Power PC Build - Blackops
Thought I’d blog this, from a sharing sense!
I need a powerful PC to do my work and for pleasure, in the past I’ve always built two machines one for home use and one for work; they back each other up in a work sense via a NAS. So my SOHO has two towers, a NAS, LAN, two broadband connections and often 2 laptops, since my laptop is more powerful than the tower till I need to run a big spreadsheet then I use the tower since I have a great (old) Sony 20" CRT Monitor.
The last tower is a 2002 vintage, and at the time was bleeding edg(ish) so my towers are well past their sell by date. I’ve actually been waiting for an X48/DDR3 motherboard so the first good one out the trap was going to get my purchase, DFI unfortunately were at one time top of the list but they didn’t have e-sata which I want. 790 was a none starter since I need this for work so just can’t afford the early chip set issues that come with NVIDIA but for goodness sake what happend to Asus??
Just for the record and the lack of knowledge in some area’s; I'm not a bench testing overclocker just a heavy duty workstation builder/user, stable overclocks, silence and simplicity are golden!
The Shopping List!
8 June 08
So we started the build by moving all the boxes from my shed into a spare bedroom at my sons place, and setting up the power, anti-static & chairs; on this build my son has joined with me (he is the 'we') that means I’m still building two towers, I recon I don’t need two for my own use now (hopefully). But if I do it’ll be easy to replicate what we’ve done.
These machines are based around the Foxconn Blackops board and we intend to use air cooling. The Blackops motherboard was chosen because we needed X48, DDR3, it was first, uses some very high quality parts and I liked the layout. We also need the best STABLE clock’s we can get,.
10 June 08
Started last night; opened the boxs! The motherboard comes with loads of parts some I’ll never use in this build but they’ll go in the parts box; we are a little concerned that this board is targeted at the bench testing overclockers and may not be suitable for our use – time will tell!
The first problem was trying to get the TRUE cooler to fit alongside the OCZ 4GB ReaperX memory sticks (slots 1 &3), after I mangled the OCZ heat pipes a bit we moved the fan to the other side in pull – I don’t like but looking at the book I can’t use the other memory slots 2 & 4.
For info I’m using the Noctua NF-P12 Fan, after a lot of research these are quieter than the others and specifically designed for heat sink radiators, they have good pressure. OK so the TRUE is now in place but no way can we get the fan onto the Northbridge so we’ll need to work on a solution for this; though looking at forums it seems it can run without a fan, maybe wait and see?
We did a trial fit into the Zalman case, well it fits; the TRUE is right opposite the case fan and the top side of the TRUE is very close to the Enermax Galaxy PSU fan, this could be good in aiding the cooling, time will tell?
So we now have the mobo, TRUE, memory, and graphics card fitting in the case, still no solution to the northbridge fan yet
11 June 08
After and update from Shamino, I was wrong about the memory so we extracted the motherboard from its case and switched stuff around and relocated the memory into the 2 & 4 slots. Moved the fan back to push configuration; note fans on the TRUE heatsink are not optimal yet, we will be using push pull just waiting for the 2 fan clips to arrive!
So time to add power, cabled it up and double checked, then switched it on and into post it went no problem. Changed the usual stuff when you start up a new system & rebooted, again but this time with a SATA DVD drive, and installed Windows XP, no problems.
Rebooted and loaded the Foxconn utilities, and used Foxconn Live to install the most current Bios G25. Loaded some test programs and all worked well at stock settings phew!
Back to the Northbridge, this was at 45 degrees so maybe look for a slim fan to go under the TRUE.. Put the lot back into the case, and had to call it a night; busy work day tomorrow!
The next steps will be getting up and running in its case before we see what stable performance vs temperatures we can get..
20 June 2008
Where has the time gone over the last week or so?
We made such good progress on mobo1 that we started the build on mobo2, and found a weird problem; aren’t they all?
Ok, since this was all new kit with no known known’s we had to drop down into the pedantic its never done that before! Troubleshooting, which takes time!!
Bottom line we have/had a defective mobo; symptoms were failure on two of the quad cores, testing using P95, Everest and a very poor result on 3DMark06.
On the positive side: We’ve a nice solution for the NB cooling by using a thin fan that slides under the TRUE, still to decide if we blow air into the NB or suck air out; seem to have lost the NB temp readout so wait till we find it and then test to see what is best.
I’d like one of those heat sinks they have used on the Dreadnought, bally Foxconn the NB heatsink block has the screw holes for it too.
Also the fan clips arrived so we installed the fans as push pull on the TRUE; this has provided a nice side benefit in that the extra air over the mosfets cooling fins has cooled them down quite a bit. And the NB temperature measurement made by touching, went from ouch to nice and warm, currently the utility we use for NB temps has stopped working so waiting for Foxconn to fix it.
While we wait for the new mobo2 to come we’ll most likely try to oc mobo1.
One of the things we have noticed is the OCZ memory is not getting set properly in the BIOS so we may have to flash the SPD on the memory sticks! We should get for the ReaperX 1333EB 6-5-5-timings. Maybe the BIOS will catch up with a fix it is a G27 so they are working hard to get the bugs out.
23 June
Sent the Motherboard back
More to follow..
I have pictures but need to find some where to host them?
I need a powerful PC to do my work and for pleasure, in the past I’ve always built two machines one for home use and one for work; they back each other up in a work sense via a NAS. So my SOHO has two towers, a NAS, LAN, two broadband connections and often 2 laptops, since my laptop is more powerful than the tower till I need to run a big spreadsheet then I use the tower since I have a great (old) Sony 20" CRT Monitor.
The last tower is a 2002 vintage, and at the time was bleeding edg(ish) so my towers are well past their sell by date. I’ve actually been waiting for an X48/DDR3 motherboard so the first good one out the trap was going to get my purchase, DFI unfortunately were at one time top of the list but they didn’t have e-sata which I want. 790 was a none starter since I need this for work so just can’t afford the early chip set issues that come with NVIDIA but for goodness sake what happend to Asus??
Just for the record and the lack of knowledge in some area’s; I'm not a bench testing overclocker just a heavy duty workstation builder/user, stable overclocks, silence and simplicity are golden!
The Shopping List!
- Motherboard: Foxconn Blackops
- Memory: OCZ 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C6 1333MHz ReaperX
- Graphics: EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2 SSC Edition
- CPU Intel QX9770 (took the longest time to decide on this part)
- Power: Enermax Galaxy 1000W
- Case: Zalman Z-Machine GT1000
- CPU Cooling: (TRUE) Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme
- TRUE Fan: Noctua NF-P12
- Prime HDD: Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
- Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5
- USB Sony Diskette Drive
- Display: Dell 24” to replace my Sony 20 CRT based monitor (sad!)
8 June 08
So we started the build by moving all the boxes from my shed into a spare bedroom at my sons place, and setting up the power, anti-static & chairs; on this build my son has joined with me (he is the 'we') that means I’m still building two towers, I recon I don’t need two for my own use now (hopefully). But if I do it’ll be easy to replicate what we’ve done.
These machines are based around the Foxconn Blackops board and we intend to use air cooling. The Blackops motherboard was chosen because we needed X48, DDR3, it was first, uses some very high quality parts and I liked the layout. We also need the best STABLE clock’s we can get,.
10 June 08
Started last night; opened the boxs! The motherboard comes with loads of parts some I’ll never use in this build but they’ll go in the parts box; we are a little concerned that this board is targeted at the bench testing overclockers and may not be suitable for our use – time will tell!
The first problem was trying to get the TRUE cooler to fit alongside the OCZ 4GB ReaperX memory sticks (slots 1 &3), after I mangled the OCZ heat pipes a bit we moved the fan to the other side in pull – I don’t like but looking at the book I can’t use the other memory slots 2 & 4.
For info I’m using the Noctua NF-P12 Fan, after a lot of research these are quieter than the others and specifically designed for heat sink radiators, they have good pressure. OK so the TRUE is now in place but no way can we get the fan onto the Northbridge so we’ll need to work on a solution for this; though looking at forums it seems it can run without a fan, maybe wait and see?
We did a trial fit into the Zalman case, well it fits; the TRUE is right opposite the case fan and the top side of the TRUE is very close to the Enermax Galaxy PSU fan, this could be good in aiding the cooling, time will tell?
So we now have the mobo, TRUE, memory, and graphics card fitting in the case, still no solution to the northbridge fan yet
11 June 08
After and update from Shamino, I was wrong about the memory so we extracted the motherboard from its case and switched stuff around and relocated the memory into the 2 & 4 slots. Moved the fan back to push configuration; note fans on the TRUE heatsink are not optimal yet, we will be using push pull just waiting for the 2 fan clips to arrive!
So time to add power, cabled it up and double checked, then switched it on and into post it went no problem. Changed the usual stuff when you start up a new system & rebooted, again but this time with a SATA DVD drive, and installed Windows XP, no problems.
Rebooted and loaded the Foxconn utilities, and used Foxconn Live to install the most current Bios G25. Loaded some test programs and all worked well at stock settings phew!
Back to the Northbridge, this was at 45 degrees so maybe look for a slim fan to go under the TRUE.. Put the lot back into the case, and had to call it a night; busy work day tomorrow!
The next steps will be getting up and running in its case before we see what stable performance vs temperatures we can get..
20 June 2008
Where has the time gone over the last week or so?
We made such good progress on mobo1 that we started the build on mobo2, and found a weird problem; aren’t they all?
Ok, since this was all new kit with no known known’s we had to drop down into the pedantic its never done that before! Troubleshooting, which takes time!!
Bottom line we have/had a defective mobo; symptoms were failure on two of the quad cores, testing using P95, Everest and a very poor result on 3DMark06.
On the positive side: We’ve a nice solution for the NB cooling by using a thin fan that slides under the TRUE, still to decide if we blow air into the NB or suck air out; seem to have lost the NB temp readout so wait till we find it and then test to see what is best.
I’d like one of those heat sinks they have used on the Dreadnought, bally Foxconn the NB heatsink block has the screw holes for it too.
Also the fan clips arrived so we installed the fans as push pull on the TRUE; this has provided a nice side benefit in that the extra air over the mosfets cooling fins has cooled them down quite a bit. And the NB temperature measurement made by touching, went from ouch to nice and warm, currently the utility we use for NB temps has stopped working so waiting for Foxconn to fix it.
While we wait for the new mobo2 to come we’ll most likely try to oc mobo1.
One of the things we have noticed is the OCZ memory is not getting set properly in the BIOS so we may have to flash the SPD on the memory sticks! We should get for the ReaperX 1333EB 6-5-5-timings. Maybe the BIOS will catch up with a fix it is a G27 so they are working hard to get the bugs out.
23 June
Sent the Motherboard back
More to follow..
I have pictures but need to find some where to host them?
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