I'm glad you've found a source for the screws - one challenge ticked off the list :-)

Thermal pads, now that's going to be a harder challenge, my guess is other than going back to the cooler or board manufacturer is to take a look at the electronics industry suppliers. In the UK we have two "biggies" RS & Farnell, they both have US divisions, and very extensive on-line catalogues, but you probably need an account to buy from them, so that can be a right pain for a once-off purchase (don't I know it). Or of course there is ebay, which may deliver what it says, or it may not...



(RS in the US is Allied Electronics, http://www.alliedelec.com/)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I'm glad you've found a source for the screws - one challenge ticked off the list :-)

Thermal pads, now that's going to be a harder challenge, my guess is other than going back to the cooler or board manufacturer is to take a look at the electronics industry suppliers. In the UK we have two "biggies" RS & Farnell, they both have US divisions, and very extensive on-line catalogues, but you probably need an account to buy from them, so that can be a right pain for a once-off purchase (don't I know it). Or of course there is ebay, which may deliver what it says, or it may not...



(RS in the US is Allied Electronics, http://www.alliedelec.com/)

Actually thermal pads are easy, Koolance makes and sells them, as does Amazon, FrozenCPU, etc, etc. Plus their available in 3 sizes, 0.5mm, 0.7mm and 1.0mm thick, at Amazon their available for $4.99 a sheet, at least I think their sold by the sheet. I'm looking at buying one of each, one of each is usually good enough for one block. From what I've read if I open up the block I'll need to replace the pads, so since I don't know what type of impression the chips are making in them, I don't know what thickness to buy, as the board was sold to Me as new and the cooler as used, so I have a feeling the seller didn't install new pads, maybe, plus I may find cheap heatsink compound, I always use Arctic Silver 5, nothing less, but then I have plenty of that at least. Since I'm looking at a Zotac AMP!/Nvidia GTX580 heatsink on ebay and screws, I don't know at this point If I can get the thermal pads too, since My finances so far only show $328.67 extra, I have a $300 loan that I want to pay off which limits what I can do since the interest is $45 a month, which leaves $255, I'll know better after the 28th of June.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I think I'm going to get a new case, yeah the Enthoo Primo from Phanteks(Google search for the Phanteks case), it seems to be the case with the most radiator expansion, it can hold a 480 in the top and a 280 down below, plus a 240 or maybe a 280 in front or a pair of thin 240's from what I've seen at this site Here, $250 in July, sounds good, at the link there is a video there at the 2nd link, they even made sure the psu was isolated from the rest of the case thermally, the case has 5-5.25" drive bays and a 6 channel fan controller(20 fans! 5 fans are included.), so yeah I'm definitely interested, this case has My attention. Oh and this case is supposed to be out for $250 in July of 2013...

So that's two cases, one for this PC and the New one...

That case can house TWO 480x120 radiators, that's simply fantastic, I left a message at this site Here, as I'd hope they'd do a review of this case. A more complete introduction is Here, that's almost a review in itself.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok I got another email back from Zotac tech support, It reads:

Victor,

I am not sure exactly which of those will provide the best cooling for the VRAM, but I would personally go with the middle choice of .7mm

And that is what I will do, as soon as I'm feeling a bit better and when I have those 0.7mm thermal pads.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Vic it is cool that Zotac is at least responding to your requests.

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Vic it is cool that Zotac is at least responding to your requests.

Yep that's so true, wish they'd had some screws or knew the size I needed, but I think I have that narrowed down thanks to the net...

Of course those Koolance 0.7mm thermal pads are $4.99 at amazon, since I'll need 10 for 10 gpus, that's $59.73 w/shipping...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok after doing some more work and testing a GTX570 that is going to go into the Pegasus, I've concluded that I may need a different motherboard, I've changed everything else, drivers(275.33 to 326.19, currently I have 266.58 online, it's untested), cards, psus(multi rail to single rail), cuda42 to cuda32, added a card that's supposed to add more 12v current to the pci-e bus, I still get WU's going from 12 to 30 minutes becoming 1 hour or more cause the speed drops from 732/772MHz to 405MHz. So I'm looking at a motherboard that will feed more power to the pci-e bus natively, so far that's an Asus Rampage 3 Formula since I can get one for about $200 now and it looks to be in excellent shape, of course that means getting a different cpu too, that will be an i7 950 after a couple months and a Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme(bought at the same time as the cpu) to replace an aging and damaged Corsair H70 cooler, I discovered that one of the screw holes is stripped on the H70's radiator.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I have some good news, the 266.58 driver works fine, all last night the GTX570 while on 266.58 did not downclock from 732MHZ to 405MHz at all, not even once, of course I'll have to modify the 266.58 inf file to enable GTX590 support and I'm stuck with cuda32, but that's life... Tonight I'll be running the GTX570 and the GTX580 at the same time...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok I have more good news, after 2 days and using both gpus on 266.58 x64(Vista/Win7), I've had no downclocks at all on the GTX570 and especially not on the GTX580, not to mention NO danged computation errors(197,), though I think I do need a better motherboard, why?

With two video cards I'm seeing a bit of a limit as to what the cpu can do and have the cpu feed the gpus at the same time, so I'm looking at getting an EVGA X58 E760 motherboard, the cpu could be a XEON like a W3530 or some i7 9x0 cpu. I'd get another Asus Rampage III Extreme, but not unless I see one that's up for bid, as the buy it now versions are going for $279 right now and right now $279 isn't possible, not unless My bills or food or something else is maybe $24 lower and I doubt that will be happening.

Oh and I think I'll shift the warmer GTX580 to the Pegasus and leave the 570 here since the closed loop cooling that Zotac had made might run better with a cooler running 570 gpu, instead of a warmer 580 gpu.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok I've come to the conclusion that I will be replacing this P7P55D Pro motherboard with a Rampage 3 Extreme or a Rampage 3 Formula, since the R3E(Rampage 3 Extreme) and the R3F(Rampage 3 Formula) both have voltage inputs on the motherboard for the video cards.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Here's an update, this October 1st I'm getting a replacement motherboard for about $204.85, it's an EVGA X79 Classified, I made an arrangement with a seller, the Rampage motherboards are now just too expensive to buy for Me. The next thing to buy will be an i7 4820K cpu, then two EK blocks(cpu, chipset and mosfet) and then some 16-32GB 1866MHz G.Skill ram, I'll have to rma the motherboard to EVGA so that they can flash the bios to be Ivy Bridge-E compatible, but then I don't want to buy an i7 3820 cpu just to flash a bios with.

Oh and the current motherboard and cpu will remain here until I've got the system ready to use, after that they'll be retired...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I just found out the EVGA X79 Classified will eventually need to be flashed with a 3820 cpu(when the IVY Bridge-E Bios for their X79 motherboards are ready, since a blind flash on an X79 motherboard is from what I've read impossible and buying an extra cpu is a problem, as that's a good amount of money just for a bios flash, I'd rather buy just one cpu, a 4820K. EVGA suggested I borrow a 3820 cpu from someone, of course since I live in a back water, no such luck, I think the most advanced PC here is My X58(it's not ready yet, nor compatible), the next most PC is even worse and EVGA said no to an RMA for flashing the Bios.

Drat and double Drat...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

It's been announced today that the EVGA X79 Classified will have a new Bios that is IVY-E compatible in about a week, Thread: EVGA X79 SLI/FTW/Classified Motherboards - BIOS 047 Released.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I got the Bios chip installed as the 2.03 Bios arrived today in the mail in a padded envelope(the link I posted before now mentions the 2.04 bios which adds P/S2 support for a P/S2(pre usb) keyboard/mouse), dang that chip is tiny, made sure the dot was lined up with the corner that has the arrow and closed the hatch and yes that's very important, now I need to get a 4820K Ivy Bridge-E cpu... But then October 2014 is as soon as I think I can get one, as there are some things that take priority like food, a/c for the house, a waterblock kit for the motherboard, a Seti@Home 15th Anniversary T-Shirt in a 6XL size, 2-Koolance vid-nx480 waterblocks, 3-GTX570 cards(not the HD type, just the reference type, like the EVGA 1570 or 1572 cards which are reference cards), some oil for an oil change for My car, it's better than spending all that I get on food like crazy at least. Though for the upgrade to be complete I'll still need some 1/2"OD compression fittings(in black-sparkle), 10'-20' of 3/4"OD-1/2"ID black tubing, a 420x140x80mm radiator, some 140mm Viper fans, DEMCiflex air filters for the HAF-X case, a 5th GTX570 card, 4-Koollance ram cooling connector fittings(size TBD, for the inner 3 570 cards)), 4-Bitspower fittings(for the outer 2 570 cards), 16GB of G.Skill 1866 ram(IVY Bridge-E supports 1866MHz ram without overclocking), a Koolance mounting bracket for the radiator with a 140/120mm fan adapter, water wetter and distilled water, of course all the blocks will need to have distilled water put through them to get out any dye or machining waste that's in the blocks and probably in the radiators too, so I'll need a submersible water pump, tubing clamps and a water filter to filter out all the crud & junk(shavings) that may lurk inside, just to avoid pump failure. For the filtration I already have the clear tubing and fittings.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's