Alex has been a PC enthusiast, overclocker, and gamer from an incredibly young age. He has been overclocking literally anything he can get his hands on from CPUs to GPUs to even wireless routers. His latest rig features a heavily overclocked Intel Quad Core processor with two GeForce 8800 GTXs on an eVGA 680i SLI Motherboard, 4GB of RAM and 1TB of Seagate hard drives. The system is completely water-cooled like nothing you have ever seen before: the CPU, the entire motherboard (the Northbridge and Southbridge), both GPUs, and even two hard drives.

"I have water cooled just about every component that produces heat…" – Alexander Kramer

1) Tell us a little bit more about your cooling system.
I have been water-cooling my PCs for some time now. But for this build, I decided to take water-cooling to the max. I have water cooled just about every component that produces heat (except the memory and the capacitors on the motherboard, which even they have had extra cooling added to them) in the system. The cooling system consists mostly of Danger Den parts with several hard to find parts by EK as they were the only ones available. My CPU is cooled by a freshly lapped Danger Den TDX, which also cooled my previous Pentium D 840 Extreme Edition. The graphics cards are cooled by full face copper EK FC-8800GTX blocks with acrylic tops. I used a Danger Den 680i MCP block on the Northbridge, from which I received a lot of overclocking headroom since it ran much cooler. I added an EK NF4 1.1 cooling block for the Southbridge as this helps with general system stability as the Southbridge now runs cooler as well. I also have two Seagate hard drives in a RAID0 configuration water-cooled by the Danger Den Aqua Drive II, which further adds to system stability and longevity to the hard drives. All of the heat is dissipated by a Black Ice Extreme 120mm and a Hardware Labs Black Ice GTX 240 (double 120mm radiator). The radiators are then cooled by five Yate Loon 88CFM radiator fans in push-pull configuration, four on the GTX 240, one on the BIX I. The entire cooling system is driven by a large reference D5 pump. The NVIDIA 680i motherboard capacitors have also been cooled by added Enzotech BMR-C1 pure copper forged Ramsinks from Petra’s Tech Shop.

2) In your opinion what is the most important feature of a high-end customized enthusiast system?
I really think that the overall look and feel and presentation of your PC is just as important as a requirement for an enthusiast system as the parts inside it. This means tucking the cables very meticulously, using lighting and LED fans conservatively and in a careful arrangement, and overall having a classy look and feel to the PC. The entire PC should appear as an elegant package, rather than just some parts thrown together. If you are going to build an SLI rig, it sure as hell better look like one.

3) What games are you currently playing? Why?
I can’t even begin to list all the games that I play. I am playing the best titles out right now, and it feels awesome that I am able to play them on the maximum settings at huge beyond-HD resolutions, which is really something you can only truly experience with an SLI PC. Right now, I am playing Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Quake Wars Enemy Territory, Half Life 2, Lost Planet DX10, FEAR, Oblivion, Command & Conquer 3, and the list just goes on. I also play Counter-Strike: Source very often. Not only am I able to enjoy the best games at ridiculous resolutions and high AA/AF levels, but the high frame rates that I get really give me an upper hand in competitive games.

4) What game are you planning on buying in the next three months? Why?
Far Cry 2. I can’t wait to experience the realism and graphics that this game will offer, and there were many things I liked about the original Far Cry. Thankfully, I have a PC that will be able to handle this game very well, as I am expecting most PC’s to receive the same beating that Crysis gave them.

THE SPECS:

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