The forgotten supercar of PCs: rescuing an extreme 2011 build
Core i7 Extreme, dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990, 24 GB of RAM, a 1500W power supply and water cooling for almost everything. After fifteen years, I got my hands on a system that in its day represented almost the absolute pinnacle of what could be built.
Sometimes you come across an old computer worth saving. And then there are computers where, as you gradually remove each component, every new discovery makes you think: “This can’t be real.”
This is exactly one of those cases.
At first glance it is an older, incomplete computer marked by years of use. Unfortunately, the original case is no longer in a condition worth saving, the water loop is incomplete and some of its parts will require fairly extensive restoration.
But underneath all that is a system that someone around 2010–2011 was clearly building with one goal:
Use the best that money could buy.
The first clue: ASUS Rampage III Extreme
The first component that immediately caught my attention was the ASUS Rampage III Extreme.
And that alone says a lot.
With its Intel X58 chipset and LGA1366 socket, the Rampage III Extreme was at the absolute top of the platform in 2010. It wasn’t designed as an ordinary motherboard, but as a tool for enthusiasts and extreme overclocking.
It offered four PCI Express x16 slots, physical switches for individual PCIe lanes, ProbeIt measurement points, ROG Connect, a massive power-delivery section and a host of features an ordinary user would never need.
The motherboard alone cost several hundred dollars at the time.
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition: six cores for $999
The next surprise appeared after removing the CPU water block.
The heatspreader revealed the inscription:
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition.
At this point it became clear that this wasn’t just an ordinary high-performance computer.
The Core i7-980X, also known by the codename Gulftown, arrived in 2010. It was Intel’s absolute desktop high end at the time: 6 cores, 12 threads, 3.33 GHz, Turbo up to 3.6 GHz, 12 MB L3 cache and an unlocked multiplier.
And the price?
$999.
So the processor alone cost a thousand dollars.
XFX Radeon HD 6990: two GPUs on one card
If the processor was extreme, the graphics card certainly wasn’t far behind.
Under the full-cover water block sits an XFX Radeon HD 6990 4 GB.
The Radeon HD 6990 is one of those graphics cards that perfectly characterises its era. AMD placed two Cayman GPUs on one enormous PCB, for a total of 3,072 stream processors and 4 GB of GDDR5 memory.
The base GPU clock was 830 MHz and maximum board power was around an incredible 375 watts.
When launched in 2011, AMD presented it as the world’s fastest graphics card and the recommended price was $699.
The processor and graphics card alone therefore represented almost $1,700 worth of hardware.
24 GB of DDR3. In 2010.
The Rampage III Extreme has six memory slots.
And, who would have guessed it… every single one is occupied 🙂
After dismantling the cooling system, I found six double-sided 4GB DDR3 modules using Hynix memory chips. Total capacity is therefore:
6 × 4 GB = 24 GB DDR3!!!
The LGA1366 platform used a triple-channel memory controller, so six modules provide two DIMMs for each of the three memory channels.
Today, 24 GB of RAM doesn’t look extravagant. In 2010, however, that amount was completely outside the norm for a gaming PC.
The original builder apparently also decided that simply installing six memory modules wasn’t enough.
They needed to be water-cooled :-D.
A water-cooled motherboard. And even the RAM
And this is where the computer starts to become truly exceptional.
This isn’t a system where someone simply connected the CPU to a water-cooling loop.
The water loop extended through practically the entire system.
The motherboard carries a period EK Water Blocks unit designed specifically for the ASUS Rampage III Extreme. It cools important parts of the chipset and the motherboard’s power-delivery circuitry.
There is also a separate CPU water block, a full-cover graphics-card block and even a shared water block for all six memory modules.
From today’s perspective, water-cooling DDR3 is of course somewhat absurd. But that’s exactly why I like this system so much. It wasn’t built around the question:
“What do I actually need?”
But rather:
“What else can we water-cool?”
1500 watts. Because why not.
After all that, the power supply designation probably shouldn’t have surprised me:
SilverStone SST-ST1500. Yes. 1500 W 🙂
At a time when ordinary computers used substantially lower-powered PSUs, the 1500W SilverStone was intended for truly extreme systems with several powerful graphics cards and heavy overclocking.
Alongside a Radeon HD 6990 drawing around 375 W, a six-core Extreme Edition processor, an overclocking motherboard, a water-loop pump and the rest of the hardware, such a PSU begins to make sense.
At least a little.
And all of it lived in a Lian Li
The original case was a Lian Li PC-A77F.
Another component where no expense was spared.
The PC-A77F was an enormous premium all-aluminium full tower. Exactly the type of case used at the time for extreme systems with extensive water cooling, multiple graphics cards and lots of drives.
Unfortunately, the case is one of the parts that cannot be saved. It is incomplete and its condition is no longer good enough to make restoration worthwhile.
But that also raises one of the central questions of the whole restoration:
How can I rebuild this system without turning it into a modern computer?
So what exactly am I saving?
The configuration identified so far is:
- ASUS Rampage III Extreme
- Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition – 6 cores / 12 threads
- XFX Radeon HD 6990 4 GB – dual-GPU
- 24 GB DDR3 – 6 × 4 GB in triple-channel
- SilverStone SST-ST1500 – 1500 W
- Lian Li PC-A77F
- extensive custom EK water cooling covering the CPU, motherboard, graphics card and even all six memory modules
And that is perhaps the most interesting thing about the whole machine.
These aren’t simply several expensive old components that happened to end up in the same case.
Everything fits together.
An extreme motherboard. An Extreme Edition processor. A flagship dual-GPU graphics card. An absurd 24 GB of RAM for its time. A 1500W PSU. A premium aluminium full tower. And water cooling extending all the way to the RAM.
This was the computer of someone who, around 2011, apparently wasn’t too concerned about price/performance.
They wanted the extreme.
And that is exactly why I think this computer deserves to be rebuilt after fifteen years.
Next time: water-cooling archaeology
The first inspection also showed that this restoration definitely won’t be just a matter of connecting a few hoses and pouring in fresh coolant.
The Radeon HD 6990 water block shows clear signs of long-term use. Deposits are visible inside, some metal parts need thorough inspection and the surface on the rear part of the block is in very poor condition in places.
The original fittings are tarnished, the seals are around fifteen years old and the water loop itself is incomplete.
Two hoses ran out of and back into the original case, so at least part of the system was probably located outside the computer itself.
In the next part I will therefore completely dismantle the water blocks, inspect the seals, clean the microchannels, assess the nickel-plated surfaces and try to save the Radeon HD 6990 full-cover block.
Only after opening it will I find out whether I have something that merely needs a thorough cleaning…
…or a little water-cooling archaeology.