Build Progress - Corsair Air 240 x99 SLI

Well I said I wouldn't do a build log. This isn't exactly that, but just for fun (not like I'm playing many games now) I thought I'd share some pics and how things are progressing. It's turning out pretty clean so far i think, apart from the fat 24pin power cable.

CASE - Corsair Air 240
MB - EVGA X99 Micro
CPU - i7 5820k
RAM - Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4 DRAM 2400MHz C14 Bl
PSU - Fractal Design Newton R3 1000W
W.COOLER - Corsair H100i

GPU - 980 PNY XLR8 GeForce GTX 980 4GB waiting for delivery

Pretty much all plumbed up ready to go as soon as the GPU arrives.

Something I didn't like was the fact this MB has no WiFi/BT onboard. The M.2 slot allows for one...but good like finding a compatible card when EVGA doesn't even know. Their support is pretty on the forums with this too.

Another problem with this MB in this case is once the second GPU goes in, it will block the USB3.0 internal 20pin header. I've ordered one of these and think it will work .









Future plans are another 980 unless something new tempts me

 

nice one! + rep!

Yesterday i've received my corsair carbide air 540.... monday i'll be receiving an additional 360 rad + various accessories from EKWB and will start to expand and improve my build. The 540 is... wow, i love that case!

So nice to have a desktop section here

Edit: i've noticed that you are using AF fans instead of SP fans on the push pull config on your rad. How do you find them?

 

Yeah I like having a desktop section here too. I'm still a laptop nut, but I need to be able to upgrade it for it to make sense to me.

You noticed the fans, yes. I've got SP on the push and AF on the pull. I don't know how that will turn out yet. Hopefully as I imagined... On the other hand it could very well create unwanted noise and/or turbulence.

 

on my actual config, i'm using AF fan in push/pull configuration, i have also the SP fans, but i find them a little noisy. My idea is that the push/pull configuration with high flow fans, can compensate the density of the radiator fins arrangement vs a single static pressure fan. Actually i didn't find that much of a difference between AF and SP fans till now in terms of temperatures, the AF fans just need more rpm to compensate for the minor static pressure generated, but they are less noisy than SP fan given the same rpms.

With the material that i will receive monday, i'll have 3 EKWB F2 fans (1450rpm, Static pressure). I've seen a video and they looks really performing at really low level noise. I'll post back the result

 

That case is sexy. Maybe I should have gone the mATX route and gone with something like that. I guess I have the room for my mid tower though. I went with a Corsair 450D.

I'm also happy to see this section of the forum getting some attention lately. I think were going to see more and more of it since laptops seem to be going the way of locked down. I'm actually hoping to see more of this steambox trend. It will draw more console players over to PCs, it already seems like the last few years of PC gaming has grown like gangbusters. Which is amazing to see after years of slumping interest IMO. I've been PC gaming since 1995 when I got my first IBM with a Pentium 133, and eventually upgraded with a Voodoo3. I remember the days of playing Top Gun on it. Haha sorry for getting off track.

 

I got a 250D and I love it. Ive never owned anything but an old Pentium Desktop for wordprocesing and other stuff until they screwed up gaming laptops so badly that I went Mini itx. I have the smaller corsair h55 liquid cooler and an over clocked 4Ghz I7-4790K. I absolutely love the fact this case has dust filters everywhere, there is even one underneath the power supply fan.

 

Same here, it just does not make financial sense purchasing another laptop if I will be stuck with a soldered on GPU and CPU. Ive seen some people say ''well the 980M will last me for ages'' but that's not the point, power users demand options. Having said that, I doubt I will feel the need to upgrade my GTX 980 any time soon but at least I have the damn option now.

The case (250D) is also compact enough for me to easily move it to a different location if I need to. Truth be told, I hardly moved my gaming laptop but occasionally I did bring it with me to other locations and I enjoyed the freedom but they screwed up so much I have no option but to go Desktop / mini itx. That is the only sensible way to go from a financial and logical standpoint.

I have to say, my 250D is near silent, runs cool and plays everything on Ultra. Idles at 29-30C, GPU idles at 35C-40C and maxes out at 70-80C. CPU maxes out at 70C unless overclocked. I also have a 1tb SSD, 2TB sshd and 3TB hdd and a DVD writer.

 

I couldn't agree more - similar reasons pushed me to build a desktop. I'm not buying a $2000 disposable laptop that's slower than my 2.5 year old r2. Not being able to upgrade vital components like GPU/GPU or sell on golden CPU's etc takes all the fun out of it too. Most of all it makes them worthless a new gpu comes out - one can't ask for much for a aging laptop that can never be re-freshed and upgraded.

 

Nice build so far brother Tbone.. I found out EVGA has these to address the USB header issue.

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=W002-00-000028

 

Cheers bro, and nice find there brother! I actually ordered one already. Yeah it was pretty silly of them to include a massively thick cable as standard. The cable they included... There's no way it will allow a second GPU to fit over it.

The other problem with this MB is not on board wireless. The M.2 module apparently allows for a wifi/bt card but EVGA don't list any devices as compatible nor respond to people's threads in their own forum on the subject. I took a gamble and ordered an
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265. Fingers crossed it works.
Just waiting on the GPU now. Slow ebay delivery is making me pull my hair out. I can't even boot up and tinker with bios settings until that comes.. Sigh.
By the time it comes the 980 ti/390x will probably be out.

 

Let me know if that card works. I'd be interested to know.

I'm abut to start another build.. I'm a nvidia guy though, have been a longtime. I tried ATI a couple times and vowed to never flush my money down the toilet again.

I'm stil deciding on which kitherboard to use and that will dictate how many GPUS I use.

I originally thought of a mATX but I am now very intersted in the new Asus Sabertooth x99. I'm waiting to see some more in depth info on that board. If I end up with mARX I'll use two Titan X's if I go Sabertooth I'll grab three Titan X's...

I really like EKWB's Titan X waterblocks.

 

What are you doing for antennas?

If I needed wifi I'd look into one of those external USB devices like Asus or something.

 

I am either deciding on this kind of thing in the pic below - I wonder if that would be enough just routing it through/to the chassis. I dare say it might.



Options #2



This would definitely work but might not be necessary. Plus a little goofy once antenna's are mounted if I'm honest.

I did grab a couple of cheap dongles from eBay just incase I get left in sh#t creek without a paddle
I had to get a separate dongle for both wifi and BT 4.0 which was sad. Having dongles with both doesn't seem like a thing...

 

Received my 360 radiator, 3 vardar F2 fans, various fittings (god if they are expensive!) en some more primochill tube.

Going to start the build this friday on the new air 540

 

Enjoy, and make sure to take your sweet time. You can't and don't want to rush the plumbing process, I know because I stayed up till 3am 3 nights in a row and was ready to kill msyefl on the 4th day LOL.

As for AF vs SP, if you have a low fin density radiator then it doesn't matter too much, but if you have a very fin dense radiator, you'll definitely need some good SP fans to help push air through.

Btw if you foresee yourself swapping components often, might be a good idea to invest in some quick disconnects.

 

I just finished building my rig. I used the Corsair graphite 760T with the Asus Rampage V Extreme. The next step is to incorporate custom water cooling. You have nice parts for your build.

 

Do you have a monitor yet? This is like the best thing since sliced bread:

 

dang at work i can't visualize it... what's that Octiceps?

 

The Acer Predator XB270HU 144Hz IPS G-Sync monitor. Best gaming monitor on the market ATM.

 

nice piece of technology

but i think i'll keep my swift for a long while (expecially becouse i cannot justify to my wife the purchase of another monitor, with all the money i'm spending on my build ), i'm happy with it and really g-sync does wonder.

 

I like my swift monitors also. I'll wait for the 4k swift before upgrading again

 

144hz IPS... "yum-yum"

Now if we see something like this in a 24" panel I'll be able to get onboard.

 

Go big or go home

 

Lol - good call - to go any bigger I need to "literally" go home.

 

So.. here's some more pictures.. coming along really nicely.

Running 4.5Ghz on all cores at 1.35 - Temps are lower than I was predicting but I don't think the chip is going to give me much more unless I ram more volts through.. still then there's no guarantee. Anyway... the discovery part is fun. Although I didn't win the silicon lottery, I certainly didn't do badly either from what I've been reading.
The Push/Pull with the SP's pushing and the AF's pulling seems to be working really well (although I don't really have much to go on other than it's pretty damn quite with good temps when all the parts are moving).

- Ram now @ 2666mhz

- Need 1 more GPU (still need to flash Boost 2.0 away too) and some nice braided cable extensions to the GPU if I decide I want to smell my own farts. If anyone can recommend me some a fair prices, that would be helpful Also if anyone knows a good vbios mod floating around Sorry - tall orders now.. I know

- M.2 wifi/BT combo is still on the way, as also are the antennas.

The front front USB panel works and will work if I add a second card in (x99 micro oversight). I used a low profile extension. So far I'm pretty happy with everything.

 

That's quite compact.. I could do something like this myself.. might need a new desk though...

BTW, why are you using an Apple Keyboard lol?

 

Haha yes. I really like the Apple keyboard. Only problem is I have to pull out a corded KB if I want to access the BIOS.

 

Short travel keyboards may be better for gaming uses.

 

Yeah perhaps. I personally don't get all 'ga-ga' over chunky yet satisfying cherry MX etc keyboards and all. I prefer a minimalist approach.

 

They do make sense if you type frequently at a fast rate. Typical membrane keyboards can get uncomfortable much quicker if you need to type all day.

If you put fingers on the specific keys and don't move around, like when gaming, short travel keyboards would provide the most direct feedback.

 

Short travel keyboards are like wedgies. They drive me crazy LOL.

 

Just thought I'd update this thread with a picture and a little run down on things..



I have since decided against sticking with 980 SLI and am going with a single 980 ti instead.. Why?

Here's my thoughts, having cards sandwiched together in SLI requires me to limit the overall TDP to about 75% to curb temps of the top card which is wasteful. Subtract a very conservative 30% loss in SLI scaling and I'm going to say it's pretty much a wash between 980 SLI and 980 ti in a case where cards have to been jammed together like this. Additionally, you could argue that SLI doesn't get MFAA which would compound onto those figures in certain scenarios.

I would have managed OK keeping them, but part of me got accustomed to running games on a single GPU while I was waiting for the second 980 to arrive.

I'm not sure if it's a placebo or not... but I am now feeling input lag in FPS and Project Cars using SLI vs a single GPU. This has never been a thing for me using SLI until now, and probably was the final push I needed to go for a Epeenless 1 card setup. Perhaps I just became a frame-time junkie.

I think I'll go for SLI one day again but I'll be changing the case first. For now, I'm going to be interested seeing how a 980ti measures up against 980 SLI based on my previous limitations.

 

Your cable management sure looks nice. I recently did mine, and it looks rather disappointing, though I still haven't done it properly yet. Should try actually turning it on once .

 

@TBoneSan, Hiya, just a quick one what settings are you running to get 4.5ghz?

I have the ASUS X99-S and whatever scan did it will hold 4.4ghz fine but it will not hold 4.5ghz at all! just keeps crashing.

 

Hey I'm not running any special settings right now. Basically just 45 @ 1.36 .
What voltage were you using ?

 

Well Scan have custom tuned the bios so they have loaded 2 profiles in.

I managed to get 45@ 1.305v Static.

I would prefer to use adaptive but for some reason it wont let me set adaptive in the bios and 1.3v as the average point.

 

What kind of real world performance gains are you seeing at say 4.0ghz vs 4.4ghz or even 4.5ghz on your guys 5820K? I've been running mine at 4.0 @ 1.14v for months 100% stable and have see no need to go further. I do some light video encoding for YouTube and what not, but for gaming I just can't justify pushing the chip that hard at the higher voltage for nothing.

Have you done any sort of comparison or seen any real gains by pushing it that far? I have a feeling you eventually get diminishing returns on running the higher clock speeds.

I did purchase that Intel warranty thing on my 5820K for the $30 or so bucks it cost. Maybe I should go ahead and run max clocks until she dies? Lol.

 

The only advantage that i'm able to see on my 4790k at 4.8Ghz is minimum frame rate a little better. No real difference in gaming from the stock 4.4Ghz (turbo) to 4.8Ghz(turbo), but also, i don't play CPU bound games, wich may take more advantage from higher CPU clocks.

 

It just depends on what you use your chip for. Clock your chip at 3.5 and that's the difference you can expect going from 4 to 4.5ghz.
I don't see any reason to buy and not push an enthusiast grade chip if the voltages and temps are safe and it runs stable. Cases of CPUs crapping out are extremely rare these days. I have no fears of the chip sustaining any damage at my settings because it's extremely unlikely .

Most of the things I do it doesn't make a world of difference. But I do notice an improvement in fps and fps stability in Project Cars and Gta5. If you're doing encoding you'd be able to notice a easily measurable improvement .
If my machine is running stock I also notice boot times are a little slower. It's not a night and day difference but it's there.
There's plenty of in depth reviews around that show the gains of stock vs overclocked chips which should give you a better idea.

 

Thanks man, I guess back to the drawing board tonight. I'll set it to 4.4 (MOBO select able profile) and then fine tune from there. Hopefully I can keep the voltages low for the overclock. I feel like I got a decent 5820k.

 

This reminds me, I need to overclock my i5 .

 

I finally got around to taking a few photo's of my build since it's moved to the NZXT s340. I've since added a EVGA Hybrid Card AIO (thanks brother @Optimus Prime for helping me get hold of one! ) Man I love this case. It's miles better than the old Air 240 in my opinion













For those who can view 3D images

Spoiler

I discovered my camera can shoot 3d so I though I'd try it out.

I've zipped a few up in this .rar here