Frank's 2011 Upgrade

The1stCAV said:
OK, so here are three Photoshopped options for painting the water blocks. Granted its not a terrific example set but gives the basic idea - your thoughts?
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I feel so blind and stupid... I was like, "WTF is he talking about 'painting the water blocks', each pic looks the same!" I was looking at the CPU block, didn't notice the 'shopped GPU blocks until I looked harder. :D
 
JMccovery said:
I feel so blind and stupid... I was like, "WTF is he talking about 'painting the water blocks', each pic looks the same!" I was looking at the CPU block, didn't notice the 'shopped GPU blocks until I looked harder. :D
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Damn, Ill take that as I did such a good job it wasn't even noticeable? :D
 
painting them all black looks gay IMO im between the red black and all red im leaning towar the black red though more contrast
 
I personally like the all red GPU blocks. Also, I think if you painted the tool-less bay pieces red that might add a little balance. Or you could just leave it the way it is and its still the one of the nicest looking rigs ive seen.
 
I don't care either way. Red, black, same shit. Does it look gay? Who cares. Just finish it this year. 2012 is just around the corner. The next wave of upgrades are coming. :D
 
wra18th said:
I don't care either way. Red, black, same shit. Does it look gay? Who cares. Just finish it this year. 2012 is just around the corner. The next wave of upgrades are coming. :D
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YEah i bet the wife will love that!! oh look babe its 2012 time for another 5-6k lol
 
I'd go all red, paint the block next to the SLI bridge black again, and leave the backplates black :p

The blocks look good red, but it's *too* much red with the current red... block. What's it called anyway?
 
shizzdizzle said:
Looks like frank is finally on hardocp :)
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OMG! I found it - nice!!! I feel honored...................Frank got rig of the day - wooooooooooooot!

http://hardocp.com/
http://hardocp.com/news/2011/10/17/h_reader_rig_day

Ohmycaptain said:
I'd go all red, paint the block next to the SLI bridge black again, and leave the backplates black :p

The blocks look good red, but it's *too* much red with the current red... block. What's it called anyway?
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Watercool HEATKILLER® GPU-X² Triple-Link
http://www.performance-pcs.com/cata...oduct_info&cPath=59_971_411&products_id=25227


Actually I think I have made a decision - paint the copper portion of the block Black on the edge, leave the rest silver to keep with the rest of the blocks and connectors. Then the tops will be black as well with the EVGA covers. It should all work out then.
 
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. said:
I'm trying to obey that 10th Commandment but it's kinda hard...
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Its quite OK - I have done the same for many years with others rigs on [H] - glad Frank could help others break that commandment, just remember lightening will not strike you if you do.
 
This is the most unbelievable computer build I have ever seen. I sure wish you were a chick because I would ask you to marry me.
 
So awesome - thanks everyone. I just checked the tracking, the EVGA items will be here this Thursday, so that means I really can get Frank done this weekend. I got the temp probe/plug replacements in and SATA cables in yesterday. So I need to sleeve the SATA cables, sleeve the temp probe to replace the one I broke on the last reinstall, sleeve the USB extension cable for the multi-card reader I have, paint the copper sides black and leave the silver portions, install the PCB covers and put Frank back together for the last time - wow, what a fun weekend ahead.
 
wow that must be one expensive machine. Do you pay motgage on top of that ;) it must be a challenge to keep this dust free, even my own rig with filters I have to clean it every week but I just dont have the time.
 
zomby said:
wow that must be one expensive machine. Do you pay motgage on top of that ;) .
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Yeah, you could say that - figures vary from who you talk to as well. Hard to nail down exactly what all this build has cost considering many things purchased ended up being sold/traded to others for other items, things were moved to my HTPC build, and new things purchased directly. So it really is difficult to put a price on it all - and yes I do pay a mortage, though thankfully that is almost paid off as well. Just finished paying off our car, that made me nervous. Paying off the car is like when the MFG warranty expires, something is bound to happen :rolleyes:

zomby said:
it must be a challenge to keep this dust free, even my own rig with filters I have to clean it every week but I just dont have the time.
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That is what a swiffer is for - as well as the electric duster vac thingy I have (mentioned a few pages back). Plus with as much as I tear into Frank, he is always being dusted and cleaned if anything just because I am touching it, wiping it, pulling it out, putting it back in, etc. But the Swiffer is a great friend for the desk, rack, pedestal, etc. That black really shows any partical that lands on it.
 
See your build yesterday and it is amazing the red the hardware the Koolance ERM-3K3UC cooling system your workstation. PERFECT!
 
Thanks to EVGA's team of support specialists I am back up and running fine since removing the LSI RAID card. Seems that card didn't want to play nice with my motherboard and was causing all kinds of issues. So I had to remove it - during the process I went ahead and updated the firmware on both the Vertex 3's and the Vertex 2's then started loading Windows however I kept having all kinds of weird issues - my mind went totally down the wrong troubleshooting road TBH. A few calls to EVGA's tech support and one guy was sure it was a power issue which was where I was leaning towards.

Finally after doing many things - I called back. The problem I was having was powering up the system may or may not want to hit POST - the start up codes would go F3, F6, FF - then freeze. The power light would go out on the case button as well as the board button. Then nothing would happen. It would take several power on/off tries until it would kick in and boot - once running it was fine. The last guy I talked to said in a matter of fact way - its your RAM. Those initial codes should be running through your RAM and its getting stuck, you either have a module not seated properly or a stick going bad. He suggested I go and try one stick at a time, if I was able to boot it may be my CPU, though he was almost sure it was RAM based on the codes.

Talk about feeling like a noob when I removed the RAM cooler to find that one stick of RAM was not fully seated - (facepalm) - EOS

So once again EVGA has proven the incredible value of Tech Support. No matter how long someone has been building, testing, and troubleshooting PC's, once your mind goes one way sometimes it takes a fresh look at the issue from another person that just may know exactly what the issue was caused by. I would have been riping out power cables, trying different PSU's and gone that route when it was as simple as reseating the RAM which was something that I am so glad that dude at tech support knew was the issue. So thank you EVGA tech support!

Now back to Franks build.................Minus the LSi RAID card and now with both sets of SSD's on their own Intel RAID.
 
OK, so now that the SSD's are flashed with the latest firmware and are on the on board Intel RAID controller, I wanted to do another Benchmark to see how they performed. The Vertex 2 SSD's still remain King over the Vertex 3's. This was the same when I had the Vertex 3's on the Marvell SATA III controller and the LSi RAID controller - neither could push these SATA III SSD's past the performance of the VERTEX 2 SATA II SSD's. Realistically I should have just purchased another set of VERTEX 2 60GB SSD's, done a RAID 1+0 with 4 of them and been better off then two in RAID 0 each. Though these Vertex 3's are not slow, they certainly still get their butts handed to them in the write department by their previous version IMO. Anyway, here are the results side by side - you can see how each faired in the benchmark on Frank.

ssdbenchmark.png



Here are the current settings/temps Frank is running:

tempst.png
 
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I am hammered today with a ton of things going on so I do not have time to post the worklog on this last weekends project. As you know I was going to reinstall some sleeved SATA cables, sleeve and install the temp probe I broke, as well as take care of the covers on the GTX 580's.

Well I have to say the covers were THE polish I was looking for and they turned out AWESOME after taking them to a machine shop to be modified. I will get into that story later when I have time to go into detail and go through the process w/pictures. End result is below though and as you can see it was well worth the effort to take these blocks apart and paint them correctly. Though the work is not as visible to what realy got done, it looks well enough you do not notice the blocks that were once copper are now black with the silver parts still silver to keep with the fittings and other silver items in Frank.

frankgtx580covers1.jpg


I will get the log put together though and post when I have time. I just knew some of you wanted to know if the covers would work and what they looked like when I got them installed. I had to do some creative things to get these covers to work with my blocks which I will go into when I get time, end result though is what I wanted - clean and looks like it was meant to be there.
 
wra18th said:
Dammit, Aus10! He'll never be finished!
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How dare you blame me for something that was already knownen :)

He aint ever going to finish!!!

I will be like 32 and this will have 500 pages and its well yesterday i got frank stable at 30.6gbz... still pushing more but the voltage is needing 1.2.... lol

While his CPU is a Intel I79 72 core with hyperthreading stock clock at 22ghz. with 6 EVGA GTX 80200 with a core clock of 10ghz per unit and 32gbs of VRAM

:)
 
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When the PCB covers arrived I could tell that they needed to be modified. The front lip needed to be cut back to not interfere with the water blocks and water block connector I use. These PCB covers were made for EVGA's Hydro-copper water blocked cards and was not 100% compatible with the Watercoool HeatKiller blocks Frank uses. So off to a machine shop to make slight modifications to the PCB covers.

frank001newgtxcovers.jpg


This is the machine that took off the front lip of the covers. They took small passes at the front edge until we got it even with the edge under the "GTX 580" text on the cover.

frank002machineshop.jpg


This was while in the machine and the window had residue on it so the picture isn't that clear, but you can see the cutting tool raised and the cover in the machine. They took small bits of the edge each pass until we got it straight along the front side.

frank003gtxmodifiedproc.jpg


One done, two more to go. This shows the finished modification to the covers after we made the front edge flush with the original edge under the GTX 580 text. Before it curved out towards the front, now it stays flush. However I must go home and paint the edge now that it is shiny aluminum. I had to basically tape off the entire cover except for this edge and then paint it black.

frank004onedown.jpg


What I did not do was take pictures of this process; however I probably should have because it was a ton of work for so little of a change. These water blocks were at one time copper on the "hole" part as well as the edges of the water blocks. Because I didn't want to paint the silver parts of the blocks I totally dismantled these blocks entirely. I then tapped off the copper portion of the blocks except for the edge. That sentence simply stating I taped off the blocks except for the edges does not even begin to detail the time consuming task it really was. All I was out to do was to paint the edges black and not get any of the silver shiny parts touched. Obviously I needed to also not paint inside the blocks nor paint the "business end" of the blocks where it goes against the GPU and other components on the cards. So I had to tape these off then trim ever so carefully along the edges to keep the sides exposed while the top/bottom sealed. It was quite the undertaking IMO. I finally got them done, painted and put back together though as shown here.

frank005frontbackgtx580.jpg


This gives a closer look at the detailed paint job I tried to do with these water blocks. You can see the edges are now block while retaining the silver portions. The idea was to allow the black edges to blend in with the look while keeping the silver portions exposed to flow with the rest of the silver shiny insider Frank such as the connections and other parts on the motherboard.

frank006wbpaintedblack.jpg



Here are all three put together and lined up showing the covers on the cards. A nice angle shot showing the covers on the GTX 580's. I have thought of stenciling on "3GB" at an angle in front of the "GTX" text using the "3" style font EVGA used on the Classified 3 product box. I may still do that one day soon.

frank007pcbcoversinst.jpg



frank008wbinstalled.jpg



Here we see the reflections from the mother board on the bottoms of the GPU water blocks as well as the painted black edges that was so time consuming. You can see under the water block connector the new temp probe inserted at the bottom of the connector. That has since been cleaned up a tad more and dressed in, but for the pictures I had to show the sleeving on the cable most will never see. That is like probably 85% of the detail in Frank is hard to see because I have tried to keep him clean and uncluttered, in turn more things are hidden but the portions you can see. Much detail has gone into this build and it is tough to point it all out. For example you will never see those two USB cables going to the USB card that I sleeved unless from a bottom up angle shot. For the most part they are hidden from view, but in those few angles where portions of it may appear. Which is the idea of all the detail on Frank - if there is a chance it will be shown, it was detailed out.

frank009lt001.jpg



Now on to the rest of the pictures - enjoy.

frank010wbblack.jpg



frank011blackedges.jpg



frank011washedout.jpg



frank012gtxpcbdone.jpg



frank013topdownview.jpg
 
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I feel like this answer is going to be like a page long but...

How does it feel owning frank? All that amazing work i couldnt guss how good it must feel...
 
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