The journey throughout years of a Thermaltake Armor VA8000 case. Going back as far as mid-2008, through many system upgrades, up until now, enjoy the trip!
July 2008 I built my own first real overclocking rig, named it
ESPRESSO, it was EVGA 790 Ultra board, Q9450 @ 3.6Ghz, single GTX 260 SC card, 2GB RAM (2x1Gb Corsair 1333MHz @ 1600Mhz CAS10), Tt armor case with quiet 1,300rpm stock LED fans, Zalman 9700 LED cooler.
Was playing around with Q9450 overclocking, went for 4GHz with it
March 2009 Q9450 @ 3.84Ghz, GTX 260 SC (core 192 & 216) in SLI, 4GB RAM (2x2GB Patriot Viper @ 1920Mhz CAS9), Tt armor case with Scythe Slipstream 1,900rpm black fans, Xigmatek HDT-S1283 cooler with 2 Scythe 1,900rpm black fans in push-pull, Antec Spot cool fan pointed on North Bridge of 790 Ultra board
December 2010 Q9450 @ 3.4Ghz, GTX 275 SC in SLI plus a dedicated GTX 260 SC for PhysX card, 6GB RAM (2x2GB Patriot Viper + 2x1GB Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT12864BE2009 running together @ 1700Mhz CAS8), Tt armor case with quiet 1,300rpm stock LED fans, Xigmatek HDT-S1283 cooler with quiet stock black 1,600rpm fan, Antec Spot cool fan pointed on North Bridge of 790 Ultra board.
July 2011 won an EVGA SC cooler in a drawing!
also picked up a 570 reference card and sold all other geforces, a few months later also picked up 2x4GB Mushkin memory kit which was unsupported on 790 (but yet working very well!) and sold all other memory modules I had.
March 2012 Picked up another 570 card (HD model this time), also loaded the board with 2 mirror RAID arrays, 2x WD velociraptors for system and 2x Hitachi 2TB for storage.
Q9450 @ 3.87Ghz, GTX 570 (872/1744/1951 clocks) in SLI, 8GB RAM (2x4GB Mushkin Enhanced Blackline @ 1933MHz CL9), Tt armor case with black 1,900rpm 110 CFM Scythe Slipstream fans, eVGA Superclock Cooler with red LED stock 2,500rpm fan, 2 Antec Spot Cool fans (blue LED) pointed to around North and South Bridge areas on eVGA 790 Ultra SLI board.
With above setup I was able to hit 9702 points in 3dmark11;
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2955338 Soon after I realized that my system is dropping value fast I need to upgrade soon also because my CPU is starting to top out on most of things ... so I sold the board, cpu, both velociraptors and 1 hitachi drive.
Instead I purchased a Z68 FTW, 2600K, since I kept Mushkin memory (8GB) I just added another same kit and went with an SSD for a boot drive ... I also added another 570 reference card since I was not impressed by 570 HD temps under load (and high pitched noise of gpu fan at 100%), I named the system
VORTEX:
was able to hit 12116 points in 3dmark11 with cpu at 4.8ghz and 570 sli;
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3254741 Vantage topped out at 40,819:
http://3dmark.com/3dmv/4039734 April 2012 ... then I played around with tri-SLI setup as long as I had it (before selling 570 HD card):
a) 3dmark11 15871
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3204924 b) vantage 46391
http://3dmark.com/3dmv/4032479 May 2012 ... and quite recently realized that I am hitting an overclocking wall past 4.7GHz. Temps too high! unable to fully stabilize the OC ... tried Corsair H80, but after it failed me (twice!) I went with an XSPC 750 RX240 water cooling kit ... and added a Raystorm CPU block extra
a) system assembled before first fill, only pump connected to psu
b) removed the 3 intake/hhd bays, installed XSPC RX240 rad, mounted in intake area. it's held by foam on left right and bottom sides. on top it's held in place tight by an hdd bay insert (single slot)
c) Raystorm water block (I know I am missing 2 zip ties, will fix soon!)
d) XSPC Dual Bay Res (+ 750 pump) slid out for initial fill and bleeding:
e) system fully operational!
... and that is how it looks alike right here right now, at night
stabilized 5GHz on 2600K, took quite a bit of vcore, but it wasn't tragic
July 2012 For some time I was contemplating new full tower cases with nice tray cutouts for better cable management, access to cpu backplate, painted black inside ... from lack of funds I decided I will attempt modding my own case instead in an inexpensive way. The total cost turned out to be only ~$40 since I already had most of tools and stuff ...plus a few days of hard work.
My biggest upgrades to this case have been described in this thread:
Modding the Thermaltake Armor VA8000BWS with a dremel, drill and spray can ;) 
Since I "reconfigured" this rig inside out and also upgraded it to Z77 FTW & 3770K (and a 670 card also coming in soon instead of 570 SLI) ... the
VorteX (Z68+2600K) rig is a closed chapter.
The new beast has been born and it well deserved (IMHO) a new place in ModsRigs, please meet THE "
R3C0NF1GUR3D"!!!
The current outcome is right here as it is now:
August-September 2012 Traded my 570 reference SLI for a single GTX 670 reference
Also decided to pull the trigger on water cooling loop upgrade and so going with:
-Koolance D5 pump (instead of Dual Bay 750 re+pump combo from XSPC)
-added a second radiator (XSPC EX360 Crossflow) in front intake area and moved my current XSPC RX240 rad to rear external location finally
-added an XSPC Razor 670 block with backplate for new GPU
-went with compression fittings instead of barbs
-swapped the tubing to Feser Active UV Blue (instead of poor quality Primochill Primoflex UV Blue)
-installed a FrozenQ Liquid Fusion (160mm) V2 reservoir with a dual-color helix and side ports (for better loop routing)
-added a second 12'' UV cold cathode at the bottom of case
-completed PSU extension wire sleeving with red mdpc-x single braided sleeving and red heatshrink
***FINAL Z77 FTW PROJECT PICS *** 
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ImageShack.us And lastly, after motherboard swap to ASUS Maximus V Extreme:
... I hope you enjoyed the journey of upgrades to this old Armor case 
post edited by feniks - 2014/04/22 21:02:48
