
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uh so my nerves are through the roof come along with
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me not too bad actually with some minor
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filing work I can maybe make that look
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pretty okay okay that actually looks pretty good not to like toot my horn too
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much or anything watch The Tubes not fit through it didn't really think about
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that part okay we're actually good so
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this will fit up here and then look something like that just in Reverse cuz
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it's going be on the other side of the case and that'll work maybe sort of a
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little bit so now I'm just
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installing the fans because uh I really
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want to make sure that this all actually does fit really well before I keep on
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I'm going with the build I was going to install the power supply next but I
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think I'm going to install the motherboard next just cuz I really want
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to get that water block mounted and see how I'm going to have to deal with that
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thing that I cut out this this
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PS2 okay that's cool even though it's
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like a really high-end x99 a suport
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still got PS2 on it I actually love that
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now please tell me this reaches oh
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no oh no oh that's pretty taut isn't it
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this would be the worst if that doesn't fit I will be so
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upset cuz then I would have cut that hole for no reason I knew it was close
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but I thought it made it that socket is
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so low oh no I don't think it makes it
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I have a plan not necessarily completely
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ideal but the logo will now be vertical
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I thought I had to do it the other way the logo on G skill stricks and the logo
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on Supreme FX are all also vertical so
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this is just a vertical logo build it was just totally the plan from the
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beginning right guys that's looking all right what do you think next up we have
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to install the ax1500i and all of our custom cable mod
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cables oh tolerances on that are really
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close there's also going to be like a gap there what that doesn't look very
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good but I actually can't even install it the other way around or this big
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extra large socket interferes with things on the case so this is just how
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it has to go I screwed up so this is the
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Rampage 5 Edition 10 it's a motherboard
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that can support four graphics cards this is the x99 stricks Edition the one
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that's supposed to go in my personal rig update that we're filming later not the
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one that's supposed to go in compensator I thought it was like a funny coincidence after all of that I have to
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take all the RAM off I have to take that CPU Cooler off after that crazy
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installation have to take the CPU out throw it all on here throw it back in
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and then we're good
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man this kind of a fun IO
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Shield the goodlooking part of the I Shield is actually on the board already
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so it just kind of slots there and this board is slightly extended that means
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that I have to install the power supply first got these green and black cables
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from cable mod they I believe completely
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match the original cables that we had
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for the very first compensator this will be the bottom graphics card so one nice
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thing about custom cables like this is I can really easily splice off the extra
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wires so I only need the six and the 6
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plus 2 I don't have to use the extra plus two that runs all along with it now
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I'm going to try to have some foresight here and install this cable too I'm
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also going to try to pre-run all the SATA cables tuck all this stuff away
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okay so motherboard install attempt
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number three two three somewhere around
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there I don't know losing track oh
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please tell me this is going to work we're fine right yeah yeah yeah yeah
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yeah okay we're good we're good it's tight it's very tight but it's fine
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nobody's freaking out the problem was
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getting the actual like header block through that was an
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issue whoa from here we got to install some
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graphics cards and couple other things and we're good to
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go I can't install that here so I'm
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going to unplug the fans all right now you go in there I really hate these
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openings I think they look terrible able one nice thing with the graphics card
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right coming right in here is it'll cover up this cable mess down at the
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bottom okay so let's put in our first Titan it looks so weird with just one
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card at the
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bottom compensator what's up this looks great
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right so you got to add another one you
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all right okay I'm going to plug this in going to plug in the little extension
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cable and then everything looks terrible I hate it I hate it so much don't order
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the stupid ones that have the loopd doop on them if you don't have to just run
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another one look look how nice so much better no say no to loopy doop cables so
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I'm just going to install the uh glass panels just before
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I do the ssds and the fans if it really
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needs lighting I want to figure out where those go before I start finalizing
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the cable management and add a ton of cables by doing the
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ssds before I do this we should see if the computer turns on at
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all okay let's get our ginormous
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cable do we see whoa
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what I didn't know it did that like I knew okay I knew the board
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lit up I didn't know like before it was even turned on that it did some cool
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stuff that's pretty sweet
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okay so especially with the tinted tempered glass on it looks pretty dark
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so I'm probably going to try to add some ambient lighting if I
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can I need it tighter there if you can ignore my ARM
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how does that look can you see these
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does it look
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cool so I'm just removing some of the
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Leon Lee fans putting in some of my
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Noctua fans does it matter not really so
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Leon Lee has a 2 and 1/2 in spot down here and up here and then six 3 and 1/2
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in spots in the middle of the cage that do not naturally convert to 2 and 1/2 if
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you have trays for your ssds you could convert them but someone's like throwing
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ours away or something so I don't
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actually have proper places for the ssds to go so I'm just going to end up like
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dumping them in here this can power my NVMe
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drive I'm going to try to make it stay right about here if I can but for the
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ssds I think I'm just going to end up going with
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like the stack eh too many power
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cables and another one okay so all the ssds have been fed
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power but I need to get the data installed so the there's our SSD spread
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all plugged in data and power that doesn't look that great does it maybe
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these go down here I don't know if I can pull that off but I can
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try the Tower of data okay that's pretty all right cool
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spin okay so the power's in the lights are all configured I only have one more
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panel to put on
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what okay hold up hold up hold up I can solve this did someone unplug me
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no
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um oh okay this power supply the the
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power symbol is off and the one is on I
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it's not H all right it is the next day
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and it is benchmarking time everything's up and running the system is wicked fast
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due to the raate array and the NVMe drives and what what not we got a bunch
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of benchmarks installed and we're going to redo some from last time and do some
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new ones okay so we got 1748 ah yes better than 99% of all
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results frame rate not
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great 130.3 those cards get so loud how hot
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are they getting
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88° on GPU 1 so this was my attempt to
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load Far Cry 4 which just isn't working
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at all control delete fail alt f4 fail
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try to tab nothing we're going to try loading
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this game computer just doesn't like four cards go horsey go horsey go this
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is running so bad Doom is not that hard
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to run okay so benchmarking complete at
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idle all of our cards ran it around 50° give or take a few depending on which
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one it was in the order so just like with compensator 1 we could have
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obviously benefited from water cooling the gpus stacking four isn't really a
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great idea without water cooling because they can't breathe and ran at about 88°
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all the time when underload resulting in some pretty serious throttling just like
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last time we crushed in 3D Mark fire strike and again got in the top 1% of
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systems which luckily is not based off of price per performance although we did
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have some pretty serious troubles with it but was able to fight through it
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through some configuration stuff last time with the four original Titan X
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cards all the games worked but they just chopped and glitched around and had some
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tearing and all that kind of stuff this time wasn't like that at all performance
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was pretty terrible really considering the cost and a couple games just refused
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to work at all what I expected to happen was that the system would just
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completely ignore the third and fourth cards and we just get some thermal
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throttled two-way SLI performance metrics that I could laugh at but in
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reality the the usage of the second card often sat at around 20% resulting in
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less than desirable results the moral of the story with compensator has always
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been the same you don't need a rig this insane and when you do set up something
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like this there are often more drawbacks than you'd expect yeah sure they'll
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perform pretty well in 3D Mark and if you water cool and overclock them you'll
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do pretty well on the leaderboards but that's about it I hope you had fun
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watching this build personally just like last time I think it's beautiful I love
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how it looks but it's just a little misguided I chose the four Titans
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knowing it would be a problem but I did so because you can still Force four-way
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to work in some games and it is still Benchmark with synthetics we'll see what
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next year has to offer I'll see you there with compensator
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3 so as you may have noticed we were using cable mod cables for this build
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just like we did with compensator 1 and now you can use their customizer to get
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your own cable mod cables that are specifically for you you just choose
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your sleeve type your power supply brand and model you select your size and
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length then the color that you want and Bam you're done that's it that's all the
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only remaining steps are waiting for them to show up and installing them in your system nice and easy if you guys
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like this video like it if you dislike this video dislike it get subscribed all
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that fun stuff check the link in the description down below to see our
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sponsors and to buy stuff on Amazon so you can build your your own compensator
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if you wanted to do that for some reason also there there's links to our shirts
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and stuff and the Forum where you can discuss how my build was so terribly
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misguided when that was the point of the video anyways check out this video which
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was compensator 1 and I'll see you next time