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Deep Thought: Water Cooled EVGA SR-2 Dual Xeon 5690 GTX 580

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Reconfigured the system with the release of Mountain Lion. I'm testing an EVGA GTX680 SC right now. So far works like a charm, but there are a couple of tricks to get things working fully in Mountain Lion

I found the fans and pumps a bit noisy with the machine overclocked, so I upgraded to 4 radiators, put in a total of 3 pumps (for higher head pressure, max flows reduced a bit). The rads required adding a 68mm top and a 4x120 fan bracket. With the pumps, I required a new fan controller, so put in Aquaero 5. Well onto the slippery slope, aquaero stuff made the dvd drive look kinda ugly, so put in a slot load drive and bezel to match.

 
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The Aquacomputer equipment is just phenomenal. Easy to configure via a VM running Windows 7 in Parallels.
 
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Here's the motherboard side before adding the 680...

 
Well, previous OC not stable in Mountain Lion. I'll keep working on it. Right now running at 4.16 GHz, that's 24 hours stable on FAH. Here's Unigine Benchmarking OpenCL on the EVGA GTX 680 SC. Score of 2231 is about 14% better than the EVGA GTX 580 Classifed Ultimate Hydro Copper. And it uses about 300 Watts less power when benchmarking, LOL.

Well, incorrect assumption... Previous overclock stable, software not. One of 3 programs (or all 3 together) was causing UI crash....Back to good overclocks.


 
Hello:
I have the EVGA SR-2 running stable with 10.7.3, x5650 x 2 (2.66GHz running at 3.6GHz).
How much trouble is it to upgrade it to 10.8?
One reason for me to upgrade would be the native support for the NVidia 670 and 680 cards in ML.
I am running a GTX480 which is getting long in the tooth.

Could you make a step-by-step tutorial for that?

Thanks.
 
Honestly, you don't need it. The small "eye candy" differences are moot at best. As Tutor and ESPECIALLY ME (since it took me months to get it through my head the hard way), the "latest isn't always the greatest." if what you have is currently working, stick with it. I tried it and I even went back to 10.6.7 because I want to take advantage of the UC'ing features that you CAN'T do effectively, the way the "newer" code is written. Just to let you know, congrats on having a stable system. Again, I would stick with what you already have that's running stable. BTW, what's your current GeekBench (GB) score? Just curious... :cool:
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+1 for that sound advice. :D :thumbup:
 
Honestly, you don't need it. The small "eye candy" differences are moot at best. As Tutor and ESPECIALLY ME (since it took me months to get it through my head the hard way), the "latest isn't always the greatest." if what you have is currently working, stick with it. I tried it and I even went back to 10.6.7 because I want to take advantage of the UC'ing features that you CAN'T do effectively, the way the "newer" code is written. Just to let you know, congrats on having a stable system. Again, I would stick with what you already have that's running stable. BTW, what's your current GeekBench (GB) score? Just curious... :cool:
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Sorry for the late reply.
I played at the beginning with various settings and came close to 27K.
http://browser.primatelabs.com/user/sgunes/geekbench2
Had no time for that for over 6 months.

Since then I upgraded the boot SSD from Mushkin Callisto, to Mushkin Chronos and now to Kingston HyperX.
I have now 96 GB of 1600MHz modules here (Kingston, 8GB, CAS 10) which I will install probably in a couple weeks.

10.7.3 is rock solid at 3.6GHz with currently 24GB of RAM. It is not a big deal not to upgrade to 10.8 as I have a MBA and arriving next week a rMBP to play around with Mountain Lion. I wanted to look into the dictation function of ML but I can try it on my rMBP.

The only thing I am bummed out about is that the Marvell SATA controller died on my EVGA SR-2 motherboard and I lost 2 SATA ports.

I have a Highpoint RocketU Dual USB3 HBA here which I will install soon.

Was anyone able to get the native USB ports working?

I am waiting for the prices on the NVidia 680's to drop to upgrade my ancient GTX480.

What is the machine doing all day while I am at work? WCG (cancer and pediatric cancer).

Bye,
sgunes
 
Get this pre-made RAID card and you'll be crankin' !!!

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID


I don't know what an "MBA" or "rMBP" is so forgive me. I will say that you STILL Underclock (UC) because you haven't gone beyond 10.7.3 (if you go to 10.7.4 - 10.8.X you'll loose that option). You can still go here and read everything to get yourself the boost you're looking for (if you're still wanting that):

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1333421

Also, about the "dictation" function in ML (which I didn't know came with that); I use Dragon Dictate and it works just great for me don't need something else.

If you're still under warranty I would send it back or have them send you out another now and then return yours after, so you don't lose time (but that's an extra $39.00 to make that happen).

Don't know much about that adapter, but I can see that you're wanting to use that as a result of your native USB port issue. Which USB ports are the ones not working on the Mobo as there are many USB ports on there (10 that I can visually see, plus I have 4 more on my tower).

I am waiting for the prices on the NVidia 680's to drop to upgrade my ancient GTX480. If you were like me waiting for a better nVidia card, don't. They're not what they're cracked up to be (as I thought they were). Maybe I'm wrong here, but when I do my test renders now with a cheap $200 ATI 6870 2GB GPU, I'm getting over 50 pts. on my Cinebench 11.5 scores over the 14 to 24 using my GTX 580. Also, I use FCP, Motion, Photoshop and can't see the difference in performance. So I'm just sticking with that card and they have a very small footprint.

So that's what you use the machine for? Great... BTW, what's "WCG" stand for?
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Sorry for the TLA (three-letter-acronyms).
MBA=Macbook Air
rMBP=retina display Macbook Pro
WCG= worldcommunitygrid.org like FAH (folding at home) or SETI

Instead of returning the MB (taking everything out, packing it up, putting it back in) I can probably get a PCI-E card with a couple of SATA ports and save myself a lot of time. Everything else works and I am afraid I will get a refurbished board with more problems.

All USB 2 ports work but I could not get the USB 3 ports working. I tried a USB3 kext for NEC with multibeast but it did not work. Systeminfo states that it is an NEC uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller.

The 6870 2GB does not seem to be much faster than my overclocked 480GTX. I may wait for the next generation that is compatible with my build as I don't have much time for gaming and the main reason to get a new one is the reduced power draw.
Looking at the threads at netkas the ATI/AMD 7XXX do not work at all and there are still a lot of problems with the 6970's. The NVidia 670 and 680's seem to be working much better out of the box without any special kexts. The 2GB factory overclocked MSI Twin Frozr 680 is currently about $450 on Newegg (with a Borderlands 2 coupon).

Regarding the Mercury Accelsior: they seem to be very fast and the 480GB model seems to be the sweet spot but I still prefer regular SSD drives that I can do 1:1 copies with my external disc copier. I had bad experiences on the Windows side with Acronis type programs and on the OSX side with CCC (carbon copy cloner, old versions worked, newer ones don't).
 
I would then DEMAND that they send you a brand new one if you experienced that in the past as I have with one of their SR-2 refurbs. They can afford it as these mobos are costly anyway and new buyers aren't buying them as much anyway and they need to serve their customers the right way if it's demanded. Remember... YOU ARE THE CUSTOMER. They are in business BECAUSE of you, not in spite of you...

My GTX 480 burned out (even though it got 46+ pts. on CB 11.5) and went with the GTX 580. Then had initial issues with that card getting 14.5 pts. on CB. I know there was some kind of patch, but I didn't want that to interfere with my UC'ing kext adjustments that I made, as problems were popping up with that too. So I decided to follow Tutor's way of doing things with his GPUs (HIS & PowerColor 4890 GPUs) and they worked great but two of the three that I bought burned out (as they were used) and probably glitchy to begin with (as I bought them on ebay for about $60.00 each for them). Anyhoo, I (by chance) just decided to try out the 6870 to see if it would work and not only did it work well my CB was over 50+ pts. That's why I'm sticking with this card for now.

I have a beta copy of CCC (ver. 3.4.4 - b3) emailed directly to me from the programmer and let me tell you, this is by far the best CCC that he put out. I tried the latest one after that and it didn't work BUT this one does. If you want it PM me and I'll load it up on some server site for you to download it for yourself (and anybody else that wants to try this out). To me it's the best as I told the programmer that I liked the original one he did as it did one simple thing... CLONE drive to drive and NOTHING else. Then he listened to toooooo many people's own issues and veered off his cloning app and started implementing all kinds of stuff that made NO SENSE TO ME (when it came to options). I just wanted to CLONE drive to drive - period.

He said that in the next beta that's what he was going back to and gave it to me within 2 hours of me talking to him. I tried the 3.4.4. - b3 (beta) and it worked PERFECTLY. Installed Chameleon right after the CCC and I had a workable back up. YEEEE HAAAAA !!! Something happened though when he uploaded the "final" version. Didn't work. So I made sure (before I overwrote the beta with the newer final one that didn't work) to back it up in a different folder. Well, I tried it again (thinking that I may have done something wrong) and it worked just fine. I again, went back and forth two more times to try the newer one and the beta and every time the beta worked and the newer one didn't.

There you have it. Again, let me know if you want it and hope it will work for you. BUT, make sure you use the original boot loader app right after the clone so it will start up.
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I will continue with the motherboard for now until something else breaks down.
I checked and my best cinebench 11.5 score on my MSI GTX 480 (overclocked with afterburner) was 52. It is not worth spending a lot of time and money unless I get at least a 20-30% improvement.

Please let me have the CCC 3.4.4 b3. As you noticed, the old versions did a good job while the new ones failed miserably.

I noticed that I have BIOS A47. Any major reason to upgrade to the A49?

Last night I took off both CPU heatsinks to install the Kingston HyperX 8GB 1600MHz (KHX1600C10D3B1/8G) x 12 which I bought from tigerdirect on sale for $35 each. These are 1.5V and low profile. My original modules were g.skill with heatsinks that were too high (and I had to cut down half of them with metal shears) as I have the Noctuas. All memory modules work at the base setting. I have not tried to overclock yet. I can now have a 30-40GB scratch disc in RAM.

Regarding the graphics card: I may have to wait until the mythical 2013 MacPros appear and see which card they will have (Nvidia vs. AMD).
 
Well it's done. No more build work on this machine for the time being. Look for my next build soon. It's of course going to be called "Forty Two"

In the meantime, enjoy the shots.













 
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