Maximus Nebuchadnezzar

I was able to use slightly lower vcore to maintain stability through completion of 3DM03, 05 and PCM05. However, I wasn't able to get CPU clock speed to match that during single VGA runs.

Judging from overall system responsiveness and performance, I'm 90% certain there is a direct correlation to power consumption. In short, the PC P&C 1KW is not delivery sufficient power to power both X2's and hit the higher CPU overclocks. These cards are verypower hungry running the benchmarks.

Some of the Extreme Cooling class overclockers on HWBot are using 1600W PSU's to get the job done. Since I can't reach similar core speeds on water, that's overkill for this rig.

After a nice talk with PC Power & Cooling's guru, Bob Roark (OCZ V.P. of Power Management), the agreement was that one of their new 1200W Turbo Cool units would get the job done, given that they can handle sustained peaks of 1300W.

Even though I'm not currently running an Nvidia chipset (mobo), I opted for the ESA unit because it will future proof the PSU. As icing on the cake, these first few units off the line will have the ESA board ("enthusiast system architecture") hand wired by Roark, himself, as that part of the assembly won't be mechanized until later this month. How often do we get hardware these days that contains hand wired components?

Nostalgia aside, the 12K ESA units are also impressive in that they are each individually calibrated to ensure their readings accurately reflect data received from the Nvidia chipset. ESA allows the PSU to directly communicate its status -- temperature, current and voltage -- in real time via a special USB cable, as opposed to communicating indirectly through motherboard sensors.

The safe QX9650 core speed max for 3DMark runs is 4650 MHz (this particular rig/water). Anything above that won't complete the benchmarks. The 1KW was getting the job done with one 3870 X2. Hopefully the PSU will get me back to 4.65GHz.

Do you have the 8-pin EPS plug plugged into the 12v ATX or just a 4-pin??.. If you havent, remove the plastic bung and use the 8 not the 4 pin..

I'm using the 8 pin. I always do where it's available (and it seems to be on most modern motherboards).

I can't improve on any of the benchmarks until I get the 1200KW PSU from PC P&C. During the downtime, I wanted to create a safe space in the case for the SSD disk. The disks are very light, easy to drop and expensive, so elected to mount it in an enclosed Nexus HDD cooling container for protection and aesthetics. Up until now, it's been sitting on a shop towel beneath one of the reservoirs.

[Note: photos didn't come up in chronological order. Second row, second photo from left show SSD as it was before installed in Nexus. The bay device above the Nexus is a Plextor slot loading DVD-RW drive.]

After installing the dive in the Nexus caddy, I removed the floppy drive and mounted it in the 5.75" bay:

Nice work - as usual, sir!

Thanks, Professor. As a topical aside, TankGuys.com just posted ETA on the new Q9450 and E8440. Won't be on the shelves until 03/28/08. Ouch!

New addition to the family. One of PC P&C first ESA unit's manufactured. Bob Roark personally hand-wired the ESA circuit board, because the assembly line isn't yet in place. The ESA feature, presently, is limited to Nvidia chipsets, so cannot use this feature on the Maximus mobo, but will most likely find use for it in a future build:

Looks good, hopefully this will alleviate your power supply woes.

Got the 12KW PSU in time for FW08 qualification scores (although my understanding is the PSU isn't counted). The differences are subtle, but definitely running more stable during the more aggressive overclocks.

Now that I'm running Vista 64bit for FW, I've been experimenting with 4GB of RAM vs. 2GB. Sound and photo editing app's like CS3 and Cubase are much quicker. 3DMark benchmarks run a bit slower, since I can't get the RAM as tight at the higher overclocks. It does seem to make a slight difference running SuperPi.

1200 watts! HS! Beautiful piece of gear. Good to go for Forum Wars BTW.

HD3870 X2 Crossfire Driver Bug:

I spent a frustrating evening triple checking all connections and IRQ's after experiencing random lockups in Vista 64, XP Pro and Vista 32. There was no consistency in the freeze -- every hour or four the computer would lock up and require a hard boot.

As it turns out, there, some misfire can occur when installing the new Crossfire drivers, version 8.3, that corrupts and/or conflicts with a DirectX dll. The workaround is to reinstall the la-*test*-('") version of DirectX after installing 8.3, then re-install 8.3. So far, this seems like a permanent fix. It's also been suggested to increase PCIe from 100 to 110MHz, which I have done.

Mtron SSD Review

Mtron, manufacturer of some of the world's fas-*test*-('") SSD's, has sent me four 7000 Series disks for review in Asus Independent. They also are sponsoring Forum Wars 08 Winter Games. The disks were shipped to me directly from Korea and should arrive March 21rst.

I'll be using this build as a -*test*-('") bed for the disks, so thought I would post this exciting news here. I will create a separate thread in a hardware review section for the review, proper.

The disks have 120 MB/s read and 90 MB/s write speeds, so -*test*-('")ing them in RAID array against four Raptors should prove interesting. There have only been a handful of reviews of this new technology as it is just now entering the mainstream after being limited to military and enterprise computing due to it's cost. As the price drops, the SSD's popularity has spread to the consumer market.

I'll be working on the review during Forum Wars and have it complete before the end of the competition.