pasted my build here so you don't have to click the link:
Hey guys,
In an effort to build a portable gaming rig this time around (old machine is in a giant Thermaltake Xaser case and weights about 50 lbs) I scored the following during christmas/boxing day sales:
Case: X-QPack gen. 2
Power Supply: Antec NeoPower HE 500 (from old PC - selling old PC w/ qpack PS)
Motherboard: Gigabyte DSR2
CPU: Q6600 G0
Cooling: ThermalRight Ultima-90 (thx to MaximumOverKill's thread in the gallery!)
RAM: 2 x 2GB Patriot 4-4-4-12
Video: Galaxy 8800 GTS 512MB
Optical: Black DVD SATA
HDD: Maxtor 200 GB (from old PC - SATA 150 only)
HDD Case: Antec MX-1
Keyboard: Logitech G15 gen. 2
Mouse: Logitech G9
Monitor: Dell 2005FPW (from old PC)
Headset: Icemat Siberia (from old PC)
So my story begins without the Ultima-90... Using stock cooling I put the machine together and started running some tests...
Idle temps around high 40's
4 instances of Prime95, 100% cpu usage bought the temp. upto 77 degrees within about 15 minutes or so.
Too hot!!
So poking around, I found Max.OverKills microfly gallery and how he got the Ultima-90 to fit. I decided to go down the same road... Back to NCIX I go! (Sure is nice to live within 10 minutes of the place!)
1/2 hour later, armed with a hacksaw and some masking tape, i was all set to chop up my shiny new case - much to my wife's dismay!
VICTORY IS MINE!
Some additional metal work was required to fit the cooler on this Giga-byte board however... One of the brackets wouldn't fit as it was to close to the NorthBridge? heatsink... so I had to show it who's boss...
This was a bit of a pain in the ass... I was used to cutting the buttery soft aluminum of the qpack case... This was MUCH stronger and took probably 10-15 minutes of hacksawing... I was damn close to calling my friend and scoring a dremel to finish it off!!
Basically I just had to file/cut off the rounded edge so it was flush with the threaded hole. It fit just perfect after that!
Once this was done, it was smooth sailing!! Well, aside from the countless ways of trying to tuck wiring away to make the best of air flow
The only other mod I did was to mount another 80mm intake fan on the right-hand side of the front panel. The qpack comes with just a single intake fan on the left side and i felt that the case needed more airflow! Thankfully there are lots of perforated holes already in the case so a few zipties later, i had a new fan!
So 1 intake fan drawing air in on both sides... 1 for the cpu side, 1 for the gpu side! Things should be flowing nicely!
Button everything up and run the same tests...
Idle's around 42 and full prime loading around 62. So about 8 degrees drop in temp! And i'm still not done! As you can in the pictures, the Ultima-90 draws air in from the side, and my case has solid window'd walls! So no doubt its starving for air... I plan on replacing the window with some sort of mesh opening to allow it to get direct cool air.
Also, i placed both of the qpack's thermal probes along each side in the air flow path. The case seems to be staying really nice and cool @ around 25 degrees or so.
The one other thing to note in my build is that i don't have the harddrive in the qpack case. I bought an actively cooled Antec MX-1 E-SATA enclosure that you can see on top of the case. I did this with the idea of keeping the extra heat generated by the HDD out of the case. No idea if it was required, but I liked the idea
Some additional pictures:
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