The Phantom Lord (Thermaltake Armor Modded Water Cool)

[martini161]

9/18/08: HARD CORE MODDING STARTS HERE, AS DOES AN EXTREME 56K WARNING
well if figured i post some pics of my new rig so you can all see it. its not nearly as awsome as bio-hazard's rig but this was a tight budget build. here are some prebuild pics
(sorry for the hugeness of them)

the thing on top of the white box is the G0 stepping q6600

thats my work space. notice the Anti-ESD matts and wristband. i know its overkill, but im an electrical engineer, so i have this stuff lying around why not use it? post some more pics later on

[Bio-Hazard]

Sounds like its going to be a very nice rig...............

Keep the pics coming please................ ;)

[kenc51]

Nice

[martini161]

more pics for you (they are all thumbs)







just about done now. just have to finish installing all the liquid cooling stuff and do the wiring. i hate to have the rad hanging out the back like that, but its just temporary until i save up for a Swiftech LCS. my original plan was to go with air cooling at first, but then i saw this deal. got the whole system for 80$. it was oem and didn't come with coolant, but i could care less.

[Bio-Hazard]

Damn, that's one big tower you got going on there......... Looking good though................

[martini161]

i know its huge! it weighs 50 pounds with nothing in it! this is mainly because its steel instead of aluminum, which is a + or - thing. its more durable, but its also heavier, easier to scratch, and SHARP, my fingers are cut up like crazy! the main reason i bought it was for airflow. it has 11 external 5.25 bays that are are all perforated so i have a ton of intake, and it has a 250 mm fan on the side panel. ill post a picture of that when i have the chance, and one 90mm exhaust fan, and a 90mm cooling the hdd's next to the power supply

[DMB2000uk]

Is the hard drive cage really blocking the air to the PSU fan or is that just the angle of the picture?

The cooler on the 8800GT really is nice. Looks like you are going to have a very sexy rig when you are done.

With everyone getting 8800GT's around here, I'm losing my fight not to splash out and get one

Dan

[martini161]

your right it is thanks for chatching that one dan, i dont have any hard drives in there so ill just take it out. thats one of two things i dont like about this case. 1. the side ways psu 2. the tooless expansion slot system looks like stevie wonder designed the color scheme. purple+green=DO NOT WANT. but hey, this is a $150+ MSRP case, and newegg had it for 69.99 after rebate, so i can hardly complain

[martini161]

i have a question. does any one know why the fans have a female and a male molex connector? is that so you can daisy chain a bunch of them together only using one molex plug?

[DMB2000uk]

Yeah, it is. You can either daisy chain them or use the molex with another device as well as the fan.

Dan

[martini161]

sorry for the delay, i had to RMA my LCS cause my pump failed during leak testing. newegg was great as always and got me a new one preaty fast. here are some new pics


ready for leak testing (i was stupid and took everything apart to do the test outside of my case. the problem? i had to drain it to get it back in the case )


components laid out in the case


fan testing

well, all i have to do now is fill it again and put AS5 on the cpu and attach the water block. then of course there is the never ending task of hiding wires. should be running by the end of the day

[Bio-Hazard]

Lesson learned, do the leak testing in the case with all the components in place..........

Saves on one heck of a lot of work.............

[martini161]

god damit something is wrong with my machine. vista install has blue screened 5 times now. how ever, VM-ware and Native Linux have installed fine. any ideas as to what the problem is?

[DMB2000uk]

Download the Ultimate Boot CD, and run the diagnostics on it.

Bad RAM is ususally the first call for errors like that.

Dan

[Bio-Hazard]

Check the voltage setting in the bios for the OCZ memory, it my be auto setting it to low for the spec.

[martini161]

did that allready, set everything right an tried to install again, bsod after 2 minutes. ran memtest while i was at work to day, no errors. gonna check out ocz's support forum, its probably just some hotfix i need

[DMB2000uk]

Check what teh BSOD's are telling you on MS support.

Dan

[martini161]

yea, checked ocz's support forum, it turns out that you cant do anything in vista with 2x2gig sticks with out downloading a hot fix. now i just have to take one stick out until i update. thanks for the help guys

[martini161]

W00T!!!! first post with new rig. will post benching numbers once i run them. still working on ocing. right now im at 3.0 ghz, my water cooling hadled it like a champ. dont know what the temps are because speed fan has them jumping from -150 c to 120 c, so ill try core temp here is the finished build pic

[kenc51]

Nice job