Alienware Area 51 7500

[Elf]

Edit: With apologies, I no longer wish to have involvement with SGUG or SGI communities in general,
and have also chosen to remove all of my content. Many things have changed since I co-founded, named, and ultimately
then left SGUG. There are many good people around, to whom I apologize for frustrating by removing these things, and
also many petty people that over the years whittled down both the enjoyment as well as sense of obligation I used to
feel to anyone else regarding what was ultimately just a hobby. Unfortunately one of the latter now writes the rules
and so it is time for me to take my things and go.

This message will replace all of my previous forum posts because deleting threads that I started would have removed
other peoples' posts.

 

[Irinikus]

Nice machine, I wonder what that all would have cost at the time?

A lot, I'm sure!

 

[Irinikus]

This is the best 3DMark06 score the machine could muster before I slotted the low latency Patriot DDR2 RAM:

And it got this score with the new RAM slotted:

So the memory does make a marginal difference to the machines performance! (A 3% improvement to be exact!!!)

 

[Irinikus]

Using MSI Afterburner, the system statistics show that this machine in it's current configuration with the Quadro Plex can do what two 8800 Ultras in SLI simply wouldn't have been able to do, as they'd be out of video memory!

 

[Irinikus]

I've built this system to demonstrate the performance of the Nvidia Quadro Plex 1000 Model IV running on period specific hardware. (This video just shows the setup.)

 

[Elf]

Edit: With apologies, I no longer wish to have involvement with SGUG or SGI communities in general,
and have also chosen to remove all of my content. Many things have changed since I co-founded, named, and ultimately
then left SGUG. There are many good people around, to whom I apologize for frustrating by removing these things, and
also many petty people that over the years whittled down both the enjoyment as well as sense of obligation I used to
feel to anyone else regarding what was ultimately just a hobby. Unfortunately one of the latter now writes the rules
and so it is time for me to take my things and go.

This message will replace all of my previous forum posts because deleting threads that I started would have removed
other peoples' posts.

 

[Irinikus]

It’s a pleasure! They seem to largely be forgotten pieces of hardware!

 

[Irinikus]

I had some drama this morning when trying to fire up my Alienware system for the first time in months!!!! (Liquid Cooling Loop Pump failure!!!)

At first I thought that the CPU had cooked itself, but luckily after "de-modding" the system (replacing the original cooler), I was happy to find that the CPU still works!

Nothing like completely rebuilding a PC at 06:00 in the morning!!! (The motherboard had to be removed for me to reinstall the cooler's bracket!!!)

Here's the removed cooling loop:

Here's the "de-modded" system:

 

[Irinikus]

 

[Irinikus]

 

[Elf]

Edit: With apologies, I no longer wish to have involvement with SGUG or SGI communities in general,
and have also chosen to remove all of my content. Many things have changed since I co-founded, named, and ultimately
then left SGUG. There are many good people around, to whom I apologize for frustrating by removing these things, and
also many petty people that over the years whittled down both the enjoyment as well as sense of obligation I used to
feel to anyone else regarding what was ultimately just a hobby. Unfortunately one of the latter now writes the rules
and so it is time for me to take my things and go.

This message will replace all of my previous forum posts because deleting threads that I started would have removed
other peoples' posts.

 

[Irinikus]

The thermal protection feature of the CPU kicked in, luckily!

At first I didn’t know what had happened, as the machine got to a point where it wouldn’t POST, and wasn’t displaying a video output.

When I opened the machine up, I noticed that the fluid wasn’t flowing in the cooling loop, and there were bubbles on either side of the cooling block, indicating that the fluid had started to boil!

I’m still going to open the pump to see what happened internally. I suspect that the ethylene glycol clogged up the bush that the impeller sits on! I’ll report back on this!

 

[Irinikus]

I cracked the pump open, and the impeller was indeed ceased due to an ethylene glycol buildup.

I cleaned it, and the impeller now spins normally when power's applied!

I won't be installing liquid cooling into any other systems in a hurry!!!