Had a chance to see the beauties in the warehouse today, so I thought I’d snap a couple of pictures for my loyal readers (you know, the ones that do nothing but sit in front of their computer on the F5 button waiting for my next blog post… ha… ha…). These things are gorgeous. The finish is so shiny you can see my pink/white sneakers reflecting off the case in one of them.

I just had a cheap drive enclosure die on me. There’s no warranty support of course, so even though it only cost me $7 I have to buy a new one. I could go through 3-4 enclosures in the life cycle of a drive, not even including the ones that are DOA.  So it occurred to me the best way to get enough drive enclosures would be to order bulk from China.

If I’m going to place a large order I might as well resell them to others as well. So that means I have to come up with a brand. Stay with me here because it’s about to get a little crazy…

El-Tek is the perfect brand. The intentional misspelling of the abbreviation tech. (for technology) is to demonstrate the hip, rule-defying attitude we have at El-Tek. The “El” is a play on my name and it gives potential customers a good idea of the quality level of the product. By coming right out and saying how cheap it is I could completely ignore all warranty claims and reduce my overhead, allowing me to sell everything for dirt cheap.

Look for El-Tek products at an NCIX near YOOOOUUUUUU!

It’s been a long time since NCIX has seriously stocked any Shuttle SFF PCs for reasons unbeknowst to me, but the line has been rejuvenated, and we’ve got some pretty awesome little barebones PCs available now. One of the coolest ones is the X27, which includes the Intel Atom CPU that everyone’s been going nuts over.

There also a pretty good deal on some X38 crossfire ready ones right now. As far as I can tell the X38 model is the same as the X48 model, but cheaper and I think lower FSB support, but how many people actually OWN a QX9770? It’s the ONLY LGA775 CPU that uses a 1600MHz FSB, so I don’t think it’s a huge problem. Here’s a picture of that one.

Now all that’s left is for me to water cool one…..

I’ve got a post upcoming about my most recent water cooling adventure, but I thought I’d do a segment on one of the more interesting parts of this build: Making the MCW60 work with D-TEK’s Uni-Sink for the GTX 260 (and 280 if you have more money than I do…)

So here you can see the Uni-Sink in all its glory, along with my ghetto-fabulous method of removing my GPU blocks without actually draining my loop. The third picture is what the whole setup will theoretically look like when I’m done.

From talking to Danny at D-TEK I knew I was going to have to drill out the threaded holes that are set up for the FuZion GFX. The pictures above show me setting up for drilling by using saran wrap to keep the thermal pads from getting covered in aluminum shavings. The third picture shows why that doesn’t work very well… On the second attempt (SLI) I just peeled all the pads off ahead of time. It worked much better.

What I didn’t know is that there’s quite a bit more modification that needs to be done….. There are about 20-25 pins that need to be cut off in order for the MCW60 hold down plate to fit. Back to the dremel and then we’re done.

Haha. That was a good one! The baseplate of the MCW60 is not the same shape as the baseplate of the FuZion GFX… Talk about a round peg and a square hole. I was able to make it fit with a reinforced cutting disc and my dremel, but I really wouldn’t recommend this method…. I made a bit of a mess of things.

Nothing a little bit of nailpolish can’t fix I guess. Rather than leave the bare aluminum showing, I painted the exposed stuff with some black nailpolish. Never leave home without it.

After that I was finally able to mount the Uni-Sinks to the cards. My overheating problems are now a thing of the past (folding away on my GPU as we speak) and it’s nice to not have to worry about little junk falling off the VRMs. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to use safety goggles.

Edit: Yeah… It occurs to me now that this thread is missing temp readings. I’m using GPU-Z to take temps and I’m just kinda eyeballing it because quite frankly I don’t care. I water cool for looks/silence, not for extreme overclocking.

Idle GPU0: GPU-36/GPU-28/PCB-39
Idle GPU1: GPU-36/GPU-28/PCB-34 (this one gets only a little bit more airflow over the uni-sink)
Folding GPU0: GPU-40/GPU-33/PCB-42
Folding GPU1: GPU-42/GPU-33/PCB-37

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