![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
I have for some time been participating in Folding at Home. This can place some strain on your hardware if you don't make efforts to keep it cool.
I enjoy overclocking, which again you need to keep things cool.
Cool apparently is the key. Unfortunately for me, I'm in the Navy and have been stationed in Hawaii for the last 5 years. With electricity at $0.29 a KWhr, I really don't want to pay for air conditioning. So, here I am Overclocking and Folding with room temperatures reaching 85F during the day.
Around a year ago, I saw a case which from the outside called to me, the Corsair 800D. I looked at the pictures of this case, awesome from the outside, but airflow in... that would be a challenge. I got to see an 800D which my friend had shipped to Hawaii, it was everything I thought it would be, good looking and poor air flow. Inside his case was a EVGA Classified mainboard. This board caught my eye. And about 2 months ago I bought the system off my friend, used but in really good shape.
The i7 920 just wasn't enough CPU for me, so I started looking to get a 970. Toss in a few really large EVGA video cards and I started seeing a theme. Case and cooling by Corsair, and boards from EVGA. The machine even had corsair RAM.
Some of the things that influenced the build were:
Fast CPU
Fast Nvidia GPUs
could not be custom water cooled (I plan on moving, maybe I'll upgrade the cooling then)
As quiet as achievable
Stability, overclocked, fully loaded in room temps of 85F.
So now to a few pictures and some descriptions.
A couple of obligitory pictures of the MB as you won't see much of it in my build.
I modded the GTX570s with High Flow brackets from EVGA. This got me an improvement of about 3C or so on a fully loaded card. Not much, but it helped.
Stock:
Nekkid:
Modded:
The Rig:
You can see my non-stock H70 there to the left. It is mounted in one of the 140mm outlets of the case. Due to the north bridge heat sink, it could not mount in the center of the outlet as the 800D allows. I made a custom sheet metal fan adapter that allowed me to mount the fan to the upper left corner of the grill. Additionally, you will notice what appears to be an extra 120mm fan on the suction. It's not a fan (anymore). It's a 25mm thick spacer that allows the turbulent air flow coming out of the fan to diffuse and equalize flow prior to entering the radiator. this allows for more of the radiator to have cooling flow going through it. Normally with a fan pressed up against the radiator the very center has little to no flow. This mod got me a drop of 3-5C. So if you have the space, I recommend it. Note 38mm thickness would be better than 25, but all I had to gut was a 25mm thick fan. This mod is not required on the outlet of the heat sink as mass flow rate out of the heat sink = mass flow rate of the fan and where the air really is going doesn't matter as long as it is leaving my case.
Also on the north bridge, you will see a modified Corsair Dominator Ram fan. Just a little more active cooling to achieve those high QPI clocks. And another Corsair Dominator fan set on the RAM itself.
All these pictures are taken with the system running. Kinda neat to know my camera can shoot fast enough that the fans look stopped.
The last region worth talking about is at the top of the tower. It's cut for 3x120mm fans adjacent to each other. I found that with as many 120mm fans as I was using, (and I had 3 140mm fans that came with the tower), the build was getting stupid loud and I didn't want to be in the same room with it. So I upgraded several of the fans to 140mm. Including fabricating more of my 120mm/140mm addapters for the top. The middle fan is mounted to another gutted 120mm fan so it clears the ones to the left and the right.
So, how does it run?
With everything folding drawing 850W from the wall:
(sure I know the last one won't mean much to most of you)
Runs pretty darn well.
I enjoy overclocking, which again you need to keep things cool.
Cool apparently is the key. Unfortunately for me, I'm in the Navy and have been stationed in Hawaii for the last 5 years. With electricity at $0.29 a KWhr, I really don't want to pay for air conditioning. So, here I am Overclocking and Folding with room temperatures reaching 85F during the day.
Around a year ago, I saw a case which from the outside called to me, the Corsair 800D. I looked at the pictures of this case, awesome from the outside, but airflow in... that would be a challenge. I got to see an 800D which my friend had shipped to Hawaii, it was everything I thought it would be, good looking and poor air flow. Inside his case was a EVGA Classified mainboard. This board caught my eye. And about 2 months ago I bought the system off my friend, used but in really good shape.
The i7 920 just wasn't enough CPU for me, so I started looking to get a 970. Toss in a few really large EVGA video cards and I started seeing a theme. Case and cooling by Corsair, and boards from EVGA. The machine even had corsair RAM.
Some of the things that influenced the build were:
Fast CPU
Fast Nvidia GPUs
could not be custom water cooled (I plan on moving, maybe I'll upgrade the cooling then)
As quiet as achievable
Stability, overclocked, fully loaded in room temps of 85F.
So now to a few pictures and some descriptions.
A couple of obligitory pictures of the MB as you won't see much of it in my build.
I modded the GTX570s with High Flow brackets from EVGA. This got me an improvement of about 3C or so on a fully loaded card. Not much, but it helped.
Stock:
Nekkid:
Modded:
The Rig:
You can see my non-stock H70 there to the left. It is mounted in one of the 140mm outlets of the case. Due to the north bridge heat sink, it could not mount in the center of the outlet as the 800D allows. I made a custom sheet metal fan adapter that allowed me to mount the fan to the upper left corner of the grill. Additionally, you will notice what appears to be an extra 120mm fan on the suction. It's not a fan (anymore). It's a 25mm thick spacer that allows the turbulent air flow coming out of the fan to diffuse and equalize flow prior to entering the radiator. this allows for more of the radiator to have cooling flow going through it. Normally with a fan pressed up against the radiator the very center has little to no flow. This mod got me a drop of 3-5C. So if you have the space, I recommend it. Note 38mm thickness would be better than 25, but all I had to gut was a 25mm thick fan. This mod is not required on the outlet of the heat sink as mass flow rate out of the heat sink = mass flow rate of the fan and where the air really is going doesn't matter as long as it is leaving my case.
Also on the north bridge, you will see a modified Corsair Dominator Ram fan. Just a little more active cooling to achieve those high QPI clocks. And another Corsair Dominator fan set on the RAM itself.
All these pictures are taken with the system running. Kinda neat to know my camera can shoot fast enough that the fans look stopped.
The last region worth talking about is at the top of the tower. It's cut for 3x120mm fans adjacent to each other. I found that with as many 120mm fans as I was using, (and I had 3 140mm fans that came with the tower), the build was getting stupid loud and I didn't want to be in the same room with it. So I upgraded several of the fans to 140mm. Including fabricating more of my 120mm/140mm addapters for the top. The middle fan is mounted to another gutted 120mm fan so it clears the ones to the left and the right.
So, how does it run?
With everything folding drawing 850W from the wall:
(sure I know the last one won't mean much to most of you)
Runs pretty darn well.
.