My Battlestation(Finished) preping for OC and Upgrades.

[bob2701]

Is that an 8 pin cpu power cable running across the case?

Yeah, unfortunately the PSU's CPU socket is to its far left, plus this is a full tower case so the cable was not long enough to be run through the back(definitely prefers that way). I am definitely considering getting a 3 row PSU with that socket on the top right corner when I upgrade my PSU.

Take a look here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812198024

[BackDraft]

Looks good. just hide those wires. I do run seminars on creative wiring.
Otherwise job well done.

[sherlock]

Looks good. just hide those wires. I do run seminars on creative wiring.
Otherwise job well done.

I will buy a Cable extension to route my 8 pin supplemental CPU power cord behind the Mobo tray, the fan wires on the other hand I probably have to live with since I don't see many places to hide those. Will see what I can do about the other power cords.

Was going to order a 200mm CM Mega flow for $8 after rebate, but found out it would die quickly since it is a sleeve bearing fan and I wanted to mount it vertically.

[Slaughter]

Getting the 8 Pin out of the way will definitely help. Also, if you were to rotate the white fan on the bottom of the case, you could at the very least have the cable just going straight up and then try to tuck the remaining wire behind the PSU. I'm not very familiar with that case, but wire management is something that is crucial to me when selecting a case. I'll try to post some pictures up of my rig later (As I meant to do a long time ago when I won the Cosmos II)

[sherlock]

Getting the 8 Pin out of the way will definitely help. Also, if you were to rotate the white fan on the bottom of the case, you could at the very least have the cable just going straight up and then try to tuck the remaining wire behind the PSU. I'm not very familiar with that case, but wire management is something that is crucial to me when selecting a case. I'll try to post some pictures up of my rig later (As I meant to do a long time ago when I won the Cosmos II)

Yeah I will rotate that white fan at the bottom to its wire out of the way. The Wire management isn't too bad as between the Mobo tray and the right panel I have about 1" of room, just need to get to work with some zip ties.

[rrplay]

Looks good. just hide those wires. I do run seminars on creative wiring.
Otherwise job well done.

I will buy a Cable extension to route my 8 pin supplemental CPU power cord behind the Mobo tray, the fan wires on the other hand I probably have to live with since I don't see many places to hide those. Will see what I can do about the other power cords.

Was going to order a 200mm CM Mega flow for $8 after rebate, but found out it would die quickly since it is a sleeve bearing fan and I wanted to mount it vertically.

yep looks pretty good ! other than some of the creative wiring seminars might be a good idea to check with the esteemed local 'cooling guru ' regarding the 200mm fan . Been lots of new tech in fans lately and if anyone would really know bout the cool and quiet... Cella would.

[sherlock]

Looks good. just hide those wires. I do run seminars on creative wiring.
Otherwise job well done.

I will buy a Cable extension to route my 8 pin supplemental CPU power cord behind the Mobo tray, the fan wires on the other hand I probably have to live with since I don't see many places to hide those. Will see what I can do about the other power cords.

Was going to order a 200mm CM Mega flow for $8 after rebate, but found out it would die quickly since it is a sleeve bearing fan and I wanted to mount it vertically.

yep looks pretty good ! other than some of the creative wiring seminars might be a good idea to check with the esteemed local 'cooling guru ' regarding the 200mm fan . Been lots of new tech in fans lately and if anyone would really know bout the cool and quiet... Cella would.

Cool, currently I am looking at the following Upgrades in fans(looking for either all Blue or all Green atm):

3X 230mm Blue LED fan with good CFM/dba(prefer to be under 30 dba) ratio,No Sleeve Bearing(only one mounted vertically)
Currently looking at Bitfenix Spectre Pro 230mm Blue
Seem like Bitfenix is the only company selling 230mm case fan independent of cases these days.
Dimensions (mm) 230x200x30mm
Current (A) 0.41A ±10%
Speed (RPM) 900 RPM ±10%
Air Flow (CFM) 156.27 CFM ±10%
Air Pressure (mmH2O) 1.81 mmH2O
Noise (dB-A) 25.6 dB(A)
FDB Bearing

3X 140mm Blue LED(Same requirement)

2X 120mm Blue PWM LED(Push Pull on my Hyper 212Evo), good AirPressure, better than stock dba(currently 36/32 dba)

Update:This weekend I will reseat my Heat stink(I twisted the Heat sink a few times during installation and might have compromised my Tim layer with airbubbles, and do some cooling test with regard to Push vs Push-Pull vs no rear exhaust fan/top exhaust fan, also try to figure out it the 140mm I glued down in the bottom 3 Optical Bay helps or not.

As far as Fan upgrade goes the only 230mm I can find are Bitfenix Spectre and they seem to have better stats than Coolermaster Megaflow 200/NZXT 200. the 140s I am still not sure out, will test to see if I need the bottom and front Optical Bay Intake, andif Rear Exhaust affect my CPU heatsink performance. Linked a Overclock.net post on how you get the best heatstink performance without the rear fan.

120mms for my Evo I have settled on CM Sickle Flow 120 Blue LED as they look good, have similiar stat to Blademaster and is quieter(19 vs 32).

[sherlock]

I seem to run into some issues Overclocking my 4X4G of Corsair Ram, the situation is as follows:

Hi, I was attempting to overclock my 4 sticks of Corsair Vengeance 4G DDR3-1600 Cas9 1.5V Ram on my ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 board(system in my sig), with all Timing set to Auto.

Command Rate in both cases is 2T

First My Ram would not pass Prime Blend at 1600 Mhz 9-9-9-24 @1.5V(I would get individual core failure yet no blue screen) though it would pass Memtest86+ v4.20 without problem, so I raised the Dram Voltage to 1.53V and run Prime Blend(1hr 45 min) and Prime Custom(1 hr) Torture(14G Ram used) , passed both.

I first tried to raise the XMP profile to DDR3-1866 with the voltage unchanged(1.53V), this failed Prime Blend in 4 min.
I upped the Voltage to 1.56V, this failed Prime Blend in a few mins as well.
I upped the Voltage to 1.6V(1866Mhz 9-11-11-28 1.6 V ), this passed 30 min of Prime Blend then I shut the test off

I tried to set the timing in Bios manually(from the auto 9-11-11-28) to 9-9-9-24, you probably know what happened, this stupid move caused my computer to auto shutoff during boot.

I pressed Clear CMOS button, rebooted and went back to DDR3-1600, 9-9-9-24 at 1.53V and all is well.

My questions:
1. how much extra performance do I gain at 1866Mhz 9-11-11-28 1.6 V vs 1600Mhz 9-9-9-24 1.53V? I don't mind being a min slower in video encoding but if it affects my gaming performance I might take the 1866Mhz.

2. Is the extra Dram Voltage an issue(I hear you are fine at anything below 1.65V, but the board allows a max of 1.8V)?

3. I plan on stress testing my OCed Ram with a longer Prime Blend & Prime Custom 14G Ram run(each for an hour) and a Memtest86+ run, is this sufficient and if not what else should I do to test my Ram.

4. I hear that not OCing your Ram reduces your CPU OC ceiling by about 200 Mhz, is this true?

p.s If you have experience OCing 4 sticks of Ram, how much could you push it? Do you recon I can push mine to 2100/2133 at 1.65V?

[slugbug]

Any performance gains will be so small they will be measured in milliseconds and therefore be barely noticeable.

[sherlock]

Any performance gains will be so small they will be measured in milliseconds and therefore be barely noticeable.

Alirght, so instead of pushing my Ram to a higher OC( unless it really helps me in Gaming or a 4.6Ghz OC), I probably should explore to see whether I can get it stable at a voltage between 1.5(stock, failed at prime blend) & 1.53V(passed prime blend, totally stable).

Didn't know beforehand that Corsair bin the Vegenance Rams pretty hard and they might not have much OC room(heard about this recently on OCN), probably should have gone with the Samsung 30nm Rams but oh well the money is spent already.