I upgraded from an Asus P8 Z77 V-Premium that was almost 8 years 0ld. - She'd seen many Graphics card Combos over those years such as three Way SLI GTX 670 Ti's, Dual SLI GTX 780 Ti's & finally dual SLI 1080 Ti's. Those 1080 Ti cards in SLI were absolute Monsters on Z77
System is as follows....
Tower Case: Modified Temjin TJ11
Motherboard: - Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme
Intel i9 12900K 16Core/24 thread running @ 5.4Ghz PCore & 4.1Ghz ECore
Ram: Corsair DDR5 5600Hz Running @ 6000Hz
Graphics: Asus ROG Strix RTX3080 Ti
Keyboard: Corsair K100 Mechanical
Storage: 2 x 2TB WD Black PCIe4 NVMe's; 2 x 1TB WD Black PCIe4 NVMe's; 2 x 1TB Samsung EVO's; 2 x 500GB Samsung EVO's in RAID0.
So it all started Back in December 2021 & I allowed myself to be fleeced by Overc0ckers.co.uk over 600 bucks for 32GB Dual Channel DDR5 ram.
DDR5 was like hens teeth at the time so ended up paying three times what it costs now. The Motherboard blew me for £940 & the CPU was a stiff £650 event. - So many sexual sounding events.... But was there any pleasure?
Delivery #1 late December 2021 after Xmas :
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Board Assembly:
Assembly01.jpg
Assembly02.jpg
Et voila.... One 0ld Z77 set up running two Zotac 1080 Ti's in SLI....
Z77 SLI.jpg
to this....
Z690 SLI.jpg
It had to be that particular motherboard for my dual Zotac GTX 1080 TI's in SLI. It was the only Z690 Board to give me the three Slot Spacing for a £60 HB SLI bridge I already owned. This also offered better & bigger spacing for the two cards vertically over the dual internal case fans & as the 1080 Ti's were air cooled, they stayed really cool for this set up.
The performance from those 1080 Ti's in SLI was absolutely phenomenal. The problem was, they were absolutely flat out on Z690 chipset. They completely flat lined on FPS in things like 3DMark.
The caveat with this Z690 board was if I put a PCIe 5 capable NVMe into said slot, (Under the OLED Heatsink above PCIe 1) the 2nd 16x PCIe slot would be disabled on the motherboard!
Another BF meaning upgrade the Gfx card. - SLI was dying.....
Only supported fully on RTX 20 series & then on on RTX 3090 Series. RTX 4090 does have SLI implemented on the PCB design, but no manufacturer actually produced one. - I'm sure Mr. nVidia has a few prototypes kicking around.
Anyway, back in September 2022, I bought a bargain RTX 3080 Ti brand new for £850 (retailed for £1299.99 @ Overc0ckers)
RTX3080Ti-01.jpg
& then decided to Water Cool everything because I had to remove one of the TJ11's internal Fans for the 3080 Ti to fit on Air.
IMG_20221013_143222874_HDR.jpg RTX3080Ti-02.jpg
Looking for a Water Block for the Strix 3080 Ti was an event beyond itself & led to a couple of catastrophic f'k up's along the way....
F'k One was having to remodel the first concept into concept #2 becuase if I wanted the latest water block from EK to cool both sides of the 3080 Ti, I would have to loose the OLED Heatsink that covers the only PCIe 5 slot on the Mobo.
So, hearing about the Heat on the backside of the RTX 3080/90 cards, |I was a tad miffed getting fux0rd for a £940 mobo event,
ROG Strix 3080 Ti comes with a switch on the side of it's PCB for an 1845Mhz Over Clock.... Pfffft my Ass it will do it on Air....
So after trawling the Web for a suitable Water block for this card, I found an EK Vector Strix block in a British Heart Foundation Shop on eBay for £70 delivered & unused. Overc0ckers were not having £160 for one with the Vector Strix2 @ nearly £200. - With the cash saved, I spent another £30 (was £70) with EK water blocks for a Flow indicator. This was fantastic in two ways. It gives the user a visual water flow indication & aligned the Distro Plates for the water circuit into the Graphics card in the best possible way
RTX3080Ti-03.jpg
Water Cooled with only the GPU cooled om the Vector Strix water block & an Aluminium Heat Sink on the Ram side of the card. - 3090 & Ti's have 24GB Ram on both sides of the card. The Strix 3080 Ti has heat around the GPU Side... not the back side.
Bar the shouting, nearly 2.3Ghz on the GPU! - Thats a 500Mhz Overclock on the GPU for water cooling....
These modern cards will throttle themselves for the heat they're suffering. Cool with water & the numbers climb drastically. This Valley Benchmark is after the completed build.
RTX3080Ti-04.jpg
Distro plates......
Distro Plates.jpg
If I used Phantek's 240 Plate.... Linky Poo ....
.... it would have halved the water-flow rate by splitting it in two. - Single Loop block Systems have a higher flow rate than split ones because of "Back Pressure".
Split flow rates will give less kick back pressure on the pump, but the depletion in pressure via two circuits doesn't get rid of the heat per "Water Cooled Component* as a continuous push on a single loop.
The caveat to this principle is to make sure each component cooled gets a Radiator after it in the Water Loop. - Hence two single D120 Distro Plates. - Please remember..... this is making/shoe horning/bastardising/fitting/engineering components you don't have before you buy it....
So I Printed two life size ones to work it all out....
Distro Plates Print.jpg
There are some Fundamental Graphical Curves here that I'd really not want to go into as an HND Mech/Elec Engineer. It's bloody Daunting....
More to follow guys.... BarbeQue was done Sat night.... School tomorrow.
Here was the first run for the build.....
FirstRun-01.jpg FirstRun-03.jpg
FirstRun-04.jpg FirstRun-05.jpg
FirstRun-06.jpg FirstRun-07.jpg
FirstRun-08.jpg FirstRun-10.jpg
See Post #8 for more....
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- Not impressed UPS!!