An utterly great mod!

Fantastic job all the way around!

Much appreciated on that link - from the looks of how those are made I think I will be just fine - appears to be the same hole spacing and needs as my Watercool Heat killers and the edge where it wraps over also appears to not be an issue - if it is, there is a solution (Dremel).
 
I do not know if this is appropriate and if not - please PM me and I will gladly edit - but I am pretty excited.  Out of nowhere someone pointed me to the "Rig of the Day" at HardOCP - it was Frank.
 
The guy wrote the following:
"You know how I say that our case mod gallery is a great place to get ideas and inspiration for your next computer build? You know what they are also good for? Making your PC feel inadequate when you see rigs like this."
 
Frank and I were shocked and honored at the same time - it was pretty cool IMO.  Anyways, thanks all for checking out Frank.

I actually received in the two more SATA cables I planned on sleeving so I should have about everything sleeved in this system at that point.  Those remaining two cables you see that are stock SATA cables are being replaced now with SATA III cables I will be sleeving. 
 
Yeah those power cables were a challenge to make while ensuring the spacing was correct on each of them.  That SATA power cable is 100% custom - so I had to show it off as it is usually hidden somewhat.

im amazed.... stunned even. all i can say is___ ITS ALIVE!!!!!
Beautifull build my freind.

I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Phobya makes this sweet temp probe that is similar to a straight through fitting. It has a male end and a female end with a probe wire coming straight out the side. I'm using one to monitor water temperature in my rig. Just thought I'd mention it in case it was something you were interested in.

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.
 

 
Here are the current settings/temps Frank is running:

ty Ziggy - I see you are also one of the many preparing and anticipating BF3 coming, had mine on pre-order for MANY months, Frank cannot wait to tear up that game, we say BRING IT ON!
Still trying to get the community ranking up on Frank's ModRigs post - so if you like him, please consider a +1 in ModRigs - thanks.

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 really 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.



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.
 
Oh and whatever was ailing Frank that was causing me all kinds of issues with games and other things went away after I tore him down, did the PCB covers and put him back together.  I even changed out CPU's to a 975 Xtreme I had to check and then put the 990X back in, the RAM modules came out and went back in etc - basically everything was out and reconnected except the mother board.  End result, whatever wasn't making a proper connection or in the right configuration is now because Frank is BF3 ready!  I was able to play RAGE at 5980x1080 with eye candy turned up via the cfg file and it runs great.  Crysis 2 also runs smooth as butter at 5980x1080 with everything maxed - so I say bring on BF3!  Oh then we get MW3 too in a week and I am not done with RAGE yet - damn so much to do and so little time..........

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


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.




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.


Now on to the rest of the pictures - enjoy.

techsoldier Looks great! I have to say, the EVGA backplates look so much better than most aftermarket ones. I'm curious to see "Frank - His Beginning Iteration for 2012" :)

Considering it took me since FEB of 2011 to get to this point, I think I have done enough modding in my spare time from working to hopefully last me a year - as well as the tech in Frank should sustain me for at least a year I hope.  So maybe not a 2012 build in the future though a 2013 could be a possibility of a whole new machine because by then there should be significant enough hardware changes out there to justify the new "from scratch" build.
 
I agree, I love these EVGA back plates.  I had to modify them a tad, find different screws to use on my Heatkiller water blocks so they would fit on the blocks, etc - but in the end they worked out great, even cutting off that front lip with the curled portion turned out as I wanted - so things fell into place where they should and I think I am officially done with Frank - well except for the cover I want to now make to go over the XFI sound card so it doesn't keep staring at me in these pictures saying "Well what about me?" - then I should be done (famous last works - been saying that one for months).

Now I am speechless!!

Thank you all for checking out Frank - yeah he is supposed to have lots of red lol.
 
I will say though I finally got my hands on my pre-order from Newegg of Battlefield 3 and so far Frank is doing well at 5980x1080 - settings on Ultra - and getting mid 40 FPS or higher, at times hitting 65FPS, at times dropping to 37FPS, but mainly in the mid 40's most of the time.
 
Some screenshots along the way:

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/1706/bf320111028161636154.jpg
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/5047/bf320111028161724964.jpg
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/787/bf320111028161842869.jpg
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8392/bf320111028161905277.jpg

Hehe, Frank looks very nice, lots of work and time that you put in!
 
I like Black-Red(-Silver) stuff alot, too, even as I just get rid of the red glowing in my case (Lian Li fans). So my main rig is going to be mostly black&red, too, but hopefully doesn't look like a theme-copycat. *hopes*
 
I like how you set up the whole room in the "Frank"-theme, even as it wouldn't fit my room-style, it fits very well together with your rig - that rocks!