System Upgrade I've been Working On Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,475 words · ~7 min read
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well I've been making some changes to my rig and uh I mentioned it in one of my
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other videos and someone asked me to do a blog post on what I'm actually
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installing in here and what kind of changes I'm making so first of all I've
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gone with an MSI Big Bang X power for my latest build it's a very solid board
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comes with a very good accessory package and just all the features that I really
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need lots of PCI Express slots I'm pretty much done with PCI personally so
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that's uh that's one of the reasons I decided to go with this board and uh
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Down Under that enzotech Luna water block I've got a 980x 6 core processor
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that's 12 gigs of ocz special edition
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see the blue and black color scheme which is just dead sexy on there and uh
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so I'll be running that in the motherboard this is an MSI GeForce GTX
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480 I've gone with a single card this time around although I usually do run
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SLI and I may change it later on in the future to add an additional graphic card
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I am using a modular power supply that's an enax Revolution 85 plus it's an 80
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plus silver Power Supply so I will have the option to add more cables and add
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another graphics card in the future should I desire it yes that is
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a vision Tech killer
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Nick it's got a feature I really like it's got that bandwidth allocation
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feature which I find really cool I like their software overall I found that
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having the killer neck in my computer is better than not having the killer Nick
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in my computer so I went ahead and replaced my Intel Nick with it a while
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back so let's move back and take an overall look at the PC this isn't a
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Silverstone tj07 the only modifications I've really made to it are a couple
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holes here and there and I have painted the interior with a black wrinkle I had
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it done by Mountain mods a couple years ago at this point I guess I am using GED
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Wing fans up here in the visible parts of the build and then here in the front
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GED Wings again but then where it's actually hidden I have the new
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Silverstone air penetrators which are running the main Thermo chill PA 120.4
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radiator that does most of the cooling in this build
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although there is a black ice 2 Pro here
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in the front but these fans actually only turn on if the system gets hot
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which with a single graphics card in it is very unlikely for the liquid cooling
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system to actually heat up uh speaking of the liquid cooling system here's an
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EK gtx480 uh nickel plated Plexi block
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so that's going to go on the 480 once I've finished doing some burn in and
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testing on this system you can see the
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back of the system I'm using noise dampening mounts for all of the fans
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where that is a possibility this build is all about silence this liquid cooling
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system is not for performance all of these fans will be run at much less than
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full Voltage at all times thanks to this
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guy right here this is the brains of the operation so it's got a couple of
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temperature sensors one of which gets uh attached to the side of my main radiator
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and the other one sits around the uh here there it is right there sits in the
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North Bridge so basically I use those as a reference points for how hot is my
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liquid cooling system how hot are the air cooled components in my rig and then
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I adjust the fan speeds in zones so these two and these two are actually
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adjusted together and I use the 92s
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first because at low RPM where I don't need a lot of cooling they're actually a
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little bit quieter than the 12 then the 120s kick in when things get
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hot and the liquid cooling system actually runs with the fans off on the
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front and right around like 30% fan
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speed on the bottom ones until things start to get a little bit warm there's
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that Amax Revolution yes I realize in an
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Ideal World I would have this fan turned around but then I would have to uh use
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the other holes in my power supply Mount down here and then I'd like chip the
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paint and really I have enough Radiator in this rig to cool a couple machines
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like this so I'm not too worried about it there's the air penetrator fans I was
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talking about these are going to be a great addition to this build I just
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changed over to these I was using Y loons down here before because air
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penetrators are designed to actually blow air in a column directly away from
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the fan so what that means is once I close up this side panel and the mesh is
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sitting here it should more in this is all in theory it should in theory more
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effectively blow the air through and out the other side panel rather than just
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kind of scattering it around in here and relying on random chants to blow out the
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other side of the computer so that that is my
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theory seems like a good theory uh here's some inverters for cold cathodes
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here's where I mount my uh 2 and 1/2 in SSD drives so I'll just uh run all the
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SATA cables here I use this hole right here to run some SATA power up there so
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all the drives stay completely hidden out of the way I still have some stuff
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to do so I still got to mount of pump and some kind of reservoir down here I
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haven't decided how I'm going to do that because honestly it's a total nightmare
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to mount uh one of these I've got a few MCR micros here here's a REV 2 here's a
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REV one here's a really old rev one that
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has like some kind of Gunk on the side of it then I've also got uh one of these
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uh t- virus reses this one leaks though so and I haven't really found a place to
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to put it where it would really work like it doesn't really fit here which is
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ideally where I would want to put it so I think that one's pretty much out of
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the question right now um yeah this is what the floor looks
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like oh yeah I've been working on sleeving the revolution comes with just
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horrendous looking sleeving on I me look at
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this so I went ahead and replaced it with uh plain black sleeving that I
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bought from cable organizer.com it's cheap it's fast things get done so uh
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yeah that was why I went that root so you can see all the cables are now
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sleeved black I've got the two eps8 pins up here I've got my six pins here my 24
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pin I've still got to do some uh some SATA cables as well as a Molex cable
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make sure I've got power everywhere oh yeah I've got one of those cool LG uh
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Blu-ray slhd DVD drives I know no one
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cares about HD DVD anymore but if I ever
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happen to cross an HD DVD drive I could or disc I could play it so there you go
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that's more than you can say oh yeah I replaced the uh the front of the case
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the the front drive bay covers with antech 900 ones so now they are uh
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perforated and you can run air through them which is good here in the front I
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still have the stock USB fire wire audio
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thing and I have UV lights yep black
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lights here here two of them here one
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more back here and that lights up the UV
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Blue uh primoflex LRT tubing as well as
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the UV sensitive GED Wing fans
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and I used to have a DFI land party board so it lit that up as well but uh
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there you go that is the build that I am working on and it's been sitting here
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for wow like weeks I I wish it worked
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cuz then I would have a computer again that would be great