Cosmos 1000, it's full of stars!

deadfones · Post by **deadfones** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 2:25 pm

First off, happy birthday to me. I turned 27 on the first.

Here's my new rig, a decked out Cosmos 1000 feat. the usual suspects with some twists.

Hardware:

ASUS P6T Deluxe
i920
12gb Corsair 1333
2x ASUS 9600gt passive
4x WD10EADS
2x Intel X-25E in raid 0
Enermax modu 82+ 625
Zalman MFC1+
Noctua NH-U12P
Handful of Scythe SY1225SL12M

Mods:

Cut out most of the fan stamps with a clipper and put vinyl sealing around them.

Added a fan to the front of the hdd cage to blow on the video cards. I stood it off with a series of nuts, grommeted the top and bottom.

Cut wire holes in the mobo tray for video power, mobo power, psu fan monitoring. For the aux power, I de-pinned an extension cable and ran that behind the back bar, then ran the psu to that. The back of the Cosmos 1000 is a not perfect because a bar becomes flush with the back between the mobo and designated cable holes, so running cables behind and across it causes the back of the case not to close. It closes fine now.

Drilled a new hole in the Zalman MFC1+ for recessed mounting. Door wont close unless you recess it.

Used the included 7v resistors from the Notcua HSF for the the rear and top exhaust fans. The Zalman gives me 5v/~700rpm, but with the resitors it's a little quieter. These fans start with the resistors and with the Zalman all the way down! I have them set to just before they turn red, which is less than 5v with the resistors.

Gasketed the back exhaust and bottom intake. I was trying to isolate a vibration issue, but it turns out that was coming from the Comsos' included bottom plastic fan bracket. I recommend tossing that and screwing the fan directly into the bottom of the case.

I mounted the SSDs with this bracket, buy. There aren't many mounting options for 2.5" in the Cosmos because the hdd cage uses bottom mounts. This is one of the few brackets that has them. I ended up needing to space the drives off the bracket with some gommets and extened screws (M3 IIRC), because the included IDE adapter (which I removed) is mounted on raised metal.

Software mods:

I've been keeping track of the software mods I've done that pertain to having 12gb of ram and a crazy fast, but small c:.

disable scheduled defrag of c:
disabled hibernate
set volume shadow copy space to 4gb
set pagefile to 900mb
enable write cache in intel storage matrix (make rocket go now). This doubled transfers in HD Tune from ~250-300 mb/sec to 500mb+/sec, read and write.
browser.cache.memory.capacity to 250000 (undid, firefox sluggish after awhile?)
symbolic link google earth cache to o: (a tb drive)
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 20
fdm hdd write cache to 800mb

I have 19gb free on my c: now with most of my stuff intalled. VS2008 and CS4 each took about 8 minutes to install!

The system is very fast, quiet, reliable, and never slows down because it never pages. I'm very happy with it. Running Vista 64. It's my main rig and I use it for programming and basically 5/8 of my life.

idle temps, 70f ambient:
gpu: 54c
gpu: 55c
system: 48c
cpu: 39c
hdd: 37c
hdd: 42c
hdd: 37c
hdd: 35c

I got the fans, cables, hsf from http://www.jab-tech.com/ . Highly recommended. Fast shipping and they sent me free stuff with my orders! A tin of chocolate penguin mints and a small led flashlight. Newegg wanted way too much for shipping for the accessories.

Pics:

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 2:34 pm

"Playmobile!"

Holeee rig batman! Nice x four.

Any worries about cat hair getting in that beaut!

deadfones · Post by **deadfones** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 2:38 pm

xan_user wrote:"Playmobile!"

Holeee rig batman! Nice x four.

Any worries about cat hair getting in that beaut!

Playmobil link. It's cheaper elsewhere.

Hair's not a problem but he likes to stick his paw in the back exhaust. I'd rather not put a grill on it, but that's what I did with my last case.

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 4:14 pm

Wow. Nice. N64 controller?

deadfones · Post by **deadfones** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 4:28 pm

psiu wrote:Wow. Nice. N64 controller?

Yep, using this with Goldeneye and Project64. Looks great at 1280x960 windowed. The best n64 adapter is called Adaptoid. It has memory card support but it's no longer sold. So I just used cheats to get all the 007 cheats (all weapons, infinite ammo, turbo mode is how I roll, no radar in mulitplayer).

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 4:41 pm

ooohhh RUSH 2 @ 1280x960!!!!

Awesome fun!

deadfones · Post by **deadfones** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:31 pm

xan_user wrote:ooohhh RUSH 2 @ 1280x960!!!!

Awesome fun!

Cool game, thanks

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:00 pm

Sweet!

BTW happy birthday!

I am going to have to get that set up..how hard are the roms to find?

So many memories...it took forever to find all the keys and mountain dew cans...

Still cant forget how stoked i was when I found the hidden trick track in rush 1.

I want RUSH on the wii!!!

deadfones · Post by **deadfones** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:45 pm

xan_user wrote:Sweet!

BTW happy birthday!

I am going to have to get that set up..how hard are the roms to find?

So many memories...it took forever to find all the keys and mountain dew cans...

Still cant forget how stoked i was when I found the hidden trick track in rush 1.

I want RUSH on the wii!!!

Thanks

. Not that hard to find. You basically google n64 rush rom.

godbreath · Post by **godbreath** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 3:53 pm

wow nice

4x 2408wfp's
and a hd650 with blue cardas cables connected to some amp

i only got a 1 2408wfp and a hd650 on a little dot v

Redzo · Post by **Redzo** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:18 pm

Great setup. Nice job too

Happy birthday.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 2:06 pm

Sweet monitor set up and very nice build! Its clear that cat wasn't intrest of being photographed... ^^

deadfones · Post by **deadfones** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 9:05 am

Thanks for the kind words.

The cat's not shy--he's actually a total slut.

Something I didn't mention but that you can see from the rear pic is that I mounted the gasketed fans with zip ties. I got some rubber mounts for them but they didn't have enough clearance once the gasket was in place. So I just used some zip ties, going through the back holes only. It worked well.

The front-top exhaust fan isn't connected right now. I didn't notice a temp change when I hooked it up. The rear-top has a positive effect though.

The Zalman LEDs also match the Cosmos', if you ever have the door open. It's a nice door too. It'd rather swing open than shut like my p180/2 door would, so no fear of my burner tray hitting it during auto eject.

frenchie · Post by **frenchie** » Sat Feb 28, 2009 12:53 am

Nice setup !!!

good job.

mzx · Post by **mzx** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 1:10 pm

deadfones - Thanks for sharing this detailed post. I had been languishing for a long time to find a sharp, classy, non-teenager case and the cosmos had slipped my sights (since I wasn't anticipating getting a full size tower). The detailed photos really sealed the deal and I put together something very similar but with the p55 chipset. A month later I am extremely satisfied with the build quality and noise level and really couldn't be happier with my setup.

How did you go about cutting the additional holes in the case for cable management?

Do you like using the Zalman fan control more than software like speedfan?

Thanks again

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 4:09 pm

I dig your cable managment mods. Even though the cosmos is a little too big for me I always liked its cooling setup. That`s an excellent system overall, great pics too.

Cosmos 1000, it's full of stars!

Cosmos 1000, it's full of stars!

Thanks for the detailed post