Project: Irate

[brandonwh64]

nice progress so far!!! cant wait to see whats next

[1Kurgan1]

Originally Posted by brandonwh64

nice progress so far!!! cant wait to see whats next

I been sleeping lately, but modding is still going on as far as hardware. Got a 28" Monitor, PII 955 BE just showed up, and 2x 5850's should be here soon. Hopefully will have time to sand and paint some more soon.

[1Kurgan1]

Well after 2 years of the case sitting, I have finally returned to it. It was initially to house my WC setup, but since I never finished that I just never finished the case. Well I finally got around to finishing that WC setup, so I figured it deserves a good home. ( Insert gratuitous WC pictures)









So I dug the case out from it's resting place (under my basement stairs) to look at what I had. After sitting for that long, it had got chips in the primer I had done and in the factory paint (the sad part as I didn't want to repaint the whole case). Also after 2 years of mopping the house (which included the stairs) some water had collected on the case a few times. Not a lot and thankfully not on metal, only on the parts I had primed, so no rust, but the primer was now junk, covered in grime and scratched. It was time to completely strip down the stuff I had done and start over. So I sanded down the entire case and re-primed it all with 3 coats. Then I sanded it down again, only finer this time and primed it with 3 more coats. Then I went really fine on the sanding and hit it with paint. I've painted a few cases and none have turned out this well. Some looked great unless you looked for imperfections, some chipped easily, or some looked good only from certain angles. This just looked great, I feathered down the exterior scratches in the factory paint and resprayed those spots, then asked the fiancee if she could spot where I had repaired (as the ultimate test), and she couldn't. I'm extatic, it looks as if the case came this way.




I got a few more finishing touches to do (cut some holes for rads), then it's basically done and I will start putting the hardware in it (hopefully next week). The only thing I have to figure is what to do with HDDs. I'm thinking of just building an external rack from the original HDD cage (notice it's not in the pictures). That way swapping of drives between comps will be easy and it cleans up the inside of the case.

Long term plans are to replace the CM Window Side Panel (that I got from the CM store) acrylic with smoked acrylic. And then to cut out HAF from the side panel and put acrylic behind that and light it up. But those are long term, and I probably won't bother with those till next year.

[Cold Storm]

Man, I was thinking about this build not to long ago.. going threw stuff and seeing I had one of the two brackets from MM for the hdd..

keep it up man!

[1Kurgan1]

A few more presents have shown up, I went ab it crazy and decided to indulge myself and got these


Also my HAF sidepanel showed up, got to paint that, probably try and get this all into the case next Monday I think.

Originally Posted by Cold Storm

Man, I was thinking about this build not to long ago.. going threw stuff and seeing I had one of the two brackets from MM for the hdd..

keep it up man!

Yeah I still got those in my mind, I don't think I'm going to end up going that route, but it's still possible. I like the idea of an external HDD rack a bit better though. But that is one of the reasons I revived this old thread rather than make a new one, because a few great suggestions by MK.

[theoneandonlymrk]

Heh , nice build , i got something similar as my main rig, different case but some similar kit, i went with acrylic clear Ek blocks, but either way they're good , my cards have been folding all,, well ever lol, but lately at a newly CC inspired 1025 and never go over 51 core 61 vrms

i went mad with rads thoguh ,my Kandalf case has a 320(poor one) in the swinging door but ive added a reasonable 240(front) and 120(rear), but lately ive been thinking what about a massive rad External with low spd fans, just sharein a thought and thats a green smile cos of that lovely Gfx card you have

[1Kurgan1]

Eventually I plan more rad in this, I kinda wish I could go thicker on that rads, but such is the limit of a internal dual loop on a mid-tower. But for now the 320 on the cpu and the 240 on the gpu's seems to do great (max I ever see on the cards is 33c). In the future I might put a 180 by the front case fan and maybe a 120 on the back case fan, doubt I'll ever need that many rads, but why not if I can, have 4 rads internal on a mid tower will be pretty funny (but things going to be heavy).

[1Kurgan1]

And the case is done for this year!

I installed the top light, then I couldn't find the Res cover, so I took the stock grills for the drive bays and pulled the grates metal off the plastic frames that clipped in. Cut a hole in one to see the Res water level, then mounted them. So now it looks great!

Next year maybe cut out the HAF logo on the side and put acrylic and a light behind it, then I think the case is done all together.










I think it turned out great, I'm extremely happy with it. Also I did add 1 new hardware piece between the last pictures and now. Borderlands 2 is coming out, and I picked up Batman AC, and since I got so much invested in this build already, playing anything at less than maxed out just won't do. So I picked up a 9800GT from a friend for cheap to use and a Physx card. You can see the poor thing under the bottom 7970, look at how close it is the PSU, not much breathing room, good thing it was single slot. This poor mid-tower has about as much in it as possible, so much that my HDD's are external, she is quite heavy. But it turned out great and external drives make drive swapping easy, I'm super happy with the end result.

[t_ski]

How are the temps on the bottom card since you have the two in serial? I usually set up my dual cards in parallel...

[1Kurgan1]

Yeah I was thinking about running two lines between each, but I didn't pick up an extra kit to go between them (and I didn't really want to use tubing). So I just went with this, and funny thing is, card 2 actually runs cooler than card 1....

Here's a Afterburner screen during a BF3 session (card 3 is the air cooled 9800GT sitting idle, funny to see an idle card 20C over cards running a game )

[t_ski]

The second card is probably not being used as much as card 1, so it may be pulling lower clocks. Check your GPU activity/load % in Afterburner and keep an eye on the speeds. I have my GPU stats set up to display on my Logitech G15 keyboard, which is nice. I can see loads & temps while benching or gaming across all three monitors.

[manofthem]

to your build, looks very sweet! You gotta love the 7970cfx! Very awesome!

[1Kurgan1]

Originally Posted by t_ski

The second card is probably not being used as much as card 1, so it may be pulling lower clocks. Check your GPU activity/load % in Afterburner and keep an eye on the speeds. I have my GPU stats set up to display on my Logitech G15 keyboard, which is nice. I can see loads & temps while benching or gaming across all three monitors.

Yeah thats most likely it, I don't think parallel will provide much if any better cooling, it might be marginal, but I'm not too worried. Even looking at the screen I put up, it shows max temp for each card and the 2nd cards max temp is 7C lower than Card 1, so under load it must just run a lot cooler since it doesn't push as much of the load.

Originally Posted by manofthem

to your build, looks very sweet! You gotta love the 7970cfx! Very awesome!

Thanks, yeah I've always wanted to CF and WC, mostly because it looks so sexy. And now I got it, and I got to say, it lives up to everything I expected looks wise.

[manofthem]

Originally Posted by t_ski

How are the temps on the bottom card since you have the two in serial? I usually set up my dual cards in parallel...

Originally Posted by 1Kurgan1

Yeah thats most likely it, I don't think parallel will provide much if any better cooling, it might be marginal, but I'm not too worried. Even looking at the screen I put up, it shows max temp for each card and the 2nd cards max temp is 7C lower than Card 1, so under load it must just run a lot cooler since it doesn't push as much of the load.

You guys have got me thinking now about running my cards in parallel....I have my 7970s in serial currently. As it is, card 2 usually is about 1-2*C warmer than card 1, I figured just because it's second, but maybe it's worth it to try a parallel config.

One more thing, I really like the painting of the interior of the case Kurgan. My 932 is not painted. I've wanted to paint it but it looks like a lot of work. I haven't really tried taking the case apart but it didn't look easy. Now I have lots to think about, thanks

[1Kurgan1]

Originally Posted by manofthem

You guys have got me thinking now about running my cards in parallel....I have my 7970s in serial currently. As it is, card 2 usually is about 1-2*C warmer than card 1, I figured just because it's second, but maybe it's worth it to try a parallel config.

One more thing, I really like the painting of the interior of the case Kurgan. My 932 is not painted. I've wanted to paint it but it looks like a lot of work. I haven't really tried taking the case apart but it didn't look easy. Now I have lots to think about, thanks

Well we both have basically the same blocks and my card 2 is running a bit cooler than card 1. As far as read, parallel is just better for matching the temps of the card. After all you run your line in and your line out, the config of serial or parallel is going to have a smaller effect on the flow as long as your pump is cut out for the job.

And you can paint your case easily, and it will look good, but the paint will scratch off easily. Even with good sanding it still can, I was tempted to try and use my oven to bake the paint (kind of like powder coating), but I didn't. I highly suggested taking the rivets out and sanding it down, I used something like 120 grit scuff pad and then 400 scuff pad, and then primed it. Then did 400 then 600 then painted. I just used my dremel to drill out all the rivets, then bought a rivet gun and riveted it back together when I was done painting it. That will get you the best results, otherwise you will have a hard time hitting some of those weird angles.

[HammerON]

Nice build! I love dual loops myself. How are your loops set-up (can't tell from your pics)?

[1Kurgan1]

I'm running the triple rad (top rad) for the CPU and the dual rad (on the bottom) for the GPU's.