Here's the beast in all its togetherness. Our sister publication AtomicMCP built its very own PC worth about $13,500. Notable features (aside from the huge case) are two processors, four graphics cards, ten RAM sticks, two SSDs, two Velociraptors, and two PSUs. Here's a sneak peek.
Case exhaust is provided by four excellent Noctua NF-S12B fans. There was a serious volume of air movement!
A glow was provided by four Antec Tricool fans, naturally glowing red.
Heatsinkery was provided by Noctua, keeping our Intel Xeon X5670 hexa-core chips stable - even when at 4.3GHz.
The EVGA SR2 motherboard we used in the build was so fresh out of the factory that it didn't come with an I/O plate. Ah well!
Due to the immense power draw of four graphics cards through the motherboard (75W per card, totalling 300W) we had to snake a PCIe connector underneath the four cards for stability. Very tricky to manage with only two hands - thanks to iamthemaxx who helped out at Unlocked.
The Antec power supplies split the graphics load; the primary powering the top ASUS GTX480 card, while the secondary one powered the three EVGA cards. We strapped a fifth Noctua fan to the PCIe cables to provide some airflow for those toasty cards!
The primary power supply, sitting neatly at the bottom of the Lian Li case in its own little chamber.
Two Western Digital Velociraptors, each running 600GB of storage at 10,000RPM.
The secondary psu was located where the hdd cage would otherwise sit, and blocks the front 140mm fans. Power was threaded through the case, exiting near the primary psu.
Cabling with all this tech and two power supply's worth of cables was tricky, even in such a large case.
That said, it does look impressive to have eight slots taken up by graphics cards!
A shot of the exhaust, and the external USB3.0 extension cable. Most case manufacturers are taking this route until an internal header standard is ratified.
That is such a pretty looking power supply. Seriously. And aluminium casters just add to the awesomeness - though they're actually needed to move the system around (relatively) easily!
A shot of my cabling job behind the mobo tray, showing just how much is going on. To its credit most of the tech fit - though Lian Li didn't include an 8-pin ATX power extension cable which we had to pinch from another case.
A molex daisy-chain, powering eight of the case fans (front three, top three, rear one, graphics one). The four tricools were powered via 3-pin mobo headers.
A shot of our ninja cable-tying, holding the secondary psu in place through one of the hdd cage mounts.
The cables almost look orderly...kinda. Not really. But the sidepanel does fit back on with it all here!
It was finally time to start pulling the beast apart, and the most logical step was to get those graphics cards outta there. Here's a look at how we ran that PCIe mobo cable.
SATA cables were next once graphics came out. Though they're vertical there is enough room on the motherboard that they don't interfere with graphics cards - no matter how long.
The twin OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs, mounted neatly atop the primary psu chamber. A slide and a pull was all that was needed to remove them.
SSDs, all gone. They did cable up quite neatly though.
The extended 8-pin ATX cable was tricky to get installed with all those fans and heatsinks in the way! It came out with some expert fingerbatics.
A quick snip of that cable tie holding the secondary PSU in and it came out without significant compaint, creating a huge void.
Front panel headers were unplugged next. Annoyingly the Lian Li power LED was a three-pin socket, while the header was the standard two-pin. Nothing scissors couldn't fix, but irritating nonetheless.
Fans were removed from the top of the case, and we grabbed our fan grilles back - Lian Li didn't include any.
Unscrewing the thumbscrews and unplugging all the power cables meant the SR2 could be pulled out of the case by the heatsinks.
Once on the bench I had to get a pair of pliers to pull those fan clips off due to incredibly close quarters.
A handful of speedy Corsair Dominator GT came out to give unrestricted access to the fan.
FANS ALL GONE. The beast's lifeforce is very slowly ebbing away.
With the Noctuas out of the way we can see the two Intel Xeon X5670 processors still coated in a thin, even coating of Noctua NH-1 thermal gunk.
A recent Labs cleanup meant I'd lost the Noctua tool to remove the heatsinks, so I made my own.
Here they are again, posing for the camera atop the SR2's chipset cooler. Aww.
And here they are again, this time cleaned of their goop.
We grabbed the socket covers and clipped them in place, with the beast now completely taken apart.
We packed it into an electrostatic bag, then into a bubble-wrap cocoon.
And finally, the SR2 went into a box full of foam and bubbles. It'll be returned along with all the memory, power supplies, storage, processors, to their respective owners. RIP beast :(
Here's the beast in all its togetherness. Our sister publication AtomicMCP built its very own PC worth about $13,500. Notable features (aside from the huge case) are two processors, four graphics cards, ten RAM sticks, two SSDs, two Velociraptors, and two PSUs. Here's a sneak peek.