Frank N SteinPC Case Mod

Every year and a half I “upgrade” Frank.  Each time I do, I want to do a little more, go a little bigger, dive a little deeper into the details.  This build was no exception.  I went with a Mountain Mods case to give me that challenge of building in an open chassis that could not hide anything, forcing me to pay attention to every detail in every way.  I detailed everything I could as I spent over 8+ months striving for perfection with the goal of bringing this monster to Quakecon.  I have tried to get to Quakecon for three years now and never seemed to have had the rig done in time or time to go – this year I finally was able to get there, enter this version of Frank into the Case mod Competition, and was very appreciative of the win in the Case Mod Competition.

I mod out of my office and a spare bedroom when I can.  I do not even own a workbench, power tools other than a drill, Dremel, and saw, though that would be nice one day to have a shop to mod in.  For now I mod in my room and a spare bedroom when I can get away with extending past my office. Sometimes when I am really lucky I get to do some work in the garage. So what was modded you may ask?  Well to name a few, Three GTX 680 backplates were ordered from the Watercool Factory with screen printed “Frank N SteinPC GTX 680 4G” stenciling on them, I then took those backplates and modded each one by hand with Carbon Fiber DiNoc.  The Mountain Mods Case I used was DiNoc’d on the floors of both the Extended U2-UFO, and the Water Barrel 24.  I also laid both red and black DiNoc on the MB tray. All PCI slots were done to show red on the back side and black inside with the DiNoc to contrast the surrounding colors. Bitspower Universal RAM Blocks were modded to remove the frosting. Bitspower Universal RAM Blocks heat spreaders were modded with DiNoc as well as a custom Bitspower logo installed.

The CPU Waterblock was also modded with 3M DiNoc CF. All custom cables were hand-made from crimping pins to sleeving them with Lutro0 Customs coreless paracord then hand sewn into shape – this includes all 4 of the GPU 8 & 6 Pins, the CPU 8 & 4 pins, the 24-pin power, the 6-pin PCI power, all the 5.25 bays power, the power leads from the fan controllers to the fan PCB’s below, etc – all cables were hand-built in this system and then sleeved. Created two custom dual Pump power cable runs that took a 3-pin fan style connector at one end and split to two 12v Molex 4-pin connectors below to feed each pump set. All 41 fans were custom sleeved.The Primochill Blood Red Coolant was tinted and modified to match the Primochill fan covers red. The Asus Phoebus Xonar was modified with 3M DiNoc CF and case badges installed. The SB and MOSFET EK water blocks were modified with CF as well. Samsung DVD/BR player front was modded with black 3M DiNoc CF. MM floor of the Extended U2-UFO was modded to allow for the pass through of In and Out water flow as well as a 400MM reservoir that is all fed from under the floor. 3x 360 Radiators were modded with Red 3M DiNoc CF. Rear panel of the Water Barrel 24 was modded at MM to accommodate a Watercool MORA3 1080 Radiator. MM had to modify the front panel of the Extended U2-UFO and flip it 180 degrees to allow the air flow from the fans to blow across the motherboard.  I felt this system was water cooled to the max, but I still wanted that airflow from the fans to cross the board and keep everything as cool as possible and use those fans to my advantage.  So the front panel was flipped.\

CPU: Core i7 3930k @ 4.8Ghz
Mobo: Asus RE4 Socket 2011
RAM: 32GB G.Skill @ OC’d to 2133Mhz (1866Mhz native)
GFX: 3x EVGA GTX 680 4GB GPU’s
PSU: LEPA G1600
Cooling: 4x VPP 655 Pumps, Primochill 400mm CTR Reservoir, 2x 250mm Bitspower Z-tubes on top of dual mod tops, Bitspower fittings throughout, Primochill Performance Blood Red Coolant, 1x Swiftech Performance 360 Rad, 1x Black Ice Xtreme 360 Rad, 1x Alphacool UT60 360 rad, Watercool MORA3 LT converted to a push/pull, Watercool Heatkiller CPU v3, 3x Watercool Heatkiller GTX 680 Hole Edition w/Modified/Customized Backplates, EK Mosfet and South Bridge water blocks. 9x Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm Red LED, 6x Enermax Magna 120mm Fans, 12x SilenX Effizio 120mm Fans, 9x SilenX 38mm, and 5x Xigmatech Crystal Series 120mm fans.
Case: Mountain Mods Extended U2-UFO and a Water Barrel 24
Storage: 4x 128GB SSD in RAID 0 (Boot/Programs), 1x WD 2TB Caviar Black, 1x WD 1.5TB Caviar Black

Other: Koolance FM17n inline Flow Meter, Koolance Flow meter display, Phobya Red LED Temp Sensor Displays, 1x Asus 27” 3ms 144Hz 3D monitor, 3x Asus 24” 1920×1080 60Hz monitors, G19 Keyboard, Razer Nostromos Game Pad, Razer Naga Molten Edition, Buttkicker Gamer II, Yamaha Receiver, Klipsch HD500 5.1 Surround Sound Speakers, Asus Phoebus Xonar Sound Card, Razer Tiamat 7.1 Headphones