New setup

[Hammer]

Donated my a 7970 to a friend so we can play BF4 together, so with the extra room in my case I did a custom water loop.

Disadvantages were space and the case. Top 200mm fan, one 120 in the back. Had spaces for two in front of the GPUs though. The way the holes were in the 240mm rad in the front of the GPUs meant I had to move my GPU down a slot. Good thing is, the Crosshair V motherboard had two x16 PCI-E slots although if it were a x8 slot drop in performance would be miniscule. In fact, I actually like my setup this way. Shows off the motherboard more, and it opened more slots. With the Asus 7970 being a three slot card it blocked two PCI-E slots when placed in the top slot. With it being in the next x16 lane, it only blocks one and a fairly useless PCI slot. I also wouldn't recommend putting the pump/res on top of an already heavy GPU. It sags a little but it isnt going anywhere (i hope). Two pumps in also kinda unnecessary but I had an extra laying around. Enjoy!

AMD FX-9590 eight core OC'd to 5.5 ghz
Asus 7970 (R9 280x V2) DCII
Asus CrosshairV Formula
AMD Radeon series RAM 32gb
Corsair Force GT SSD
Asus AC1900 wireless adapter
Creative Recon3D soundblaster
Antec TPQ-1200 OC
Antec 1100 case

[bover907]

Shit, that's monstrous! Darn, I knew I should have followed up with you on that card! Now that I lost out, if you and your buddy are able to play BF2 on it together than it's for the best. Since heat is the only thing I play on the computer, I don't need anything that big anyway, lol. Nice setup, man!

[Hammer]

The 7970, or R9 280x, is a very capable card. Its not the best but it still plays every game out there flawlessly, and two are complete overkill. The 7970 was AMD's flagship card back about two years ago I think. This Fall they renamed all their cards to R9 2xx, with the 280x being a highly overclocked 7970 and the 290 being the only completely new card. The main reason I got rid of my older 7970 was because my buddy was putting a little budget build together but the prices for AMD cards when through the roof with this crypto currency craze. Apparently AMD cards demolish nVidia cards (of course over something useless!) in this "mining" shit. I got my new 280x for $300 on the nose. They are now selling new for nearly $450...freaking outrageous.

That CPU is a monster too. AMD's best out right now with a massive 220 watt power draw. Its just about even with the newer 4770 from intel but still gets beat by the highest end i7s. Its inefficient as all hell, needs to be watercooled because of the heat output, and requires the 990fx chipset with an extra four pin CPU power connector on top of the eight pin. So only a handful of motherboards can actually run the thing. All things considered, its not bad for a company less than 10% the size of Intel.

The best piece of hardware in my system is arguably that power supply. That thing is a beast. It can be pushed well past 1400 watts.

[BlackKnight]

nice hammer wish I could afford a setup like that looks awesome

[mustangman759]

[mustangman759]

So how much did this raise your electricity bill?

[Hammer]

Its going to get higher for other reasons, but the draw from the computer is going to get a lot lower. With one of the two power hungry 7970s gone, and one pump gone afterwards in order to have a cleaner look to the bottom of the case it doesn't draw anywhere near the wattage it used too. I am still pushing the CPU to the limit, and with a fan gone, and a reservoir that could potentially lower temps 1-2C, the thing is still staying cool to the touch.

I do think the motherboard is dying. With all the GPU swapping the PCIE lanes have taken a beating and my intergrated intel LAN chipset refused to be detected even after a clean install and update to the drivers. On board sound is also nonexistent. It's the oldest part in the build, and its on its last legs it seems. Sucks I'm stuck on wireless again only after a month after I went back to wired.

[bover907]

Motherboards are pretty cheap. Especially one that's compatible with your slightly aged CPU.

[Hammer]

Motherboards are pretty cheap. Especially one that's compatible with your slightly aged CPU.

Ehhh its not that simple. There's only about 5 or 6 motherboards that can handle the CPU, which was released in June. And, as far as I know, only the Crosshair V Formula and Formula-Z boards from ASUS have and eight pin and four pin CPU power connections to bring the CPU to its full potential.

We're looking a at least $225 for these Crosshair Vs new. Thing is still trucking along though. I have a sound card and have a much better wireless adapter. As long as the DIMM and PCIE slots continue to work fine then all is good.