[Case Gallery] KRK MTT-2.1

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

To view this case mod, go here.



Specs:
QC 6600
Motherboard: ASUS P5N-t Deluxe
Cooling: Watercooling, heatpipe.
Memory: 2x1GB Crucial Balistix DDR2 800Mhz
Video Card: NVidia 8800 GTS 640MB(PhysX®), 2xGTX260(SLI)
Harddisk: 3xMaxtor 500GB RAID 5 config., 1x Samsung 1TB, 1xSeagate120GB
CD/DVD Drive: Asus DVDRW multidrive with Light Scribe
CRT/LCD Model: LG 20" (1680x1050)x2
Case: Custom case
Sound Card: onboard
PSU: CoolerMaster UCP1100W
Software: Vista Home Premium

Mods:
Case moddifications: moved the PSU support closer to the mobo tray to allow mounting of a triple radiator on top; made the holes for radiator on top, fill port and wiring on mobo's tray, painted all black.The waterblocks for the 2 GTX260 are homemade, I used a small lathe as a router to fabricate those fron 8mm thick aluminium plates. Won't do it again, I swear!

To be honest, I was working on this system for almost a year just to get some crappy ratings without any explanation. Thanks to those taking time to comment, much appreciated!I was running this system using a coolermaster real power520w. So much about power requirements! I switched to UCP 1100w just because I intend overclocking it. It tops at 505W on stock settings. The room temperature at the time of testing was about 36 Celsius degree and CPU idle at 37! Tested the graphic cards and those go as high as 76 Celsius for the 65nm versions and 65 for the 55nm. From my experience, overclocking 20% won't increase much the temps, maybe about 5 degree more.

[Howard]

cool, nice setup!
would u mind to share temp/core info?
will vote when it's ready..

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Since I've just finished it at 6am today (no, I didn't sleep!) I just tested the graphic cards temps. Idle at 45 for the GTX260 55nm, 48 GTX260 65nm, and 49 the 8800GTS640. On maximum load (Crisys) the GTX260 55nm go as high as 65 and the rest of it around 76. All celsius degree. The CPU won't go more than 60 in any case, I won't even bother to test it, is the coolest part of the sysem, idles at 37 degrees... Thanks for the interest! :)

[Howard]

this is a nice build!! and u already done what u could with that small case, so it's 7/10 and
+1 for the effort! finally 8/10!

anyway, do u really need that many of HDDs???
personally, i think ur PSU a lil too powerful for your current setup bro!

thx !

welcome check out my RIG!
http://www.techpowerup.com/gallery/2255.html

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by Howard

this is a nice build!! and u already done what u could with that small case, so it's 7/10 and
+1 for the effort! finally 8/10!

anyway, do u really need that many of HDDs???

thx !

welcome check out my RIG!
http://www.techpowerup.com/gallery/2255.html

One of them is used for backup; the 1TB Samsung. The smallest one is there just because I didn't want to throw it... But since you asked if i need that much, I may say that I would prefer to have 6HDDs in a RAID5 config for both speed and redundancy; let's not forget this is a gaming rig after all, nothing is too much :D! My memory sucks to be honest but I already spent too much so maybe next month... Thanks !
PS.: The PSU is too big but I've got it for only 130USD so is a bargain(had to replace the power connector only!LOL Anyway, as I said, at stock speed, the monster is eating 505W so imagine it OC... for sure more than 600W wich exceed the 520W on my old PSU.

[pentastar111]

Nicely done. now i know what "elbows" would look like if i used them... :) 8/10

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by pentastar111

Nicely done. now i know what "elbows" would look like if i used them... :) 8/10

Thanks a lot, much apreciated! If you need any help let me know! I'm a tool maker by profession. BTW this is a budget project; if I had money and enough tools...

[dr.rooke84]

so when are you going to dust lol

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by dr.rooke84

so when are you going to dust lol

When I finish Crisys or maybe Prototype... I let you know! LOL

[dr.rooke84]

Originally Posted by Keny_Robert_Keen

When I finish Crisys or maybe Prototype... I let you know! LOL

crysis and war head are blinding games but prototype well was not to happy with the ending :-(

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by dr.rooke84

crysis and war head are blinding games but prototype well was not to happy with the ending :-(

Hehe, if I keep overclocking this rig, it might not live to see the end of it... God, since when ASUS suck that much?! The chipset was overheating from start and I had to replace those silly thermal pads with Arctic Silver 5 to get the temps dropped to 43Celsius; it kept freezing at boot or in BIOS before that! I mailed the customer support and they told me to flash the BIOS at latest revizion; it froze at half and I had to buy another chip, fortunately flashed to the latest release (viva ebay)! When I asked to replace it they said I have to send it back to UK and stuff! I said I will buy EVGA next! Those rock! We learn from mistakes, right?!
For some reason I can't get it past 3.3 Ghz and the QC6600 is easily going to 3.6 or more. I had it OC at 3.75 on a crappy mobo before! Same problem, overheating the chipset! I would watercool it but it doesn't worth the effort! When I'm thinking about those buying the Striker, based on the same architecture with some eye candy... What a loss! At least I found this mobo as a bargain...!

Sorry for the long text, is taking a piss at me today! :D

[exodusprime1337]

I rated this build a 5 for a few reasons and i hope you don't take this as a "crappy comment" but as a form of constructive critisism. Let me explain how i felt about it.

First of all if you took a whole year to build a computer and it's not worthy of the cover of CPU mag... then you either have 20 illigitimate children at home sucking your money and time out of you, or you didn't work to hard at it.. and i think based on the pictures it shows.

There are far to many elbows in there and even in the places that should have elbows like just below the rad barbs you put none and opted to bend the hose precariously instead-this shows lack of thought, time, and effort all rolled into one.

I don't know who said that this case was small but you fit an incredibly unnessessary amount of hdd's into that case and you put them in backwards, you could have hid all the wires if you turned them around.

Next thing i noticed was the fans on the rad itself... there are only 5.. pretty sure it will take 6 if i'm not mistaken and although you have little room underneat the rad at that point, you could have put the fan in anyways, or better yet, moved the rad perhaps outside the case to the top of the case instead, either way there is a way to put 6 fans on and for a case mode gallery, things like that should not be overlooked or cut out just for the sake of space, we're modding here.

Elbows... I don't know but holy fuckin shit, does the water still move after all those corners. Completely unnessessary. Even if you are getting average temps for a water cooling righ, it's a mess and it takes way to much of the veloicity out of the current inside the hose. Not to mention, it makes the case look like my basement by the boiler. Fix this and it will clean up the case a lot.

fan grills or dust shields on the inside of the case... seems like your trying to prevent dust from getting out. You've got it backwards, things like that go on the intake fans, if you do that then you won't have any dust to filter on the exhaust ports.

Wire management, to be honest the mess of hose actually makes the case less clean, but the wiring is pretty shoddy. Modular psu's def help with things like this but in your case the one thing you could have done is lined up all of the wire coming out of your psu instead of them looking like you braded them first.

To be completely honest with you the build really is impressive and if you just made it "modded" in some way besides water cooling it could be worthy of a higher score. Keep us updated and do what you can to change it up a little bit. I did my first water cooling rig and then had to change it about 3 times before i found a config that fit my style and made me feel as if i did a good job. Show as whatcha got tool man.

[Howard]

if u would sleeve all wires, might improve a lot in overall look!!!
it's just a suggestion tho..

@exodusprime
1 year to finish this build, well that's hard to believe,
unless he wants to do it slowly, or maybe he got a busy life??? haha..
it's kind of hard to mount all WC parts in such small case, and especially he used that 360rad.


blind guess though, anyways good luck to this build !!!

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by exodusprime1337

I rated this build a 5 for a few reasons and i hope you don't take this as a "crappy comment" but as a form of constructive critisism. Let me explain how i felt about it.

First of all if you took a whole year to build a computer and it's not worthy of the cover of CPU mag... then you either have 20 illigitimate children at home sucking your money and time out of you, or you didn't work to hard at it.. and i think based on the pictures it shows.

There are far to many elbows in there and even in the places that should have elbows like just below the rad barbs you put none and opted to bend the hose precariously instead-this shows lack of thought, time, and effort all rolled into one.

I don't know who said that this case was small but you fit an incredibly unnessessary amount of hdd's into that case and you put them in backwards, you could have hid all the wires if you turned them around.

Next thing i noticed was the fans on the rad itself... there are only 5.. pretty sure it will take 6 if i'm not mistaken and although you have little room underneat the rad at that point, you could have put the fan in anyways, or better yet, moved the rad perhaps outside the case to the top of the case instead, either way there is a way to put 6 fans on and for a case mode gallery, things like that should not be overlooked or cut out just for the sake of space, we're modding here.

Elbows... I don't know but holy fuckin shit, does the water still move after all those corners. Completely unnessessary. Even if you are getting average temps for a water cooling righ, it's a mess and it takes way to much of the veloicity out of the current inside the hose. Not to mention, it makes the case look like my basement by the boiler. Fix this and it will clean up the case a lot.

fan grills or dust shields on the inside of the case... seems like your trying to prevent dust from getting out. You've got it backwards, things like that go on the intake fans, if you do that then you won't have any dust to filter on the exhaust ports.

Wire management, to be honest the mess of hose actually makes the case less clean, but the wiring is pretty shoddy. Modular psu's def help with things like this but in your case the one thing you could have done is lined up all of the wire coming out of your psu instead of them looking like you braded them first.

To be completely honest with you the build really is impressive and if you just made it "modded" in some way besides water cooling it could be worthy of a higher score. Keep us updated and do what you can to change it up a little bit. I did my first water cooling rig and then had to change it about 3 times before i found a config that fit my style and made me feel as if i did a good job. Show as whatcha got tool man.

I really appreciate this as the first complete comment, addressing all the issues this case has.
It took almost a year overall to build this case because I live on a fucking island and I had to wait on average 3 weeks for any part I order. I was building alone the waterblocks for the GTX260s and that took time to build, experiment, take it apart, moddify it, and so on.
I had it mounted toghether in about 7-8 hours last time but imagine I had to dismantle this case about 30 times to the bits. That adresses the issue of time.
The watercooling loop is crappy, right; too many elbows for sure and in the wrong place also, agree; I was just using scraps to put the tubbing together, I think the longest piece of tubing I had left was about a foot. I will order some half inch tubing soon and I will buy some threaded elbows for the rad as soon as the shops open on this island(in August everything is closed but the bakery and supermarket)!
The wiring is tough. First of all, this PSU is not modular.The wires come out of it trough a 2 inch hole and are very rigid. I have the 520W modular one, is great but we have to consider 2 issues with modular power supply: first, more connectors, greater risk of poor connections on greedy graphic cards and overclocked components and the average life time of those molex pins is about 3 years and are rated under 3 ampers a piece. I understand the choice of many manufacturers of PSUs that exceed 600W not to make them modular. Is a mess in a case, I dmit but I won't cut the extra wiring just for that! I will consider opening the PSU's case and rearanging the wires to get the unused ones on the side tho'.
The HDD. I can't turn those around and keep the actual rail system that makes them removable. I did the best I could to compact the wiring and maximize the air flow around them. Too many?! Gotta be kidding! I wish I had 6 of them in a RAID5 configuration. The case is built for that many, it has 2 fans to cool them so I disagree! Is up to my choice how many HDD I use in a system, that seem unfair, sorry!
The fan grills and filters are there to solely protect the blades from dust and the radiator fins. I was thinking of mounting filters on the 2 big fans but that will imply a moddification of the plastic casing of those fans and I prefer on the next revision to use smaller fans and a transparent window on that side panel. Another reason the fans have the filters inside the case is the pressure. if I turn the big fans to minimum, in the case I will have negative pressure and the air will go in from the vent ports on the back and side of the case rather than the 2 big fans.
5 fans on the rad is overkill actually. 3 of them are enough actually if wasn't for the dust filters. The reason I didn't add the 6th one is the space left between the fan and PSU. I want to be able to remove that dust filter with ease. It might work but is not necessary. It makes no diference, I tried it. The flow restriction compensate the added power probably because I've seen no diference in temps readings.
Anyway, be sure this is not the final revision. For the HDDs I have a surprise: I ordered some SMD SATA connectors that I will solder on a PCB as soon as I get the CNC machine up and running to cut it. then I will reverse those suckers and make it removable just the way the laptop drives are; all or nothing ;) ! See you next year ! :))

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by Howard

if u would sleeve all wires, might improve a lot in overall look!!!
it's just a suggestion tho..

@exodusprime
1 year to finish this build, well that's hard to believe,
unless he wants to do it slowly, or maybe he got a busy life??? haha..
it's kind of hard to mount all WC parts in such small case, and especially he used that 360rad.


blind guess though, anyways good luck to this build !!!

Thanks Howard once again. The wiring is sleeved tho' ! Even the SATA cables but that fricking red will show on pictures brighter than in reality!There is only one way to get that red out of the case and is only if i replace those wires with black ones :D !

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by Keny_Robert_Keen

When I finish Crisys or maybe Prototype... I let you know! LOL

I tried to get a better pic BTW, It looks like the flash is still picking up invisible staines for the naked eye tho'! Sorry for not cleaning it at the time I made the first pics, I admit that was bad judgement but I didn't slept for ages so have mercy on my soul! :D

[Howard]

Originally Posted by Keny_Robert_Keen

I tried to get a better pic BTW, It looks like the flash is still picking up invisible staines for the naked eye tho'! Sorry for not cleaning it at the time I made the first pics, I admit that was bad judgement but I didn't slept for ages so have mercy on my soul! :D

well then, god bless u bro!
off to a good build..
but just don't keep modding, u need to enjoy ur PC, that's the main point!
hehe peace out~

anyway, what island u live in? u r not in hawaii, rite? or guam? haha..

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by Howard

well then, god bless u bro!
off to a good build..
but just don't keep modding, u need to enjoy ur PC, that's the main point!
hehe peace out~

anyway, what island u live in? u r not in hawaii, rite? or guam? haha..

Hehe, I wish! I live in Cyprus. That's a small Island in Mediteranean sea. And Howard, You're damn right bro' I didn't build this system to mod a case but to be able to fit all this hardware in a nice looking case without adding too much to it and being able get some performance out of it at some resonable cost and efort. I don't believe there is any real gaming case out there, one you can just buy and mount all this inside. Maybe I should go back to Romania and start a busines building cases... One of the reasons I posted 2 of my cases here was to find out what people really want from a gaming PC. I think we can all agree that we want performance, low cost and a nice look.

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

I voted 9/10 because:

I just put 9 to balance it out. The score should be higher than the 5.9 average imo.

In anycase, nice specs. Sweet case to boot as well.. first time Ive seen a case like this.. and your mod is good.

The elbow to the pump inlet and the cpu > rad is unessesary imo. Better design the loop with minimal adapters.. kills the pressure.

you scoring angle barbs? score one from bits or koolance. they have this unrestricitve design to it. (I know because I tried to breathe in / out using those, and you can feel like your still breathing to a normal 1/2 barb fitting)

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by Bjorn_Of_Iceland

I voted 9/10 because:

I just put 9 to balance it out. The score should be higher than the 5.9 average imo.

In anycase, nice specs. Sweet case to boot as well.. first time Ive seen a case like this.. and your mod is good.

The elbow to the pump inlet and the cpu > rad is unessesary imo. Better design the loop with minimal adapters.. kills the pressure.

you scoring angle barbs? score one from bits or koolance. they have this unrestricitve design to it. (I know because I tried to breathe in / out using those, and you can feel like your still breathing to a normal 1/2 barb fitting)

Thanks! I will moddify the watercooling system as soon as my tube is coming. That is made from scraps for now because I was too impacient to play with :) I will build my own barbs for the rad, I hate to pay more shipping than the barbs worth... Will try to make it nice ! :)

[ex-dohctor]

Am I missing something here?

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by ex-dohctor

Am I missing something here?

Well, you just missed the last 2 free tickets to Michael's concert! I wouldn't cry for that !LOL

[ex-dohctor]

LOL, nah mate. For some reason I couldn't see the pictures last night.
Some cable management is definitely needed in there mate.

Switch the H.D.D's around and move/lose the dust covers. If you intend to leave the case open like that then the dust covers are kind useless ;)

Maybe some decent cable sleeving would also help.

I know nothing about water cooling so I cannot comment there :P I am an air cooling junky so I would look at sorting out the cables to improve airflow of the existing case fans as much as possible.

Post up some more pics after a bit of a tidy up.

Later mate!

[Keny_Robert_Keen]

Originally Posted by ex-dohctor

LOL, nah mate. For some reason I couldn't see the pictures last night.
Some cable management is definitely needed in there mate.

Switch the H.D.D's around and move/lose the dust covers. If you intend to leave the case open like that then the dust covers are kind useless ;)

Maybe some decent cable sleeving would also help.

I know nothing about water cooling so I cannot comment there :P I am an air cooling junky so I would look at sorting out the cables to improve airflow of the existing case fans as much as possible.

Post up some more pics after a bit of a tidy up.

Later mate!

Hehe, I admit the Cooler Master's PSU have a crappy sleeve on the cables but I won't change it just for that. As much as I know, sleeving is to help with air flow mostly. In my case, I have too much air-flow anyway! :D I will turn around the HDDs but only after I will build the docking system so I can plug it in similar to a laptop. I don't modd for modding, anything I do must be backed by a practical reason. The dust filters will stay in place just because I hate cleaning fans and radiator's fins. I don't care how much dust gets in the case, I just hate to have noisy fans because of the dust depositing on it. The cables are fine, what you saw in most pics are diferent phases in assembling the PC and only one pic is with it almost finished. It will stay closed BTW, I like the case as it is, I think overmodding is GAY! If I want a fucking Picasso I buy one !LOL Thanks for taking time to comment mate, much apreciated! I will let you know when KRK MTT 2.2 is ready and I will post it with better quality pics and I promise, I will hide all the wires! :D

[ex-dohctor]

Looking forward to KRK MTT 2.2 then.

Cheers Mate!