Speaking of Watercooling

[mjmacky]

Chart lacks UEFI BIOS info. I've been seriously craving this advancement for the past year, does anyone have one yet? I'm like dying for feedback about this particular feature on the new boards. At least from people I care to listen to take time to read.

[Artemis]

Chart lacks UEFI BIOS info. I've been seriously craving this advancement for the past year, does anyone have one yet? I'm like dying for feedback about this particular feature on the new boards. At least from people I care to listen to take time to read.

I ordered the hardware on Tuesday but today (Wednesday) is a national holiday (ANZAC Day) so the parts are still in transit.

[Chewie]

I have an Asus M5A99X-EVO. It's a very strange feeling the first time you look at a UEFI BIOS page after so long with the two standard layouts (sorry Dell, yours don't count).
There are far too many options for me to play around with and SNAFU the setup so I just concern myself with the basics.
My only gripe is the speed with which the mouse moves; mine is only a Trust Laser not some fancy Death Adder gamer thingy, but it's so bloody skittery in UEFI that I find it much easier using the keyboard.

[mjmacky]

I have an Asus M5A99X-EVO. It's a very strange feeling the first time you look at a UEFI BIOS page after so long with the two standard layouts (sorry Dell, yours don't count).
There are far too many options for me to play around with and SNAFU the setup so I just concern myself with the basics.
My only gripe is the speed with which the mouse moves; mine is only a Trust Laser not some fancy Death Adder gamer thingy, but it's so bloody skittery in UEFI that I find it much easier using the keyboard.

I feel the same way about ExpressGate, a preOS launch Asus feature with a quick loading ultra light version of Linux. Something about driver implementation with those firmware type loads, mouse movement is just awful.

[Artemis]

So the hardware is here, and at the time I purchased it, I said to the little chinese gentlemen with the little smiley faces are you sure the Antec cooler comes with the mountings for the LGA 2011 processors? The grins got wider, they went away and came back and nodded. Now I KNOW there is an adaptor kit out there for the 2011 CPU's, I SPECIFICALLY asked them because I had done the research but with the fervent nodding and grinning I thought maybe there was a new version that included the 2011 adaptor by default.

Well no actually, even exlaining patiently and clearly, short of getting out a box of crayons and paper and drawing a picture for them, they still fucked it up! Saints preserve me from stupid people, and no, making your eyes bigger and grinning at me doesn't help. I have ordered the adaptor kit through another company since the monkey's pissed me off.
So this build is going to be delayed for a while yet.

[Artemis]

So the tale of woe, is not over, not by a long chalk. You would think in this modern day that part of the quality control process for passing of a motherboard would involve a laser alignment shirley? Because the one I received had spina bifida to the maxx. Yes it looked it pretty, no it wasn't going to function correctly because it was so badly warped in one corner that one of the USB mounts was never going to line up with the I/O plate, rendering four USB ports unusable, nice one guys!

Since the board was brand new it was covered under a straight D.O.A. return, but surprise, surprise there is no stock on hand, not even at the logistics center. Lots of excited phone calls later I get the news, free weeks, free weeks till that model of motherboard will arrive, but they can upgrade me to the deluxe model for $200 more. Lots of little yellow grinning faces at this point.

So I said no I'll go away and do some research thanks thinking that if the only way to resolve this is to pay $200 more then I'll just get the money back and wait free weeks or go somewhere else, but what my little yellow friends didn't advise me of is that the X-79 Sabretooth is only $55 more, a much more palatable option, they have bucket loads of the things in stock, they are actually designed to military standards to resist sand and dust and all sorts or strange stuff so O.K. I'll have one of those thanks.

It's here now, so let building commence, hopefully the next thing about this build will the pictures of the assembled machine, not a continuing blog about my little yellow friends.

[Artemis]

The build went well actually, surprisingly easy. Tricks for young players: You MUST remove the plastic retention cover from the LGA 2011 socket vertically, apparently customers have rocked the retention cover from side to side and bent the pins (woops!). Also another trick I had previously installed two other Antec 920 Liquid Coolers one on an Intel LGA 1155 machine and one on an AMD AM3 machine they both used a (different) backplate to mount the cooler to. Not so with the LGA 2011, the adaptor kit you get comprising the mounting and locking ring and the four locking screws (that have a different sized thread) are the complete mount for the cooler for an LGA 2011 installation making it extremely simple to install.


Re the Antec Kuhler H2o 920 Liquid Cooler itself, the three machines I have installed this cooler into are all used fairly heavily. The LGA 1155 is an i7 2600k gaming machine with an EVGA twin GTX 560 TI graphics card running Skyrim and Diablo 3 on Dual 24" monitors so it gets pushed hard with the cooler in operation the temps are 28-32 degrees celsius even under full load.
The AMD machine is an 880GM chipset board with a 1090T Hexcore CPU (not exactly a thermally efficient CPU at 130W) with an EVGA GTX 560 graphics card on a 27" monitor also running Diablo 3 as the favorite game at the moment, although of course WoW and Skyrim are in there as well. The cooler is keeping this machine running at 37-41 degrees celsius. ( I have quoted both of these temperature readings using the quiet temperature profile, the fans are capable of far faster speed, but at the expense of noise).
I haven't really built the software up on the LGA 2011 based PC yet so I can only quote the basic running, under a minimum load it is running on average approximately 28 degrees celsius once again this is using the silent profile.
I should explain the profiles further.
The Antec 920 like other coolers has fans which can be controlled by PWM. In the case of the H2o 920 it has 2 fans in a push-pull configuration with the radiator in between. The difference though with this liquid cooler is that it also has a USB connector which mounts to an internal USB header on the motherboard. When you install the included software, it provides you with a monitoring program that gives you a visual indication of the liquid temperature, sound level,fan speed and pump speed. There are also three profiles to choose from silent, extreme (i.e. full speed) and custom where you get to choose the parameters . there are also some graphs to chart the parameters and you can change the color of the RGB LED that says Antec on the CPU mount itself.

[Artemis]

Chart lacks UEFI BIOS info. I've been seriously craving this advancement for the past year, does anyone have one yet? I'm like dying for feedback about this particular feature on the new boards. At least from people I care to listen to take time to read.

So to answer your question (from someone you hopefully care to listen to ) the UEFI BIOS is responsive with my mouse (Microsoft Laser 7000) and has a far faster boot time than a standard BIOS. The BIOS has two modes, it is mouse driven GUI and has a basic (idiot) mode with pretty pictures and large icons to switch between different modes in the idiot basic mode. Advanced mode offers the more traditional control layout but takes a bit of getting used to since you have to navigate trough nested options. Once you are used to this it is a quicker way to use a BIOS to configure your computer, and is a big advance over the older BIOS, an obvious caveat would be the mouse though, if it is not recognised by the system or poorly recognised things would be interesting.

[mjmacky]

Chart lacks UEFI BIOS info. I've been seriously craving this advancement for the past year, does anyone have one yet? I'm like dying for feedback about this particular feature on the new boards. At least from people I care to listen to take time to read.

So to answer your question (from someone you hopefully care to listen to ) the UEFI BIOS is responsive with my mouse (Microsoft Laser 7000) and has a far faster boot time than a standard BIOS. The BIOS has two modes, it is mouse driven GUI and has a basic (idiot) mode with pretty pictures and large icons to switch between different modes in the idiot basic mode. Advanced mode offers the more traditional control layout but takes a bit of getting used to since you have to navigate trough nested options. Once you are used to this it is a quicker way to use a BIOS to configure your computer, and is a big advance over the older BIOS, an obvious caveat would be the mouse though, if it is not recognised by the system or poorly recognised things would be interesting.

Now I've got a big fucking itch to scratch.