[Case Gallery] Antec 900 Quad SLI

[Glendor]

To view this case mod, go here.



Specs:
Antec 900
Fatal1ty AN8-SLI
AMD Opteron 165
4x Corsair LED RAM
2x 7950GX2 (Quad SLI)
SATA HD & DVDRW
Audigy2 zs w/ Livedrive


Mods:
Hidden Cable Routing, Inverted 600w PSU, raised case, ducted cooling.

15 more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/claude.monroe/QuadSLI

After a week of use, the AS5 has 'cured' and my temps have dropped WAY down. During the first few days, when I was benchmarking, the CPU idled at about 38c with an ambient room temp of 27c, and would reach around 58c under load. Now though, it idles at 28c (one degree above ambient!). I just noticed this yesterday, and tonight I'm going to do my benchmark suite again to see what the load temp looks like.

Also, I'll be updating the post with a Rev2 of this mod. I'm getting a new mobo/CPU, and will also correct some wiring eyesores while I'm redoing everything. Rev2 should be worth a second look when it's ready.

 

[-=l32andon=-]

Wow, I wish I had your 7950GX2s!!! Sell them to me, lol. Very nice. Love the hardware. 9/10 from me, man those GX2'S are SWEEET!!! And after seeing that you have cut your 900 to route the cables & wires though the back it has inspire me to redo mine.

 

[steelkane]

That front shot on your website looks awesome, Nice build.

 

[DrunkenMafia]

Nice rig man, you don't see to many 7950gx2 cards in sli... I hope you have that opty ocd to the shithouse...

V.nice setup...

 

[grunt_408]

Nice 1

 

[Glendor]

Nice rig man, you don't see to many 7950gx2 cards in sli... I hope you have that opty ocd to the poophouse...

V.nice setup...

That's one of the reasons I used them Just last year, these cards were going for $600 each. I'm still waiting for nVidia & Microsoft to get their heads out of their butts and get some Quad enabled drivers for Vista. You know, if I still had the box the cards came in, I could have sworn it had a "Vista Ready" sticker on it.

I don't have the opty overclocked yet. The RAM won't overclock at all, even when I loosen up the timings (2.2.2.5), so that is the limiting factor on my overclock. With different RAM, I'vehad the CPU up to 2.4ghz, and I hear tell of others with the same stepping as mine reaching 2.7ghz. I would be happy with 2.2-2.4ghz OC, but I would have to give up on the 4 banks of activity lights on the RAM, and it has such a nice visual effect.
I shot a short video of the PC with the RAM lights going like crazy, I'll try to find a way to post that ASAP.

Glendor...

 

[Sampl]

hey man that is an impressive rig, with the quad sli...WOW!
i've got one question the side 120mm fan... do u use to blow air in or out??

 

[Glendor]

hey man that is an impressive rig, with the quad sli...WOW!
i've got one question the side 120mm fan... do u use to blow air in or out??

I tried it both ways, but the GPU temps went down by about 15c each when I had the fan blowing in. The Fatal1ty motherboard possitions the PCIe slots slightly below the center of the side fan. I think of the case as having an 'Optimal Cooling Zone" and the 2nd PCIe slot is slightly too low: not in the zone. I've been looking for a better board that would get both cards in 'the zone', but I haven't had any luck yet. I think that some of the DFI Lanparty, and the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe would be perfect, but I haven't had any luck finding a good deal on one. I tried a Biostar TForce4 SLI this week, and thought it is exactly like the A8N-SLI, I couldn't get it to work correctly in SLI mode, and had to send it back. I'm still looking for a good mobo to replace the Fatal1ty board.

Speaking of temps, I have to say I'm impressed with the OEM heatpipe cooler, and that duct I put on it. My idle temps are only about 28c (that only 1c over room temp of 27c), and under load (benchmarks) is only 39c. They were much higher before the AS5 had time to cure.

Week / Room / Idle / Load
first / 27c / 38c / 54c
third / 27c / 28c / 39c

 

[mab1376]

Whats your 3dMark 06 score?

 

[Glendor]

Whats your 3dMark 06 score?

** Updated **

3DMark06 8382
3DMark05 12355
3DMark03 35774

I swapped out the Opteron 165 for an Athlon64 x2 4400+ and overclocked it to 2.553ghz, but my motherboard doesn't seem to like the 4x Corsair RAM, so I'm back to 2x512mb.

Glendor...

 

[Glendor]

Updated with some new benchmark numbers & processor stats.

 

[LiveOrDie]

nice but not ture Quad sli, nice and tidy in side 8/10
this is ture Quad sli

 

[Glendor]

Actually, what I have is what nVidia defines as Quad SLI (4xGPU in SLI), what you show in the picture is usually called Octa-SLI, but it's not true 8xSLI because the two Quad SLI banks don't actually talk to each other. I suppose it's more accurately called Dual-Quad-SLI

It's not really possible to do because there are no drivers to support Octa-SLI or even Dual-Quad-SLI.

Here's an article: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/5814/2_x_nvidia_quad_sli_when_four_gpu_s_is_not_enough/index.html

If anybody can find a true, working, Octa-SLI setup, or even working Dual-Quad-SLI, can you link me to it?


Glendor...

 

[LiveOrDie]

ture about the the 4 cards not linked, Only the 8800 GTXs and Ultras can Quad sli fully and there are a few board that have 4x PCI-e Slots but don't think they all work together but i've never seen it done, All im saying it not ture sil, You can't say one 7950GX2 is dual sli because its not fully because it one card with 2 GPUs, I think of sli in the way a nvidia sli board does 2 video card 2 slots dual sli.
And it will be hard find some one with 4 video cards (Quad sli) one because it would be some one beachmarking and two there are no good Quad sli board that overclock well.

 

[InnocentCriminal]

Dude, this case is excellent! 10/10 - :cheers:

I love the fact you've got it incredibly tidy, using the duct as well - slight gripe about having the 120mm fan being an intake but it seems to be working. So no loss of points there. The case is nice and the uGuru fits in nicely. If only the case fans were red to match the motherboards PCB that'd make it make it slightly better in my opinion.

The inverted PSU however, is what sealed the 10/10 deal for me to be honest. Again, excellent stuff!

 

[Glendor]

Dude, this case is excellent! 10/10 - :cheers:

I love the fact you've got it incredibly tidy, using the duct as well - slight gripe about having the 120mm fan being an intake but it seems to be working. So no loss of points there. The case is nice and the uGuru fits in nicely. If only the case fans were red to match the motherboards PCB that'd make it make it slightly better in my opinion.

The inverted PSU however, is what sealed the 10/10 deal for me to be honest. Again, excellent stuff!

Thanks for the Score, and the comment. I was already working on replacing the fans with red ones, but with your endorsement of my idea, I'm making it a priority. Before I decided on red, I purchased four new Coolermaster blue LED fans about two weeks ago. They are very quiet, and move a sufficient amount of air, but the LEDs are TOO FREAKING BRIGHT, and instead of pointing from the fan frame inwards towards the hub, they point OUT toward the exhaust side of the fan. In the case of the side video cooling fan, the LEDs point right into my eyes! So, they are on the way out, and since I'm changing fans again, I'm going with red this time.

Unfortunately, I've already moved on to another motherboard, and it doesn't have a red PCB... The Abit board was nice, and looked great, but didn't overclock worth a squat, and my RAM was slightly unstable on that board. Anything above 210fsb caused it to error out in MemTest. Also, the PCIe placement on that Abit board was about two slots too low to be in what I call the "sweet spot" of the side cooling fan, AND the two PCIe slots were back-to-back and didn't allow any space between the two 7950GX2 video cards.

I now have an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe installed. The video cards are almost directly below the side fan, and they have a space between, so my GPU temps went down by about 10c under load. I replaced the Opty165 with an x2 4400+ that overclocks to 2.7ghz; much better benchmarks than the Opty had. It currently runs a little warmer than the Opty did, but I'm waiting on the AS5 to 'cure' before I state my final idle/load temps.

Another side effect of changing from the Abit to the Asus board is that I had to get rid of the uGuru panel I really liked that thing too. I've installed a Coolermaster Aerogate II instead. It's not quite as fully functioning as the uGuru was, but it does have fan controlling capability, and I have all four 120mm fans connected to it. It also has Temp sensing capability via probes. I have placed temp probes on the RAM, the intake fan (to measure ambient room temp entering the case), the PSU & GPU exhaust. I don't have the NB or CPU temp on the Aerogate like I did on the uGuru, but I have a plan for that...

I'm getting a Logitech G15 next week, and will use a Windows plug-in to display the CPU temp & stats on the LCD readout on the keyboard. That should MORE than make up for what I lost when I removed the uGuru panel.

So... I'm hoping to have all the modifications to the original Antec 900 Quad-SLI rig done in a few weeks, and I'll post new pictures at that time. I'm going to take care of a few wiring eye-sores that were left over from the old config while I'm at it.

I'm not sure how to address your gripe about the 120mm fan pointing in (I assume you mean the one on the rear panel?), that was done to channel cold air directly into the mouth of the CPU duct. It really makes a difference. I guess your gripe is because normally that would point out? Since the Antec 900 has that huge 200mm blowhole fan in the top, it can exhause all the hot air that's in the case, so 4x 120mm silent fans going in seems to equal the 200mm silent blowhole fan in the top. Hopefully my explanation helps you understand why I did it, but if that wasn't the fan you were commenting on, let me know and I'll give it another go.

Have a great week,
Glendor...

 

[JC316]

Man, your 3dmark05 seems really low in comparison to your other scores. I get 13K with my 8600GTS, but only 6.5k with 3dmark06. It seems like you should be in the 14-15K range on 05.

Nice system BTW, 9/10

 

[InnocentCriminal]

Thanks for the Score, and the comment.

No freakin' problem, you deserved it!

I was already working on replacing the fans with red ones, but with your endorsement of my idea, I'm making it a priority.

Woo!

Before I decided on red, I purchased four new Coolermaster blue LED fans about two weeks ago. They are very quiet, and move a sufficient amount of air, but the LEDs are TOO FREAKING BRIGHT, and instead of pointing from the fan frame inwards towards the hub, they point OUT toward the exhaust side of the fan. In the case of the side video cooling fan, the LEDs point right into my eyes! So, they are on the way out, and since I'm changing fans again, I'm going with red this time.

Shame about the blue being so bright. I was rather stupid with my original ideas & thought black, blue and orange would be a good colour scheme for when I finally get around to watercooling my Shuttle. The reasoning behind this was due to the front LEDs being orange and blue, my waterblock having a blue LED and my external enclosure (housing my DVD burner) has blue cathodes. Would rather have had red, but I'll save that for my next rig.

Unfortunately, I've already moved on to another motherboard, and it doesn't have a red PCB... The Abit board was nice, and looked great, but didn't overclock worth a squat, and my RAM was slightly unstable on that board. Anything above 210fsb caused it to error out in MemTest. Also, the PCIe placement on that Abit board was about two slots too low to be in what I call the "sweet spot" of the side cooling fan, AND the two PCIe slots were back-to-back and didn't allow any space between the two 7950GX2 video cards.

Again another shame on colour, but I think I'd rather have a fair better board than just to keep within a scheme.

I now have an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe installed. The video cards are almost directly below the side fan, and they have a space between, so my GPU temps went down by about 10c under load.

10°C - :O - That's a rather tasty drop in temperature. Plus black for the motherboards PCB is better than red.

I replaced the Opty165 with an x2 4400+ that overclocks to 2.7ghz; much better benchmarks than the Opty had. It currently runs a little warmer than the Opty did, but I'm waiting on the AS5 to 'cure' before I state my final idle/load temps.

Can't really complain with that. I always thought the 165 would OC higher than that X2 but still, you have a good OC and a stable rig. I doubt the extra warmth is going to be an issue.
Slightly annoying I guess.

Another side effect of changing from the Abit to the Asus board is that I had to get rid of the uGuru panel I really liked that thing too. I've installed a Coolermaster Aerogate II instead. It's not quite as fully functioning as the uGuru was, but it does have fan controlling capability, and I have all four 120mm fans connected to it. It also has Temp sensing capability via probes. I have placed temp probes on the RAM, the intake fan (to measure ambient room temp entering the case), the PSU & GPU exhaust. I don't have the NB or CPU temp on the Aerogate like I did on the uGuru, but I have a plan for that...

D'OH! >.< I hope the Aerogate fits into the whole aesthetics as well as the uGuru did. Looking at an image of one now, I hope it's black and not silver. :/

I'm getting a Logitech G15 next week, and will use a Windows plug-in to display the CPU temp & stats on the LCD readout on the keyboard. That should MORE than make up for what I lost when I removed the uGuru panel.

That'd be cool, not entirely keen on those keyboards, but how can so many people that have them be wrong?

So... I'm hoping to have all the modifications to the original Antec 900 Quad-SLI rig done in a few weeks, and I'll post new pictures at that time.

I'm going to take care of a few wiring eye-sores that were left over from the old config while I'm at it.

I can't say I saw many, if any to be honest. The only one would the single cable by the PSU. Got to lurve that reversed PSU. XD

I'm not sure how to address your gripe about the 120mm fan pointing in (I assume you mean the one on the rear panel?), that was done to channel cold air directly into the mouth of the CPU duct. It really makes a difference. I guess your gripe is because normally that would point out? Since the Antec 900 has that huge 200mm blowhole fan in the top, it can exhaust all the hot air that's in the case, so 4x 120mm silent fans going in seems to equal the 200mm silent blowhole fan in the top. Hopefully my explanation helps you understand why I did it, but if that wasn't the fan you were commenting on, let me know and I'll give it another go.

You've totally dispelled all my issues with having the rear 120mm fan. I was only thinking about the heat being expelled from the GFX cards, whilst completely forgetting about the humongous blowhole at the top of the case.

Have a great week,
Glendor...

I'll try, thanks! I look forward to your update!

 

[094145]

I voted 3/10 because:

nothing special...credit to ur hardware