Not bad, but it seems like the three extra PCI-e slots and 850W PSU is a bit overkill for running a single midrange video card...

I'm interested to know, too, why did you have watercooling before, or, rather, why watercool when you had a board that couldn't be overclocked? Was it just for noise?

nah, i thought it would be cool it was but, the radiator was on the out side so i put in the dangerden radiator and the fsb cooling block and that when it started leaking. i plan on future upgradesthats why i have the big psu.

here my old pics of when it was nice.

yeah u kinda need to change the coolant occasionally. Just like with a car. 😀

That's why I don't have any interest in water cooling. The added maintenance and the risk of hardware destruction aren't worth it in addition to the added costs.

Exactly, hard lesson learned.

and here it is just came in

Hanns G 22 and Saitek Eclipse and Logitech MX518

nice job with the coolant. And those cotton balls... thats classic! But then again I'm the guy that will attach heatsinks with super glue and clamp capacitors with binder clips.

Looks like you got a nice rig going there, it's similar to what I just put together:

Gigabyte MA790x-udp4
Athlon64 x2 7850
4gb Patriot Viper DDR1066
HIS Radeon HD 4870 512mb
WD Raptor 74gb

...and clamp capacitors with binder clips.

Wait... what? You cannot give passing mention to something like that and not offer further explanation (and pics, too, preferably). 😁

i agree, pics please???

Alright i'll give you guys the short version:

I bought an Ati 9800xt off ebay. I believe it was assembled by Hercules, and the item included a nice Zalman HSF with it. I think paid 30 included shipping.
Anyhoo... after installing and booting it at first I would get a whole mess of corrupted characters on the screen... like ANSI codes and stuff... cracked out video BIOS... if you can picture it. I removed it and did an inspection, and found the a lead had broken from one of the capacitors. I reseated the card, manually applied pressure to the cap and got a succesful post. I tried to remedy it first with box tape... not only did it not work, it resulted in breaking the other lead and now the cap was completly off. I eventually impovised a way to use a binder clip, a piece of plastic from some blinds and a couple strips of paper (electrical insulation and another as a shim) to apply pressure and restore the signal path... kinda. It is still a little sensitive, for example if I move the computer around alot it may thorw it off ever so slighty and I have to open it up and tweak it a little. My machine currently dislikes to cold boot, and because I limit the amount of changes right now I haven't emilinated that as the cause (could also be the ram or something else). I have been itching to take some snaps of my rig... give a day or two and I'll post them here.

That sounds pretty epically ghetto. What about resoldering/replacing the capacitor? It shouldn't be too hard to do...

Due to the layout of the SMD's on the back of the card the solder points aren't accessible. I suppose that I could get a new cap, bend the leads at a 90 degree angle and then try to tack it down on the front side... it seemed like so much more work. I may do that later or try to get a whole new card and move the Zalman kit over it it. I almost got a Nvidia FX5950 instead of the 9800, but I chose better support for DX9 over faster DX7. Now it's even further down on my list of priories as I'm almost done building a Pentium D 960 /w a 7600gt, and when that is done I think I'm going back to a Voodoo 5 in my retro rig for a while.

*Necro Hijack*

Here are pics of the (in)famous binder clip:

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/3241/pic0197.jpg the quantum force bios is really cool it even gives you complements when you o […]
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the quantum force bios is really cool it even gives you complements when you over clock.

Have you updated your bios yet as your CPU is showing as "unknown" (a common sight using Phenom II or Athlon II CPU's in an AM2+ motherboard).

I updated it some time ago, I still need to update the back up bios though, but since i'm lazy i'll probably never do that. I have installed an XFX4850 1gb gfx card and an ASUS Xonar D1 pci sound card. I also flipped my hard drives around to hide the power cables and replace the fan on the side cover with some black mesh.

Wow, a fellow bodger.

I do all kinds of stuff like this, this is why I've never installed water cooling. When i built my sister's system (drunk), I used carpet tape, and toilet paper to stop the board shorting, as some of the mounts on the case had broken. For years i had a system running with a heat sink attached with bits of an ide cable.

Oh, and I built a system on a sheet of mdf once, ran fine.... I just propped it up against the wall.