JF's First Desktop Build (Liquid Cooled G0 Q6600, 8800 GTX, 1.5TB HDD Array, etc)

Just got my new optical fibre internet installed at my apartment today. Yummy.


Japan Optical Fibre internet FTW. Optical Fibre > ADSL+Cable

Got my motherboard back and got it up and running again after my new modifications.

• Lapped IHS
• Lapped Waterblock
• Added Radiator
• Wrapped cords to make the system cleaner
• Replaced bottom compartment fan with LED Fan
• Added 500gb Western Digital HDD (Total two Terabytes of space)
  

The lapping, and radiator greatly reduced my temps by atleast 15-18 degrees. At 3.2ghz after 12 hours prime 95 she would sometimes spike up to 75 degrees. I have since overclocked her to 3.4ghz and now she only spikes up to about 65 degrees under load after the mods.

I'm pretty sure I can overclock her just a bit further but to be honest with you, 3.4ghz Quad Core is plenty fast for me. This is coming from a guy who was on a 1.86ghz Dothan Pentium M for about 2 years. She does 16 seconds on a 1mb SuperPi test and has withstood the test of Prime95 of 15 hours + Prime95 and MemTest combined for an additional 8 hours.

By the way don't mind that weird background, that's my DreamScene wallpaper playing. (Yes it was on during the Prime95 burn in) And yes that's my Antec Powersupply box my radiator is on. I accidentally cut the cord too short when I added the radiator, I'm just too lazy right now to redo it so it can sit flush on the floor.

Without further ado the pics:










I was finally able to burn in my new build after about a month playing with her. I did replace the memory twice. I went from 2GB Corsair XMS2 C4 6400's to 2GB A-DATA Micron D9 PC8500's and finally to 4GB Ballistix Micron D9 PC6400's for various reasons as explained in my NEW redone picture gallery. Tomorrow I am also adding another 500GB since I got free gift certificates from an electronic store here in Nagoya - I can get a new 500 HDD for about 30 bucks which pushes me up to 2.0TB of HDD space now I think. . The new and updated gallery has comments that guide you through the build. Please check it out!


For those who did wonder about overclocking. Then here she is. Q6600 originally at 2.4ghz overclocked to 3.2ghz with 4gb of Crucial Ballistix PC6400 Ram. I managed to boot her at 3.6ghz but she wasn't Prime 95 Stable. I am 100% sure that I can somehow make her Prime 95 stable with various BIOS tweaks but since I am still relatively new at OCing I am more comfortable at this speed right now. Besides at 3.2ghz she is even faster than the newer QX6850 with it's faster FSB and it's $1200+ pricetag. Not too shabby for a $300 processor and $180 water cooling setup huh?

Comments are welcome! I'd like to hear all your thoughts about the build and even OCing in general!

Anyone care to help me pushing her to 3.6ghz?



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Yo! What's happening off-topic? I just finished my very first desktop build and I wanted to share it on NBF. Here are the specs:

TERMINAL

Antec P182 Special Edition (Only 5000 made)
Antec Truepower Quattro 850W
Asus P5K Deluxe Wifi/AP
Core 2 Quad Q6600 (G0 Stepping/Revision 2)
Thermaltake Bigwater 760i (Liquid Cooling System)
Leadtek Winfast PX88 Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX
Corsair XMS2 PC6400 2GB
Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200 RPM (Primary)
Western Digital 500GB 7200 RPM (ESata)
2x 250GB Photography/Backup HDDs 7200 RPM (Firewire)

LG 22" Widescreen LCD 2MS 3000:1 Contrast Ratio (White)
Logitech G7 Mouse (Carbon Fibre Version)
Logitech G15 keyboard
Razor eXactMat and eXactRest

Background Information:

First and foremost I am an Enthusiast/Hobby Photographer currently living in Nagoya, Japan. Photography is my passion and I will soon be in the process of building my own portfolio soon enough. With photography aside, during the day I'm a certified EFL/ESL Teacher teaching at kindergartens, elementary schools and even adults. At night I am still an undergrad student finishing my degree from my University in Canada (Kwantlen/UBC) at night online.

Reasons for building:

My Nikon D80 in RAW + Large (High Jpeg) + Burst/Bracket totally PWNS my Travelmate 8100 and it's measly Pentium M 1.86 dothan. I needed a rig that would run Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Capture NX with about 30 instances of large uncompressed photos. For me this automatically required a Quad Core CPU + a crapload of space. Hence why I got a Q6600 after the July 22nd price drop (Yes Japan was affected as well) plus my collection of High capacity internal/external HDD's.

Updated: Tell me what you think. Thanks man, the Liquid Cooling ain't as cool as your system though. I'm just burning this baby in right now. In a couple of days I'm planning on OCing the Q6600. It's just on stock right now. Thanks.

Thanks you guys. I haven't overclocked it yet. To be honest with you I haven't researched enough. Perhaps I need to start looking for tutorials or resource material.

Updated August 27th!

I added a new gallery and OCing pictures! Also changed out some parts! Check out the first post.

She's doing good, running lightroom/photoshop/bridge + a whole bunch of crap in the background. It's a multitasking god thanks to the quad core and 4gigs of memory. Gaming's really good too.

Hmm...P5K Deluxe from your sig and same speed ram right?

Is your Q6600 G0 or B3? What are your bios settings? What's your cooling setup like? Like I said I know my q6600 can OC more but I'm just being a bit lazy right now to really tweak it.