[Worklog] Frozen Sun ("hastily thrown together")

[TehLizard]

Backstory.txt

I build PCs a lot. Been doing so since I was a little kid, fed surplus parts from his father, what he could find off the street, at thrift/surplus/etc stores, and off eBay. 
So, I'm not very traditional when it comes to builds.

Most people do something like this:

1. Come up with idea of what machine will do (requirements)
   
2. Research parts, evaluate acquisition options
   
3. Acquire parts, usually from a retailer
   
4. Unbox parts gleefully
   
5. Build! Carefully, and in proper order
   

My builds often end up like this (in various orders):

1. Acquire parts
   
2. Build
   
3. Come up with idea
   
4. Unbox what I just built because I forgot what I put in it
   
5. Research said forgotten parts using a quick OS liveboot or install.
   

Best description: Build by the will of your screwdriver.
As such, I tend to have tons of misc. parts laying around, from old builds, builds for others, half-done builds, etc.

Build Story

Week before the competition started, I was busy with school, and didn't get anything done on the build. Then it started, davidfg4 started steamrolling, and I started freakin'.
So...needed to get something built that could power the GPUs that had been idling for a few months. And FAST.

Parts I used:

• Motherboard: MSI Z87-G45 (This and the CPU were intended for an actual planned build that didn't happen due to school, and got forgotten)
  
• CPU: Intel G3250 20th Anniversary Edition (Legendary overclocking and single-threaded performance)
  
• GPUs: MSI R9 290x TwinFrozr something, XFX R9 295x2 <fancyname>
  
• SSD: Crucial M500 240GB (not what the name implies...)
  
• PSU: Rosewill 1000W (don't remember the model. Last used for my main machine, so its solid)
  
• Fans: 3x 120mm fancy-pants Cougar (front, top) , 1x fancy-pants corsair silent 120mm (door), 1x cooler master 140mm (door), 2x Rosewill 9 blade 120mm (295x2's radiator)
  
• RAM: 16GB of Ripjaw something (DDR3 I hope)
  
• Fan controller for all those fans (NZXT something)
  
• Case: Corsair fancy-pants mid-tower (Was originally in a NVIDIA case, which is beautiful...if you're not running AMD cards. Then moved to an ULTRA case, then to Corsair. Thanks, medoicre CPU CLC radiator)
  
• OS: Windows 8.1 Enterprise (AMD Linux drivers don't work well with FAH, otherwise I'd just use CentOS 7...)
  

The following is what resulted.

(Warning: some crude gestures and references to alcohol)
Imgur Album

Highlights thus far

Initial parts roundup




You can't tell, but its actually 1:00AM



It's working!



Only way I could get the radiators to fit...was to put the fan on top. So no rear panel for now!



(2 Molex to 6 pin) + 6 pin = 8-pin PCI-E. Why? I lost the last 8-pin modular PSU cable needed. Hey, it works.



The reason for 2 case swaps, crude gestures, and references to alcohol, right here.



The reason I'm not folding with it right now (2/2/16)


(edit: added .jpg to images. not at all web savvy, what am I doing wrong here)
(edit2: derpy copy-pasta'd images for me)

[hiigaran]

Did someone say crude gestures?

Is that white thing an anti static mat?

[TehLizard]

Did someone say crude gestures?

Is that white thing an anti static mat?

Poor Ubuntu 

Yes,  except its not grounded at the moment,  so no.
I've got a esd wrist strap as well. Good for carpeted areas, dry spells,  etc.

[hiigaran]

Honestly, I've never used any of those before. I get the PSU into the case, plug it in so it grounds the unit and case, then touch any point of bare metal. Guess it's not as convenient, but hey, it works.

[Ruthalas]

Hey, that's the motherboard I am running! Good stuff.

Look like you managed to jam it all in there eventually. :)

[TehLizard]

Got case door on. Punched a hole through the top for the fan cable.





Unfortunately, it's pretty loud. I can close my bedroom door at night, and I'm not really at home during the day, but still...loud. Then again, no worse than the servers I've worked with. 

Just cleaned out main machine, trying to find a failed disk. Removed an extra 200MM fan that was at 100% power apparently (pure molex power, no PWM), since it already has 3. Was actually causing it to have a slightly negative pressure, glad I caught that! 

Might use that to help reduce noise on Frozen Sun, just put that bad boy on the top, and replace the 120MM orange sucker.
Also, considering moving 290x to main build again once I move HDDs out and into their own server. I'll post when I do that, since my main build is actually well planned and kinda pretty 

[PoNyePiC]

When I was planning my current build, I really wanted some of the 295x2 cards.  Up until now, I've only ever built entirely AMD based computers.  But the power that AMD consumes is terrifying.  The power bill is bad enough, but the heat output is worse    I think I originally went with AMD cards because they were considered better at folding a few years back, but this time around, nVidia is back with a vengeance    With nVidia, I no longer need two power supplies for one computer.  Of course, if I lived in a city where it's winter for most of the year, I would stick with AMD for the heating purposes since you'd be paying for the heat otherwise anyway    The 295x2 looks great in your build.

[TehLizard]

When I was planning my current build, I really wanted some of the 295x2 cards.  Up until now, I've only ever built entirely AMD based computers.  But the power that AMD consumes is terrifying.  The power bill is bad enough, but the heat output is worse    I think I originally went with AMD cards because they were considered better at folding a few years back, but this time around, nVidia is back with a vengeance    With nVidia, I no longer need two power supplies for one computer.  Of course, if I lived in a city where it's winter for most of the year, I would stick with AMD for the heating purposes since you'd be paying for the heat otherwise anyway    The 295x2 looks great in your build.

Thanks, it looks even better in main build. Very sexy cards.

Yeah, I got the first one for $1k fall of 2014, then the second one for $550 may 2015. 
Idaho power is cheap, clean, and it's cold here 9 months out of the year....so hot and hungry AMD cards are just fine