PC Cooling issue... Need input...

A quick status update for all;
  1. The Corsair H80i GT is installed and functioning as far as I can tell, as it's supposed to. I can do virtually anything, including high-graphics gaming without breaching 40c heat-wise. HOWEVER, crunching video -- regardless of the program chosen -- still hogs all four cores and hits 78c after a few minutes. I can only presume this is normal, because it's now done it with three different coolers and all four of my video compression programs.

  2. I installed two new 120mm Noctua PWM fans yesterday to both combat the noise and to help with the cooling as they're both 60% quieter than the AF120 fans they replace, and they produce more airflow.

  3. The replacement RAID array should arrive today. The NAS concept doesn't work for me speed-wise, so the new one is a DAS using either Thunderbolt, or USB 3.0 connections. Accordingly, I have begun to think about the concept of "Loki 2.0" (Loki being the name of my Godly Hackintosh)..
    1. Since I effectively broke the 20-pin connector and munged the pins on the current motherboard, I ordered a replacement to have on hand just in case this one gives up the ghost. I got the current MiniITX motherboard working for now and as long as I don't need to change cases or disassemble it again, I'm hoping it'll be fine...

      The new motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD7 TH (rev. 1.1) which is a full-size ATX with 2x Thunderbolt 2 connections (to support the new RAID at full speed)

      Being a full-sized ATX motherboard also gives it more PCI slots which would allow me to add a Firewire 800 card for my legacy RAID array. If I had thought about this BEFORE I decided to go mini ITX (what I have now), I could have saved myself a shitload of money for the replacement RAID box..

    2. If I decide to move forward, I am considering the Corsair Carbide Air 540 case for the airflow and the really neat concept of separating the motherboard/video card and power supply/drives into different areas for airflow, heat, and cable management.
The geek in me is just screaming to go ahead and buy a second CPU, video card, and SSD and just having two complete machines (in reality, those three parts are all that separates the upgrade from "new machine status")

Right now though, with the new fans in place, the water cooler in place, and the noise and temp issues handled, I'm just sitting and waiting to see what happens with the broken connector on the motherboard. If it continues to work, and if I'm ok with the speed of the new RAID, then I have a spare motherboard. If not, I'll be scuttling the ship and rebuilding it as Loki 2.0...

Wayne
 
Just got the USB 3.0 version of my RAID array installed (Thank you Drobo!)...

It's amazing how much happier I am with it at 125mbps rather than the 13 to 20mpbs I was getting out of the Gigabit Ethernet model that I'm shipping out Monday...
 
13-20MB/s? From a GbE connection? Even a single spindle is capable of delivering more than that, what's was in between your machine and NAS? My little home server that's running an entry level LSI RAID adapter with 2 x 7.2K SATA drives in RAID1 and a single GbE adapter gives me a sustained 100-125MB/s.
 
adz said:
what's was in between your machine and NAS?
Click to expand...
Originally, per the instructions, I had it plugged into the GbE Router which yielded 13mbps with spikes to 22mbps, but at their behest, plugged it straight in via CAT 6 (verified) cabling to the second Ethernet connection on my machine which yielded 19mbps with spikes to around 40mbps...

Neither of which I found acceptable.

There was also the farcical limitation of 16GB to the Drobo 5N (NAS version) which no one could explain. That meant that if I bought 5x 6tb drives in it, I'd still only get 16tb of usable space, which makes no sense for a 5-bay machine which is "compatible with the 6tb drives"...

As of this moment after letting the drive settle and build (after the restore completed), I'm getting much better results on a 5mb test.

DiskSpeedTest.png
 
Brand and model of said router?
 
I believe it's a netgear 6300, not that it matters at this point. The NAS model is being returned today.

Just for clarity's sake, I have no problem with network throughput with the current router. I've seen as high as 80mbps spikes when connecting to speed benchmarks and sites are darned quick. It MIGHT be a bad Drobo 5N (NAS model), or it could be as simple as a bad bunch of cables, but as I'm getting effectively double the speed of the old internal HD on the iMac, meaning I restored 10.7 tb in about 18 hours (rather than 4 days with the 5N), I'm ok with that.

Wayne
 
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