I´m not dead, the project has been going on in the background for a while now and I´m getting close to completion! Part 1 of my Story (Part 2 in a later post):
Whew this is/was quite a rocky road so far. I´ve been busy in the past month(s) and found little time to work on my hobby. But I kept the parts in sight on my desk to remind me every day and now I sacrificed a few nights of sleep to finally get it running.
Since I was really tired and exhausted + feeling a little blue this winter season I had no nerve to document every process with pictures like I usually do. I hope you can forgive me, it would have meant many more hours of work, stopping what I do every few minutes to take a snap and later editing and cutting it all together. Hours that I just don´t have atm. I will take some shots of the finished build tho!
Instead I´ll write down the story and share my experience of putting this machine together.
My last post from november was back when I finally received a waterblock for one of my single pcb GTX 295s. A very friendly user offered me one from his collection and I bought it, thank you so much once more! It´s the key element that was really tough to find. If you read this and want to be mentioned feel free to post or write me and I´ll give you a shout
Now I had one single slot waterblock and lucky me found a dual pcb card + waterblock. The card was definitly used for a while, I hoped it would still work for a while since I have no backup dual-pcb. This is a picture of the cleaned innovatek waterblock:
Sadly it will not be a matching look with these two, but I don´t care. I got two watercooled cards, I can´t possibly ask for more. From here on out I finally had most parts together and felt motivated enough to start working on everything. First thing I did was the 771 to 775 mod.
First part was not very difficult, I put on the sticker and checked the position with a magnifying lens -> done.
Modding the socket however was a cold sweat moment for me. I picked a scalpel and very carefully, bit by bit, cut down the two plastic notches so that I can place 771 CPUs in my socket. I took my fair time for that, went really slow and tried to use as little force as possible. After about 30-45 minutes I was happy with the result and strapped the X5482 in place.
CPU is now shielding the pins, which meant I could more or less safely take off all the heatsinks from the motherboard. I replaced all of the old pads and paste with fresh material.
Next up, the RAM-heatsinks that were just a bit to wide to fit. I thought about sanding them down some fractions of a mm, but soon realized that this might not be enough. I took the heatsinks off from a stick and saw that these "heatsinks" were just connected to the memory modules by a rather thin line of thermal glue and the heatpipe inside did barely cover 1/3 of each module. So I figured that just maybe the heat from these parts will be rather manageable.
I decided to improvise and from 2 of the 4 sticks I took off one side from the heatsink and left it bare. Then I sanded the heatsink from the opposing module:
And slapped a thick thermal pad between the now bare modules and the sanded down part. I will take a picture of that later so you can see what I mean.
Next up I replaced the CMOS battery for good measure. Then I got to the waterblock for the CPU. I choose the Alphacool NexXxoS XP³, because it was readily available and I like that black finish. I installed the backplate for it, put the paste on and the block in place. Screwed it down with the springs, not very tight but just some pressure.
Now the board is ready to rock at this point. Next are the GPUs. I´m used to working on these (btw my GPU thread will be continued when I have my next semester break), so I had no trouble taking each apart, cleaning them and putting them back together with the waterblocks. Still on these dual GPU cards it´s quite some work to do. Many tiny screws, you need to be careful with your tools and they ate a LOT of thermal interface material. I like that the waterblocks feature very tight tolerances on most parts so you can put the pads in the bin and use thermal paste, but the huge GPU IHS + 28 memory modules on each card took me 2 syringes of MX4. I just barely had enough left for the trouble ahead.
With the GPUs done I turned to the watercooling loop I had already prepared weeks ago and realized with horror that I made a huge mistake. I left it standing still for 2 months and small spots of mold had started growing inside the tubing and reservoir...
This meant taking the whole thing I had already build with radiator, pump and all apart again. Flushing it, cleaning it. I threw the tubing away, flushed the radiator many many times and disassembled the pump as well as the reservoir to give both a proper clean-up. Had to re-order some tubing and then but it back together. Finally I had everything else I need and started to build the system.
At this point you might already realize how naive I went about the whole thing, not even testing parts before putting them under the loop and everything. Did not even test the GPUs if they work before. I was so focused on getting it together in the little free time I had. I did the same with my TR build, but those had been new parts.
First sketchy thing that I did was on the CPU waterblock. It said max. 5mm long threads on the fittings and guess what, my fittings were exactly 5mm. So as I picked one from the box, I picked exactly the one that had some burr left on it which made it 5mm and a half. I tried to get it in and felt it hit the bottom before really sealing on the O-ring. I was getting a little impatient and decided to just throw in a 2nd O-ring over the first, hoping it might seal this way... DUMBEST IDEA I´VE EVER HAD.
I however called it a day and decided to go into leak testing like this. Put the loop together inside the case and routed the tubes outside to the portable part of the loop. I put paper towel around every fitting and carefully padded the mainboard too. Filled the reservoir and send it into the loop. Guess where it was leaking.
Yes from the two double O-ringed fittings on the CPU-block. And it was leaking bad, the second O-ring was completly pushed out and visible. Thank god I had it standing and it dripped down on the paper. Nothing got into the socket, not even on the board. Only the top GPU got some water and ofc it crept under the backplate... Fun moment for my heart.
But this fail shows the strengths of quick release couplers, I could quickly disconnect the two lines on the lower back outside of the case and drain only the waterblocks. I took the tubing off and took a closer look at the fitting, realizing that the problem was only with this one. So I replaced it, replaced the O-rings and only used 1 this time, like you always should.
I dried everything as best as I could and closed the loop back up again. No leaks this time. I filled it up and let it running for several hours. Still no leak. But that water under the backplate had me worried. However to take it off, I would have to undo the screws that hold the whole block in place... So I just carefully put some towel into every nook I could get under, took it off after a while and let a fan blow air under the backplate for a whole night.
I plugged in the last cables, up to this point I never had power anywhere near the system. For good reasons I think
My heart was really racing at this point. So much work up to here and I do not even know if any of the parts work at all. Is the board ok as the seller stated? Does the CPU mod work? Do my GPUs work? What if something does´nt work and I can´t even figure out what it is? What if I turn on power and some water is still left from the spill and I destroy something?
Would you have flicked to power-switch on your 1600W PSU and pushed the power on button?
Well I did.
It lit up. Fans spinning, roaring even. The first breath, the first stretch. LEDs on the board light up, blue and yellow above the RAM. I have no idea what they want to tell me but they are on and they stay on!
I heard my hdd start. I see green LEDs on my GPUs!
Then the beep, the single, satisfying and oh so sweet BEEP. It posted.
I still had no display out tho. Cable was plugged in the top GPU, but instead of a picture out I get a blue LED on the bottom card. Which told me something was going on. The blue LED only lights up on the dual pcb cards if they are recognized as the 'master card' and the blue LED is then indicating the DVI-Port to use for monitor signal.
I switched the cable to the blue port and saw the post screen for the first time. Many informations on there, good and bad. Xeon was detected and running like it should. However it claimed that there was no GPU in PCIe-Slot 1 and one in PCIe-Slot 3 and that I should re-seat it to the first slot...
Strange since the card in slot one was visibly running, indicated by the LED.
This is where part 1 ends, it´s getting late again and I´ve been sacrificing many hours of my sleep for this project as you may be able to tell already.
If you want to guess what the issue is and what caused it, feel free
You may be surprised.
Some teaser shots of it currently running next to me:
