baron_von_bootsector

Ouch that is a long time to be waiting on a card for! How are you finding the 3080? I ordered a 6800XT from PCCG on release day (19/11/2020) literally checked out 21 seconds after it hit the web site at 1am for $1049 - I think it arrived about 3 weeks later just before the CyberPunk launch. I pulled the same stunt when purchasing a 5950X and it seems as long as you are on it at the very second of launch you stand a good chance of actually getting one at MSRP. Glad to hear the PCCG are still living up to their good reputation and filling orders at the agreed sale price rather than cancelling and price gouging on the cards.

Even the prebuilds are getting to crazy prices, honestly you are better off looking at a gaming laptop these days if price and availability is your main concern. They have not seen anywhere near the same price gouging for mid range GPU equipped models as we have seen on the desktop. $2700 will score you a nice Ryzen 7 laptop with decent storage, an RTX 3070 and a 240hz display. Sure it sacrifices the upgradability of the desktop but given the pricing today its cheaper as just that GPU will cost you a significant chunk of that entire laptop if you need to buy now.

If you want to see a real joke - have a look at what people are paying for used 1080ti's / Titan XP's on eBay at the moment. Some of those Titans are actually selling for more than their original street price with 1080ti's going for around the $750 to $800 mark - insane for a 4+ year old GPU that retailed for just over a grand. Even "used" (aka flogged to death ex-mining) RX580's that could be bought used 18 months ago for well under $175 are now selling in the $400 range. If you are in need of a chuckle about the whole situation, I think this guy takes the cake in terms of optimistic pricing for a used GPU: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/203394909147

Nothing wrong with that setup - a higher-mid range quad core CPU like yours is currently the best choice for most games at the moment and the GTX970 is just about perfect for 1080P gaming on most titles even brand new ones. You should get plenty of use out it before you need to throw anything at it and even then the only thing you'd likely need is a bigger GPU in a year or two.

Nice! What did you end up buying / building?

Yep there are still a few of here alive and mostly unaffected by the zombie like plague that infests Canberra during parliamentary sitting times

Its a pretty decent cooler regardless of the price and I don't think you'd really get a much better result going up in the AIO or even from a custom loop really in that kind of space! I am really hoping that we all get a big surprise from team red with the Vega release but even if it is the (rumored) significantly improved mining capabilities of the cards will likely make them impossible to get post launch. Would be nice to see Nvidia have to cut prices back down again but its a looking like an increasingly slim chance of AMD pulling it off. I ended up using two Nepton 140XL's in mine as they were bargains at the time and due the 130W-150W Xeons throw out serious heat when pushed. Going for something like the x299 or Threadripper in a compact case would be nice but I need ECC (well TR can do so - thanks for neutering your HEDT gear Intel!) and I am a cheapskate... My existing build is based off broken blade hardware so the 2xE5-2667v2 and the 256GB (16x16GB modules) of registered ECC cost less than $700 all up and an extra $200 for a new (ex service stock) Lenovo D30 motherboard. I used to run SLI but gave up as the scaling / perf increase seems to be completely negligible for the $$$ in most titles these days - so have Nvidia / AMD by the look of their recent moves away from it. Async compute might make multi GPU relevant again but it has unfortunately SLI / CF seem to have been relegated mainly to the spec queen arena.

You might get lucky and Nvidia could launch Volta early (late this year) if Vega actually delivers decent performance - given the vastly conflicting benchmark info leaking out it seems that there is a slim chance that AMD is significantly sandbagging performance on their frontier edition cards. Its a decent amount of power you have crammed into that case and it seems to keep temps under control. I wish I could get mine down that small but work means I need huge quantities of ram (256GB) for VM lab environments so I am stuck with a massive case in order to fit a workstation board in it I am trying to build an ATX board based "luggable" in a briefcase at the moment that has decent performance for taking to site - its mostly completed but am still waiting to be able to order a compact (~170mm) GPU in the 1070ish class that's not dramatically overpriced thanks to eth miners...

Damn that looks really tight! How are the GPU temps on the 1080?

Depends on what you mean by "beef up" if by that you are going to throw a decent set of rods and pistons at it and some head work then the sky (or more likely your wallet / fuel system) is the limit. If you are only planning on the gasket and bolts then you will be limited in what you can throw into it safely and that will also be dependent on your combustible of choice (98 or E85). The goal that you have *should* be reachable with a stock bottom end in good condition and reliably so if you are careful with the tune. On the bright side keeping your normal DE compression and slightly lower boost might be a good idea to make it as usable as possible - most factory turbo cars these days are shipping with >=10:1 compression for the simple reason that they are trying to make best use of small turbos and create the illusion of a larger motor rather than the laggy huge boot in the pants 1980's turbo experience.

^^^^This The Coppermix twin is an amazing clutch and most people that drive mine swear its a factory clutch from the feel / ease of use.

Relocating the straightener to after the AFM's (as far as practical) as this should make it harder for disturbances downstream to reach back to the sensor - from the sound of it the increased velocity of the air at the reducer has solved the problem for you though.

They might function in the same manner as long as you have the exact same pipe diameter and placement in terms of airflow over the sensor. If you are having issues with reverb / air disturbance back to the sensor I might suggest that a flow corrector (something like a laminar flow insert) after the AFM's would help combat the issue. These are often used in lab / industrial equipment and look like either a grid of plastic or a bundle of straws in the pipe that that straightens out the flow and makes disturbances harder to achieve but comes at the cost of a small amount of flow restriction. The other (recommended) option would be ditching the AFM's and going for a MAP based modern ECU - its a more expensive but opens the door to doing a lot more with the car in the future and removes all of the intake mess from the AFM's. The PFC was a great solution for milder mods back in the heyday of these cars but quickly falls flat trying to cope when you are pushing more serious mods. A huge variety of these can be had surprisingly cheap particularly second hand if you are willing to hunt through eBay / SAU. There are hundreds of threads on here talking about the different ECU options available and the pro/cons of them.

The Coppermix Twin Comp model in my 3.4 with over 450KW and loads of torque is holding nicely in a heavy arsed wagon for the last 12+ months with zero indications of wear.

It looks like either a H1 or a H3 type (can't tell in the photo easily but I would lean towards H1) but by the look of it the bulb might not be the only issue (HID's tend to crack / go cloudy around the arc chamber when blown) so you might find that the ballast (transformer that the bulb connects to) could be having issues instead. Either way you wont be too far out of pocket if you decide to order a replacement kit off fleabay as they are cheap and come with bulbs and ballasts.

Might be a little late to the party but I have had issues with several innovate kits and reliability of the Bosch sensors in particular. I was pointed in the direction of the AFX / AFR500v2 devices that use an NTK sensor as these seem to stand up to (non OEM) abuse better than the Bosch LSU series but do carry a bit of a premium compared to the Bosch units. The AFR500v2 I have has been a great unit so far and has not required the same attention / recalibration / replacement that the two innovates I have had previously on the car did. The unit can use different varieties of NTK sensors or an LSU 4.9 sensor depending on what you desire but the manufacturer seems to recommend the NTK units for their durability & accuracy.

Link are not bad and there are plenty of other options on the market that are just as easy - Adaptronic and Haltec would be others to look into but really it comes down to who is tuning it and what they are comfortable with. Even having a top of the range Autronic / Motec unit will get poor results if your chosen tuner is not at home on them. Ditching the AFM's (put in gutted VL units if stock appearance is important) is something that could be worthwhile in the long run depending on your targets and future goals. Replacing the injectors may end up being worth the cash as I have seen a decent set of ID's or similar make a very drivable car out of previous pig(s) so it can be worth the $$ to replace them. All up it comes down to how much you want to spend and how much power you are aiming to make.

Oops - it seems you may require a modified DeLorean to get a policy from Just Car Insurance!

I would likely stick to 98 if you are planning on keeping those injectors but injectors are relatively cheap to replace and will hold back your setup depending on how hard you plan to push your setup. E85 will help you make more power if you are hitting a wall in terms of detonation but will require ~30% more injector at the same power level compared to 98. No idea what kind of power you should be aiming for as it depends entirely on how much boost / revs you (and your tuner) are wiling to subject the refreshed bottom end to but 300KW+ seems to be an easily achievable number on a stock bottom end for a 25.

Shannon's will normally offer comprehensive cover as lots of guys here (inc me) are covered by them. Would be strange circumstances for them to decline a comprehensive policy request but on depends on your age and history. Try "Just Car Insurance" as they normally offer cover for younger drivers with imports but will charge for it.

Yep thats what I was getting at, check the output of the sensor while its on the road to confirm the Greddy is not the issue. A few feet of wire and some alligator clips and you are set.

So your readings are coming from the Infometer? You said that you checked the sensor using water before - could be worthwhile checking the resistance output of the sensor using a multimeter hooked up during running to confirm that its not the Greddy being a bit optimistic. Are you using a stock ECU?

Definitely had similar issues with the old SCSI drives in V240's when we had to move them but if you left them running they were bulletproof apart from the tiny twin 20mm fans on the heatsink. We had it down to the point where we could slide the box out on the rails, pop the lid and do a replacement of the busted fan while the box was live as they were so easy to work on. Had hands down the best system ever in those machines if you ever had to replace / migrate them - all of the system ID info, MAC's, ALOM settings etc were all kept on a little smartcard in the front of the machine, just plug the replacement chassis in, swap the drives over into the same bays, swap the smartcard and power on

If it was running ZFS as the filesystem you probably didn't miss a byte while it was like that too. Everyone who has significant experience with their gear from that era looks back on it fondly due to stuff like this. My home theatre PC is a huge grey and purple SunFire V880 - its was gutted before I got it and now hosts an Intel board and a bar fridge but still looks awesome.

That old Sun gear was pretty much unkillable - I have seen a few V240's with similar uptimes but they were not still hosting mission critical services I miss that kind of gear and the awesome service you got before Oracle bought the company.