Here’s a teaser shot of the hardware. I’m going to try to do a proper build log this weekend

I was given the task of creating an eye catching demo system for our new Aberdeen store which will be opening in the next little while. I decided to bring take it with me on Friday as a homework project for the weekend (as if I didn’t have enough to do this weekend…) and I’m quite pleased with the results. It’s a bit of an “all show and no go” configuration with the Intel X38 “BoneTrail” motherboard and an ASUS 8800GTX, but since those parts look slick I decided to run with it. Here are some day photos that I took. I will add some night ones once I have a chance to take them (maybe at night would be a good time for that)

edit: NIGHT SHOTS!!

Look for this wicked system to show up at our Burnaby store. It was built by yours truly as a show piece to demonstrate the kind of wicked gaming PC you can build with all parts from NCIX.com.

With the Mountain Mods H2G0 case it only took about 2 hours to do this build. Here are some shots of the hardware used.

One of the first steps for me is always to install the CPU block and mount the radiator. I used a Danger Den MC-TDX for this build on account of the flashy look of the block. For the radiator I took a far more practical approach and went with a Thermochill PA120.2. This thing is a monster performer and the H2G0 is designed to be used with it, so the spacing is just right. At least it’s supposed to be just right. Even using 3/8″ barbs, there was HARDLY enough room to fit the tubing through the pre-cut holes

I opted to use a full cover EK nickel plated water block on the 3870 graphics card. Here you can see the card with the stock cooler stripped off and the second picture shows the EK block installed in the system.

Hard drive installation was pretty straightforward if you’ve worked in a Mountain Mods case, but the optical drive was kinda challenging. The pictures below show the hard drive installed in the bottom, rear 120mm fan mount, as well as a couple views of how the 5.25″ devices get installed. You must have at least one full size 5.25″ device (such as an optical drive) installed in order for this system to work.

Here are a couple shots showing cable management in the bottom. The modular Corsair power supply really makes cable management a snap. I only have 3 modular cables plugged into it. One for SATA, one for molex, and one for PCIe.

And here are the shots showing the system completed with the lights all aglow. So sexy. Be sure to check it out in the Burnaby store if you’re down there. If you’re interested in building a system like this for yourself, send an email to PC@ncix.com and we’ll get you set up.

Thanks for reading

These suckers are HUGE! I was actually the original builder of this PC, so when I got a call from the owner that it needed work my first thought was “Oh great… A failed GPU or something that will take forever to remove”. Actually it was even better than that. He wanted an upgrade.

So we threw a new 790i FTW, 4GB of DDR3, and 3 GTX 280 SuperClocked cards into his rig. Here’s some glam shots that I took while I was working on it. The whole thing took more than 6 hours.

Here’s a gallery with some great shots of this system including a night shot. It doesn’t include the actual “final” picture with all the tip ties cut short and the panels closed up, but it gives you a pretty good idea

Well I’ve finished the first of the two Corsair Dream Machines. Here’s a picture of the case I received from Danger Den last Friday with only the radiator mounted in it:

Here’s some progress on installing the 9800GX2 water blocks, which Danger Den was also kind enough to sponsor us with:

Here’s an “in progress” shot that I took on my test bench:

And now finally here are some pretty good pictures that our photo guy took of the system. These are all pre-photoshop, but it gives you some idea what a nice system this is:

Well this is a fun project. Corsair has asked NCIX to participate in building a couple of “show-off” systems that will accompany them to various shows and just generally impress people. Before I talk too much about the specs I’ll let you check out the goodies that arrived this week from Corsair and the other sponsors.

There are two systems and each will a liquid cooled monster powered by the following:

Corsair EPP 2.0 DDR3 memory at 1600MHz
Corsair HX1000W power supply
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 CPU (I’ll be overclocking these a touch just for giggles)
eVGA 790i Ultra SLI motherboard
2x eVGA 9800 GX2 video cards in quad SLI
Samsung F1 series hard drive
LG Blu-Ray/HD-DVD optical drive
Microsoft Windows Vista

Here’s a picture of one of them on the test bench (familiarizing myself with the board a little bit and making sure nothing is DOA), but unfortunately the really good pictures don’t come until I get the cases from Danger Den…

Just wanted to share some photos of an awesome water cooled system that I’ve had the pleasure of working on.

A customer asked for a wicked crazy gaming (or whatever else you want to do, I suppose) system, so this is what I put together for him

2x Xeon 5430 Harpertown LGA771 CPUs

Intel D5400XS “Skulltrail” motherboard

4×2GB Buffalo FB-DIMM memory modules (PC2-6400)

2x Visiontek 3870 X2 video cards in Crossfire-X

Silverstone Decathlon 1200W Power Supply

4x 1TB HDD

LG DVD/BLU-RAY/HD-DVD Combo Drive

Auzentech X-fi Prelude

Fully customized water cooling system powered by Swiftech, D-TEK, Thermochill, Vadim, and Noctua with Feser One UV Black coolant

UV Cold Cathodes

So I’ve made some progress on the build over the course of the day since I took that last picture, and one of the things I discovered is that you can’t use just any FB-DIMM memory in Skulltrail. I had initially thought that Mac Pro memory would work fine as long as it’s PC2-6400 (for best speed of course), but (silly me), the Mac Pro memory has HUGE heatspreaders on it, so if you’re looking for memory for your new Skulltrail system, be sure to get appropriate memory. The recommended SKUs are listed on the page for the Skulltrail board on NCIX.com

Here’s a better view of the internals, and the loop order. The CPU on the left will have water coming directly from the pump in the bottom.

And here’s where a Thermochill PA120.3 loaded up with Noctua fans is going to go to keep this beast cool. I may end up adding another radiator, but I’m not sure yet at this point. It’s going to depend on the temps. The customer is pretty flexible, and very patient, but as you can see, he’s going to get a VERY fine system. I’ll make sure to post some pictures of the system when it’s done with a little bit better lighting so you can see it all lit up in all its glory.