The AKS \"MegaRig\" Thread

I have this thing Crossfired now. I had to do some modification to the plastic covering of the new HIS card in order to fit it in there. The connections for other things were in the way. Hopefully heat from this card doesn't roast them to a crisp. My main complaint about my motherboard is that MSi didn't seem to plan well to accommodate long cards.

Witcher 2 was silky smooth. Supersampling is at least playable, but I didn't notice that much of a difference. I turned it back off.

I'm going to give Crysis Warhead a go to see what happens. I'm monitoring the GPU temperatures for now.

 

I have some pictures of the current form of my "MegaRig."

I have an odd looking pair of 6950s, XFX and HIS 1GB cards.



The HIS card is superior in almost every way. It's quieter, more powerful, and cooler. I may eventually sell the XFX card and get another HIS 6950, but I'm not spending any more right now. Regardless, they work well together in Crossfire. The Witcher 2 sings along at a silky smooth frame rate and is without question one of the best looking games I've ever seen.

Here is a picture inside before I added the cards.



That power supply unit is huge. It cockblocks me from adding another fan on the bottom of the case. It also has some cables that are the size of a snake. It started getting crowded around the bottom of the case when I needed to add four of the 8-pin connectors to the two graphics cards.

Things got a bit complicated when I added the cards. I had to carry out a minor surgery on the plastic frame that holds a 120 mm fan that blows directly on the cards. I also had to remove part of the casing of the HIS card because it was putting a lot of pressure on the connectors for the lights, power button, ect. on the board. I didn't want that to snap off. I'm just hopeful that they are fairly heat tolerant and don't eventually melt from hot air from the card. It was a challenge to get two 10-inch-long cards onto that board without breaking anything. There were SATA ports at the edge of the top card and pins/ connectors at the edge of the bottom card.



Finally, here are a couple of pictures of it assembled and powered up. It has huge fans with blue LED lights. Looks pretty awesome in a darkened room, but my camera wouldn't cooperate if it was too dark.

 

I'll try to get a picture of it when it's dark. This camera wasn't cooperating, but I'll eventually figure it out. The pics were coming out quite blurry, so I'll have to find the right settings.

I plan to keep it on the floor at the edge of my home theater setup. I took off the little stubs and put it on wheels, which gives it a bit more space off the ground. It's quite large and wouldn't easily fit on a stand, table, or whatnot. There's actually an exhaust vent right behind it, so it blows much of the hot air right into that.

I'm amazed that even with a giant case and parts that are designed with enthusiast gamers in mind I still needed to make some adjustments, including cutting pieces out of the fan frame and second graphics card and moving up the fan on the CPU cooler to accommodate those stupid fins on top of the RAM. I don't know what we are going to do in the future considering the 6990 is already a foot long.

 

There's quite a bit behind the motherboard. What took up most of the room in the front was the power cables. They are quite large, especially the cable to the motherboard. I needed to run four 8-pin cables to just the graphics cards alone. There are also 6 fans, 2 HDDs, and a DVD drive.

 

That's a good idea. I won't need to leave it on the floor that way.

 

Ha, ha, ha! But still...my 2600k style and your dual 6950 kung-fu could form a deadly combination!

Dun, dun, dun!!!


Dirt 3 max, DX11