Money no object build. Dual 980 Ti's, EK blocks, Maximus VIII, TridentZ 3200-14, Snow Silent 1050W

[pclausen]

Ok, so not quite money no object, but I'm trying to build a decent system that will play decently at 4k.

Parts for the core build includes:

Case: Thermaltake Core P5 ATX Open Frame
PS: SeaSonic Snow Silent-1050
MB: Asus Maximus VIII Hero
CPU: i7-6700K
RAM: G.SKILL TridentZ 2 x 16GB DDR4 3200 14-14-14
SSD: Samsung 950 PRO 512GB
SLI: 2 x GTX980TI-DC3OC-6GD5-GAMING
NIC: Intel X520
Monitor: Samsung UN48JS9000

For the loop, I have the following inbound:

Radiator: XSPC AX480 (white to match the Snow Silent)
Fans: Thermaltake Riing 12 Series Red
Pump / Reservoir: EK-XRES-140-REVO-D5-PWM
MB Plate: EK-FB-M8G-MONO-NK
Strix Plates: EK-FC-GTX980-TI-STRIX-NP
Strix Back Plate: EK-FC-980TISTRIX-NK-BP (just a single since I'm SLI'ing)
Dual Parallel Block: EK-FC-TERMINAL-DUAL-PAR-3SLOT-PX
Compression Fittings: EK-ACF1013-RD
Tubing: PrimoFlex Crystal Clear
Coolant: EKOOLANT-EVO-1000-RD (2l)

So the plan is the loop will go:

Radiator -> CPU -> GPUs -> Reservoir/Pump

I plan to connect the water pump to the fan header designated for that purpose on the Hero.

I got the base system assembled and it looks like this so far:

And I got the first 980Ti and it looks pretty decent I think:

So do you guys think I'm on the right path, or would you do anything different?

I'd like to hit 4.7 or 4.8 on the Skylake and 1500 on the 980Ti's.

I plan to convert to hardlines once I get everything working to my liking with tubes. Also got misc other parts ordered not listed above, like a T and a ball valve and a temp sensor.

Before I go much further, I need to clean my office. lol

 

[pclausen]

Got the system up an running on air for now.

Radiator fans are just for looks. Video card sags a lot. I hope the water blocks between the cards will help with that...

Laid it down in horizontal position to take the stress off the PCIE slot.

I even got motivated to clean up my office

The bad news is that after install win10 on the 950 pro, and then installing my 10G NIC in PCIE slot one, caused the system to not boot. After some research, I realized that with the M.2 in use, PCIE slot 1 is disabled. So this won't work with a HERO. So I just placed an order for an EXTREME to replaced it. That should afford me the ability to run 2 980 TI and a 8x 10G NIX.

I got about 250TB of storage in the basement spanning various RAID6 and RAID60 arrays, and a RAID0 SSD array, so having a 10G connection to all that is critical. Didn't realize the Hero would not support at least 3 8x PCIE cards...

Will also need to return the HERO water block for an EXTREME one. What a pain this build is turning into already...

 

[ccityinstaller]

I got about 250TB of storage in the basement spanning various RAID6 and RAID60 arrays, and a RAID0 SSD array, so having a 10G connection to all that is critical. Didn't realize the Hero would not support at least 3 8x PCIE cards...

I hate to be a downer man, but I would have gone with Haswell-E (Broadwell-E is launching in the next 2 months or so IIRC) so that you would have had plenty of PCI-E lanes..You are going to be stuck even on that $489 Extreme board you just ordered. To quote the PCI-E specs from Newegg:

3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8 or x8/x4/x4, gray)
1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x4 mode, gray)

You are going to be starving that second 980TI and the NIC since you can only offer them x4 lanes each..The second GPU will only lose 5~10% of its performance, but I am not sure what it will do the NIC performance wise..Actually you might even be losing more lanes since you have to feed x4 lanes to the M2 slot, not too sure about that though..

All that being said it looks like a nice potential build..I just hate to see you starving yourself from the beginning..You might want to look into a board that has a Plex chip..The problem there is you add lanes at the expense of latency..

 

[Nebell]

This is why I bought Gigabyte Gaming G1, it adds additional 20 PCI-e lanes at some (neglible) latency.

 

[pclausen]

Yeah, the number of PCI-E lanes really suck. I did get that Extreme mobo but haven't had a chance to drop the 10G NIC into it yet. Still waiting on my 3-way SLI bridge since the mobo didn't come with one. Want to run some benchmarks with just the 2 980 Ti's @ 8x first.

In hindsight, a X99 based build would have made more sense, but I'm too far in at this point to change that. 4x PCI-E should be ok for the 10G NIC I would think. After all, 4x8GB = 32GBbs.

On the M.2 slot, I believe it steals the lanes associated with SATA ports 5 and 6. I have all the SATA ports disabled since I won't be using them.

Had to trim 2 of the rubber grommets on the Thermaltake to make it fit.

Got the Asus EK block installed:

And the 980 Ti blocks. Here's a show of the naked Ti:

And the Ti backplate. I opted to just do the one closest to the CPU for now.

And I flushed the radiator. Turns out there wasn't hardly any debris in it. Maybe XSPC flushed them before they go out the door?

Up and running on water with soft tubes for now.

 

[Nebell]

Looking good! Looking forward to hard tubing, that chassis looks so simple and minimalistic and that's what I like about it.

Before I started my wc build, I almost went with the same parts as you.
Same PSU, chassis, ram, but eventually ended up getting different parts because I couldn't wait

 

[pendragon1]

don't forget your sli bridge.
looks good! glad you're eventually putting hard tube. it's gonna look sweet!

 

[Nicepants42]

Can you explain the flow through that mono block? EK's site doesn't describe it and their pictures aren't very detailed. Specifically, are there channels cut through the base of the block that allow the fluid to reach the outlet via 2 routes ('up' and 'down', at it appears, from the inlet)?

 

[pendragon1]

from what I can tell in the pics, it pushes into both cards at the same time on the right, flow throw the gpus block and out the left side at the same time. I was confused at first and look closely to figure it out.

 

[Nicepants42]

from what I can tell in the pics, it pushes into both cards at the same time on the right, flow throw the gpus block and out the left side at the same time. I was confused at first and look closely to figure it out.

I'm asking about the mono block, covering the CPU and VRMs.

You're talking about the SLI terminal, which does appear to be parallel, but it's flowing left to right as pictured.

 

[pendragon1]

oops...
yeah I saw the flow backwards and misunderstood your q...
I see what you mean now.

 

[pclausen]

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure exactly how the coolant flows through the mono block on the mobo. Let me take a closer look tonight and snap some better pics. I did finally get my SLI bridge yesterday and was able to do some initial tests. Coolant temp at idle is 28c and goes to 34c during FireStrike Ultra. The radiator fans (connected directly to the mobo fan headers) only speed up when the CPU is taxed, not the GPUs. I played around with AI a little, but didn't see a way to change that behavior. Its easy to set fans to max speed via AI, but it would be nice to have the coolant temp drive fan speed somehow. The water pump, also connected directly to the water pump fan header on the mobo, seems to run at a constant 4500 rpm or so. It is very quiet. Haven't found a way to adjust the speed of it yet either.

CPU temps get up there during anything CPU intensive, but the GPUs are running much cooler than when on air. I'll see if I can tighten up the mono plate any. Running Prime95, I saw the cores go past 100c.

Not sure why the GPUs are not recognized by Ultra when running SLI. Running non SLI, they are both picked up.

 

[Nicepants42]

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure exactly how the coolant flows through the mono block on the mobo.

The reason I ask is that it doesn't look like the water entering the block can reach the outlet by going 'up' as pictured - only 'down'. It shouldn't be a problem if that's the case, but seeing the L-shaped VRM block on the back makes me want to know if there's a water channel cut into it (since there's clearly not a water channel cut into the top of the block), which would allow water to reach the outlet going either 'up' or 'down' (as pictured) from the inlet.

Edit: That reads horribly. Here's two pictures to help clarify:

Running Prime95, I saw the cores go past 100c.

Sounds like a bad mount, but then again, I'm not up to speed on what Prime95 does to current gen CPUs - some say don't use it, others say some are morons. Don't know.

 

[pclausen]

Here are some closeup pics showing the coolant flow is pretty much as you guessed.

Another neat detail. There's another chip here that is cooled as well.

I'll see if I can tighten down the block some more. I did do a 2 rice grain sized drop of thermal compound right at the center of the CPU. The AI 5-way optimization did get it to 4.7GHz where on air it would only take it to 4.4GHz. Like you say, maybe Prime95 is not the thing to run on a Skylake. I'll test with Handbrake as well.