Sorry it took so long guys...I've been playing Crysis and found myself too busy to put the time into doing this till today 😛...God it feels good to game again....
I uploaded the images to photobucket...and just realized they don't have a thumbnailed viewing code..so I'm just going to give direct links with explanations 😛...too lazy to re-upload..and crysis is waiting for me 😃. Here are the events that occurred.
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The beauty finally arrives in my house...I set it down and run to get the camera only to return with my kitty playing king of the box...Not this time kitty..::slap::
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-001.jpg
Along with the lovely box came my new keyboard, mouse, and souncard..=D..My headset unfortunately didn't arrive since it was out of stock..But they shipped it out from Japan..O_O...
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-013.jpg
Before we move any further, my current setup in all it's hideousness 😛...
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-004.jpg
I'm about to go jack the ripper ape[censored]on the box 😛 (excuse my french ^_^)
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-016.jpg
The packaging itself was juts insane....I can't even fathom how much was spent on tape/bubblewrap
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-017.jpg
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-018.jpg
At this moment I began to spend 20 minutes on trying to figure out a way of getting the rig out without damaging the box, just incase something did happen to the rig....
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-019.jpg
After realizing it was impossible with all the tape..I went ape[censored]=P...
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-020.jpg
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-021.jpg
My cat explores the new belongings as I unwrap the large amount of tape used to wrap the brown packaging..
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-022.jpg
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-023.jpg
With my surprise..there was VERY THICK foam inserts all around the computer itself, I finally pried out the beast 😃.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-025.jpg
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-027.jpg
I opened up the beauty to see more foam packaging 😛..This one to keep all the cpu heatsinks, and graphics cards in place without breaking during shipment...Great job on the shipping marco! 😃..
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-029.jpg
Finally removed..Behold the beauty 😃...
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-030.jpg
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-035.jpg
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-034.jpg
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-036.jpg
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-041.jpg
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-042.jpg
And finally!..the new setup! =D
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-044.jpg
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It was definitely an adventure 😃.... But as noted in the upcoming posts..I did run into a few problems.
AHCI is the only mode to support all 6 sata ports, so I had to use IDE in order to atleast get windows XP working. I already went through 8 os installs trying to get AHCI to work in XP...But It just wouldn't work correctly for me 😞...I even slipstreamed my XP cd with nlite and the AHCI Sata drivers...It actually did install..But wouldn't boot 😞...I could probably fix it withj some time..But for now..I need to get my game on 😃.
In terms of gpu temperature..DAMN hot...I was idling at 25% stock fan speed at around 72-74C...I burned my hand on the plastic covering. At 70% manually set fan speed, temps dropped to 68 or so C idle. So I took some spare higher airflow fans I had lying around and replaced the two rear exhaust fans with higher rated CFM ones. I also took t[censored]s two replaced fans along with two other spares, and rigged them to the side mesh panel...3 of them just during direct air right onto the components, and one actually hanging angled downward to get air inbetween the bottom graphics card and my sound card. The difference was astonishing..I went from 68C idle with a 70% fanspeed to 38-46 depending on ambient temp...It's average is around 39-42C over the past few days..talk about massive..25C drop..O_O..This is what the fans look like on the side panel.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h113/kamr00z/rig/Picture-046.jpg
I've also been having CPU temperature issues which are covered in the following posts...I need to figure out what I want to do in terms of replacement heatsinks...Trying to gather the funds for some new ones...I shouldn't of went gung ho on nearly maxing out my credit card on a mouse, keyboard, headset, and soundcard..Should of just made due with what I had and replaced the cooling issue first with more memory...lol..but I'll just try to scrape up what I can, and figure out what I plan to do.
Now for the benchmarks...But to my amazement...the scores weren't as high as I thought it would be...I'm pretty much sure it's the memory holding back the system. DDR2-667 running at a 5:4 ratio to the FSB. The QX9775's are 1600FSB cpu's, so quad pumped that's a 400 FSB...ddr2-800 would be a 1:1 ratio. But as we know, FBDIMMs are expensive and slow, kingston is planning to release cas3 ddr2-800 fbdimms in the near future, I'm just going to save up my money and address this problem at that time 😛.
Regarding these benchmarks..I haven't had the time to OC the cpu's...with these temps I don't really want to do so atm till I get better cooling..I'll eventually throw in some updated benchmarking when I get better cooling and get these cpu's up to around 4 ghz or so 😃. For now there is just Stock..and a mild OC on the 8800 GT's...
Stock 8800 GT Reference - 600 Core/900 memory (1800)/1500 Shader
Current Mild OC - 670 Core/975 memory (1950)/1675 Shader
3DMark 05-
Stock: 19,257
OC: 19,566
3DMark 06-
Stock: 17,294
OC: 17,714
Super Pi 1M: 15 Sec. (exactly)
Geekbench: 7,786
I have to admit, odd that the gap in 3dmark06 in performance was bigger then 05...But the memory is indeed holding the rig back..With time I'll replace it...This is all I've been able to benchmark so far..Super Pi I'm not really surprised, it's a single threaded benchmark, and falls in line based on the timing.
Sorry it took so long to get this out guys..But Crysis is just too much fun 😛...Time for me to cloak on out of here and throw some more north korean's across the world 😃...lol...