DX79SI/64GB/510SSD/RT3WB080 upgrade

[AngryChief]

DX79SI/64GB/i7-3930K/510SSD/RT3WB080 upgrade

Don't mean to wander here, just pass on some compatibility issues that were answered during this build that were of interest to several people. Intel and G-Skill both said it wouldn't work.

1st, computers are just a hobby w/ me ever since my I got my apple I 32KB machine WAY BACK and figured out how to run "Calc" on it. Built my 1st computer when the Athlon K6 64's were around. Actually built 5 of 'em. all watercooled and all overclocked and running SETI 24/7. After 3 or 4 months I figured out why my electric bill had more than doubled and gave 4 of 'em away. No formal education in this stuff, just lot's of hand's on mistakes.

The title components replaced a 3+ year old DFI LT X48T2R Q6700 w/ 8gb DDR2-800 running win7 Pro 64 bit on 2-300GB 10K Velociraptors in Raid 1. I just moved all this stuff over to my "backup" computer that had an older DFI P35 MB setup. That was the easy part since the piping for the cpu, nb, & sb water blocks was the same exc 3/8" instead of 1/2" ID hose. this thing has been running 375 x 10 24/7 the whole time and has been extremely reliable. Also had 6-1 TB HD's in raid 5 on the sb. At one time, I had added a SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 Raid card w/ 8-750gb Seagate Sata 2's to it in Raid 5 and had 16 HD's in 3 raid arrays in a CM Stacker case w/ 4- 4 in 3 cages just to see if it would work because I had the stuff laying around. It worked when every expert told me the Bios wouldn't support 3 raid array's. This thing was constantly upgraded. Mem, HD's, Power supplies, and video cards, most of which were kept for this upgrade. Also set it up as dual boot Win7 Pro 64/ Win XP 64 that was on the P35 set up so I kept all my configurations and files.

I missed the X58 cycle for some reason, and got interested in this one when the X79 motherboard/socket 2011 CPU's were "rumored" w/ "up to" 14 sata ports. When it didn't happen, I still had the upgrade bug, read all the reviews, and as usual, the "big boys" w/ their "marketing" savy always got the rave reviews. Finally decided on the Intel DX79SI because it was "all meat" w/o the marketing garnishments that I never have a use for. I needed at least a 6 x 1TB Raid 5 array for storage so finally landed on the Intel RT3WB080 Hardware Raid Card which gives me 8-SATA 3 direct connections off an 8x PCI slot. (I've got Sata 2 drives now). The 64GB mem spec was just to enticing to pass up since this is probably my last build so I opted in for the G.Skill F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL kit. Going to set up a 32 to 48GB ram drive for it and load as many programs as possible into it on boot-up w/ a disk image. Also opted in for an Intel 510 Series SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III for my boot disk since SSD seems to be the craze. Hope it is reliable. Finally, chose the Intel 17-3930K for the CPU.

The build: Used the same CM Stacker case I've had for 4-5 years. It's been beat on, beat up, cut, butchered, and mutilated, but it still works and I didn't see anything else as flexible out there. See pictures 17 thru 22 attached. (we ain't try'n to impress anybody, it's just me, my cat & my dog) There are 8- Delta 120 x 38 EFB1212SHE 3 blade fans on this thing capable of over 140 CFM each. The 2 CM 4 in 3 year old cages have stock CM 120mm fans. In the back are 2-60mm x 38 fans that must be over 8 years old. For this udgrade, I cut a big hole in the back panel and MB tray and added 1 120mm Delta to cool the back of the MB since it looks like it has mofsets on it. 1 was added to the windowed side to cool the 2nd set of 4 dim slots. These 12 fans are controlled by an added Scythe KQ02-BK Kaze Q12 12-Channel Fan Controller. It works great. This replaced the 3- 4 channel controllers that were in it before. I had to go back and add 80 x 38mm 3 blade Delta connected to the MB CPU fan pins after everything was up and running because the Intel bios stops the boot w/ a nag screen about "no fan on CPU". (only fan smaller than 120mm I had). I hate powering fans from the MB. Uses power that could better be used elsewhere. The radiator is probably 1 of the 1st 3 cell 38mm Danger Den ever sold. Pump is a Laing D5 fixed speed high volume. All 1/2" ID Tygon hose, all of which is getting very old and discolored but still as pliable as new. Easy piping job w/ this setup because you don't have have NB & SB blocks. I use Red Line water wetter as a lube/biocide " 'cause it's what I use in my Hot Rods" !! Power supply is an old PC Power and Cooling S75QB 750W ATX12V / EPS12V (single rail) that's 3 1/2 years old. When I was doing some of the benching, the system was peaking at 851W, but the exhaust air was fairly cool and they should take a 15-20% overload for a while. Noisey ? Only when you crank all the fans wide open. Then it sounds like a J57 on a run up stand !! But I like noise. Kinda like open headers on my solid lifter 421 .

I'll go thru the rest of this referencing pictures.

1. AIDA64 cache & memory benchmark @ 4600 (doesn't show thats it's 64GB)

2. 10 minutes into AIDA64 stability test. Temps on CPU started to get close to 60C about 6 minutes in, so I cranked up all the fans and they came back to 52-55C. Something is wrong w/ the DIMM temps on the OSD panel. You'll notice that 1 place it shows them @ 28C and then the individual at 74C. 26C-28C is what it shows in bios and on the chart, so thats probably right. The 74C is frozen and never moves. Look @ the CPU Core Voltage near the bottom. 1.366 @ 4600/100% all cores. Same in the bios.

3. CPU-Z Submitted twice, came back rejected both times. When you look at the memory tab, you can see that it doesn't understand 8 x 8GB, maybe that's why. Wierd timing reports also.

4. Fryrender - 3:13 31.91 passes

5. Furmark Burn-in 2921. Using Sapphire Trix to overclock the Powercolor AX6870 1GBD5-2DH in XF. Works great. 1055 x 1235 @ 1.299V. On full water blocks, never higher than the low 50's C.

6. Win7 Performance Index. All 7.9 except CPU. (7.8). Wonder what you have to have to get 7.9 on the cpu ?

7. 1st bios screen.

8. PCI Raid Controller showing HD's configured in Raid 5. Figureing out how to do this was the most time consuming part of the upgrade. Intel support told me that it wouldn't work. MB/CPU was not on their "compatibility" list. Samsung HD103SJ's w/ both firmware revisions. One HD failure in the array in 3+ years. You read the comment's on these at the 'egg and you would swear they would never work in a raid array. I've had 'em on the Supermicro raid card, the intel x48 chipset raid hardware, and now this intel controller. Never had a problem w/ either configuration being recognized and reliable. Was concerned once, so I've got 3 spares that have been initialized and spun up in an external usb drive enclosure every couple of months.

9. Main Bios page. See Bios 0281 at the top of the screen ? I've tried to flash this to the newer 360 bios 4 times, 3 times w/ the express bios (from within win7) & once w/ the F7. Each time it said the flash was successful, but it still shows as 281 on the bios screens and within various operating system programs. Anybody got any suggestions. Intel sure ain't helping. Maybe I should leave it alone it's performing so well.

10. just another screen

11. Temps and voltages @ 46 x 100.

12. Simplest overclock I've ever done. 44% with a few clicks and never a BSOD

13. A few changes I made based on old DFI experience.

14. (duplicate-deleted)

15. Boot setup screen.

16. (duplicate-deleted)

17. EK water blocks on CPU & top HD6870. Watercool Heatkiller on 2nd HD6870. This is what happens when you buy ur cards & waterblocks 6 months apart. Water ports don't match up for XF. EK builds some incredible stuff. And 8 x 8GB dimms in the slots and working. G-Skill even told me they wouldn't work because intel was "lazy" w/ their bios writing. I took the mounting tray that was w/ the 120G, bent the back tab's little bit and just screwed it to the mb tray. That will keep it cool. And I loved that migration software that comes with it. "Migrated" my old x48 win7 pro onto it, inserted it in this updated build and it booted right up w/ all the programs and settings in tact. It auto updated almost all the drivers and I didn't have to spend another year getting it like I wanted it !!

18. back panel all connected and ready for 1st boot.

19. front panel. A note here. Disregard the hand written raid drive #'s. The raid card has 2-sff-8087 ports w/ 4 sata cables from each connector marked 0,1,2,3. When you install the cables you get the following. Looking at the installed card, the rearmost cable is for ports 4,5,6,7, and the other one is 3,2,1,0. There is conflicting and incorrect info in the documentation on this. This makes my drives in the case, top to bottom, 3,2,1,0,4,5,6,7. Nice to know when one fails since serial #'s aren't shown in bios.

20. Added fan to cool back of motherboard. Interesting discoloration on the brushed metal. I'm looking at it and can't see 'em. Wonder what the photo is picking up.

21. Radiator setup from years ago.

22. 420cfm on the memory, vid cards, & MB. I think it will be "cool". Again, using lot's of old, "unmatched" parts like filters & housings. NOT cool.

23. I remember reading an article YEARS ago about screens. Basically it said, "you spend thousands of $$$ on hardware and then buy a cheap screen that you can't see. Ever since, I've always spent my computer $$$ 1st on screens, and THEN hardware. Those are 2 - 30" Dells @2560 x 1600 and the one on top is an old 37" Visio HDTV @ 1920 x 1080. No problem driving all 3 at max resolutions w/ this v-card setup. There are 2 cyberpower ups systems in the picture. About 10 min of run time for this machine, and 15 min for the backup. They are configured to shut down the systems w/ 5 minutes left in them. They also give you realtime display of system KW load.

Just posted this speedtest FYI. Was on a Charter Cable for 13 years w/ no problems. 1st one in my town. And then they mailed one of those "notices of change" that's in fine print and 30 pages long that nobody, including me, reads and buried in it was a paragraph about new bandwidth restrictions. Got a call from them one day last May and they said they were disconnecting me for "excessive bandwidth" usage in 7 days. Just like that, no warnings, nothing. Speed was 10mbps down/3mbps up. Shoot, I could, and often did, exceed their monthly "bandwidth" limits in a day. So I called Verizon who had been bugging me for several years ever since they buried a fibre optic cable in my neighborhood. I wound up getting a Fios "small business" internet connection along w/ their "residential" cable 631 channel TV pkg for about the same as I had been paying Charter. "GUARENTEED UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH USAGE", and it's at 20mbps down and 5mbps up. In real downloading, it's 20-22mbps and I have downloaded at that speed 24/7 for up to 7 days at a time. No problems at all.

I moved the 4.5TB of data I had on the old raid 5 array to individual hd's because it was DEFINITELY going to get broken and have spent the last 2 days transfering them, 1 disk @ a time to this new array. It takes time @ 30mbps via an external usb 2.0 external drive. On the last 705GB and it shows about 7 hours left. When that gets done, I'll set up the Ramdisk, and run some data transfer/disk benchmarks to post. And then I want to play w/ it a little to see if I can get 4800 out of it. 150% sounds about right Like May West said (and us old Hot Rodders say),

"If a little is great, and a lot is better, then way too much is just about right"

 

[AngryChief]

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