I originally posted Frank and his EVGA parts on here a few weeks past - however considering he just went through 5 days of rebuilding, I felt it was almost fitting for a new thread considering I had to purchase a new case (I messed up the ld one trying to repaint it), and in the process I basically rebuilt Frank with a totally different contrast in visuals compared to what he was before. So I tried to not write a book but give a basic overview of my thoughts and intentions for this build.
I began a journey into extreme PC building back in Feb of 2011. I didn’t want to just create another powerful PC (I have been building PC's since 1998 for personal use/gaming, but nothing at this level), but one that not only had some serious beefy hardware, but also contained visually stunning imagery of craftsmanship and planned precision. Being that I am not really a metal worker, nor do I have the tools/talent for such a task, I am not too much into making some off the wall outrageous cases or case modifications. There is plenty of talent out there to fill our screens with old clocks turned PC and so on.
What I was looking to build was something powerful, clean, classy, but with enough flair that this was a one of a kind build in many ways. So with that plan, I had two goals when I finally “finished” Frank. I have drooled over the rigs at MDPC and the level of beauty that those kinds of builds boast. I wanted Frank to be considered as an MDPC one day if possible. The second was the cover of CPU magazine. Now that I have “finished” – wish me luck as I am going to begin preparing to take pictures and submit and see if all this work, time and persistence ends in success and in a fulfillment of my goals.
Over the many months I have learned a lot – spent a lot – and had both happy and frustrating moments. This has been one very big educational process in sleeving cables, painting components, planning a build and so on. It has been a journey I am proud to have been able to enjoy and make it a part of my life experience – one I would hope everyone has a chance (if desired) to do at least once.
Frank was born January of 2010 during my first attempt at water cooling a full system. Not knowing what I was doing I had tons and tons of tubes (if anyone here remembers his initial iteration) and I was asked “what are you building Frankenstein?”. From that day forward he was duly named “Frank N Stein” and his many iterations and transitions over the last year and a half. His name has gone from "Frank N Stein" to simply “Frank” in conversation and finally will be placed in vinyl letters on the PSU when I get that completed in the next day or two as “FRANK”.
Frank now is one beast of a machine that I hope to enjoy for the next couple years as he sits today. For the last 5 days I took off work to do one thing – make the final push to get Frank picture perfect in my eyes. In the process I ended up destroying the Corsair 800D case he was housed in forcing me to go buy another because everything I had was purchased, sized and built for that case. Considering it was a brand new case I really had issues with painting it. I did end up cutting the hole needed for the power cable waterfall I had hand sewn because it was either undo all that work or cut a hole – the hole cut won.
I will be taking a series of pictures over the next few days as time permits, cleaning, preparing and posting them here to show the final state Frank has landed at now that I have finally hit that “I am done” point. There are always things I want to do to Frank, things I want to add, change, tweak, and so on, but there comes a point when you have to say “I am done!”. So here it is, I am at that point with this build that I can finally say – here is Frank, I am done changing him, I am done swapping out hardware and changing things. Here is Frank’s final look – I hope you enjoy viewing images of him as much as I do taking them, using him, and the pride I have that goes with this level of a build. It has been a journey that I am appreciative that I was fortunate enough to have the means to have taken.
If you like Frank – please give him some “+1 Love” in ModRigs
Many hours were devoted to not only sleeving cables but perfecting my processes in building them. Not being content with simply the GPU and 24-pin power cables I knew in order to get Frank to the level I wanted him – all his cables needed sleeving. This image below is just a drop of water in a very large bucket of cables that I have sleeved along the way. Like photography takes 100 pictures for 1 stunner – it takes quite a few cable sleeving times to get it down right and I still feel I could do much better as time goes on. The time and detail it takes in creating your own cables from cutting the lengths, crimping the ends, connectors, heat shrink is crazy. Building Frank as I have has also given me such a huge amount of appreciation to others who have gone down this path before me – my hats go off to you and the amount of effort it takes to build a rig of such caliber. You all are my inspiration that prompted me to do my own.
Though most of the temp sensors are hidden out of sight, I wanted to make sure that if they did happen to show in any picture that these got the same level of attention as the rest of the cables in Frank.
Though this is more of an “artsy” kind of photo, I can honestly say I do not know how I ever was able to do most of what I did without these QDC’s. I went to Quakecon in 2010 and saw them on a guys rig and went home and ordered a couple sets. Now I have about 20+ sets, some in use on Frank, some on my HTPC (VAMPI) and some as spares. QDC’s are serious life savers, especially when you just want to isolate a portion of a loop without having to drain it all.
Corsair Dominator GT RAM is touted as some serious RAM capable of handling the push when OC’ing. I loved how the color scheme also worked with minimal effort on my part to change its look. This RAM IMO was made for Frank and this build. The DDR3 has been solid and runs now over 2000MHz very well with the 990X CPU at 4.66GHz.
I cannot tell how many times I have pulled the 360 RAD in and out of this Corsair 800D case. This was always a dreaded task as it required me to balance three 120mm fans for “Pull” duty on top of the radiator, stick it in the case and hold it up under the top of the case, then stick the grills on top of the case and try to line up all the holes of the covers, case, fan, and rad at the same time. For months I have struggled with ways to make it easy. As things have always of revealing themselves to you if you search hard enough, the other day I found myself faced with this very challenge. After an hour of trying, I just could not get opposite corners to line up where I could begin getting the rest lined up. I sat back and had an epiphany! I got up and went and cut the heads off 6 hex head screws. I placed a post on opposite corners of the rad for each 120mm fan. I then slid the fans down the posts, this left the other opposite ends of each fan “open” for screws. I then inserted the rad into the case, lined up the posts with the case and shoved it up and through. Once held up there against the case, I was able to then slide the fan grills over the posts on the outside top of the case, then finally started dropping in the hex head screws from the top straight down perfectly aligned holes and mounted the radiator in less than 5 minutes from start to finish once I had the posts on. I was so excited I had to share this with anyone who has struggled with this very same thing.
Because this time around I did not paint the inside red, I needed to begin creating contrast in other components against the black background of the Corsair Obsidian 800D case. The first step was to strip and pain the radiator. Below shows the rad installed with its new shiny matching red color.
The Corsair 800D Obsidian case has decent airflow, but really IMO is a perfect Water Cooling case. Because of that there really isn’t a major need in Frank for airflow. Originally I had used the Corsair Airflow attachment then eventually it was tossed aside for the finned look of the Dominator GT Ram that I had painted to match Frank’s red. This time around I wanted more of a bold color contrast and the need for better cooling to the Ram modules certainly could not hurt as I am now going to start trying to push Frank as far as I can for overclocking. With that in mind I went ahead and painted the Airflow unit to match and give me that visual contrast.
Once that went in, I saw a ton of red at top, but there was a blank in the middle before getting to his red mesh floor. Considering the Bitspower Pump Mod Kit is all black, I knew it was going to just disappear into the black cases background. How to make it “pop” – paint it red and make it pretty. So here is the pump painted and red now with the chrome connectors and plugs shinning against the red color.
Once I painted the pump, visually it seemed a tad off balance in the visuals and I needed something to bring the eye back center and uniform. What was left? The Watercool connector between the GPU blocks was solid black and needed some contrast against all that black behind it and was perfectly positioned to help align the view of reds/blacks – so off I went to paint it red and the result is below.
Below the last GTX 580 sits the newest addition to Frank and that is the LSi RAID controller. I had already sleeved the SATA cables but they have been hidden behind the pump going into the Classified board. Now that I have the RAID controller card I was able to show a tad more of the beauty of sleeved SATA cables curving around to their connection.
In an older iteration of Frank’s looks, I had a red bottom with a black mesh top that was held down with a couple strategically positioned screws. Now that I was working with a new case and a new color scheme, I ended up painting (after cutting a new “floor” from the mesh) the mesh red – this means that anything I used to secure it would be immediately visible. So I chose to evenly space some tiny hex head black bolts with nuts on the underneath to tighten it down with. So I used 8 tiny bolts for both function and visual enhancement to the overall build look and feel due to the fact that all the fans are also mounted with the same style hex head bolts.
This brings me to the last point that I felt needed a coat of red and that was the Silverstone Striker Series 1,500W PSU. Considering I had painted the I/O Panel red, all PCI slot brackets are also red, the last component that shows from the connection side is the PSU and it was black. Because it is hidden down below and shaded, it disappeared into the obsidian abyss. Painting it red brought it out visually as well as finished out the I/O end flow much better as well IMO.
