Some of you may recall my previous exercise in wiring management.
 
As a recap, went from this:

 
...to this:

 
Modest gains, but gains nonetheless!
 
Except...well, no, it's not good enough.  Even though I couldn't see it sitting down there...I knew.  I just knew...all those cables...so tangled...the airflow...the airflow!!
 
So enough was enough, ordered a pile of new parts to really fix this issue...PERMANENTLY.
 

 
Yes - better cable management, AND better cooling, here I come!
 
Oh, and one other thing since the last system build...*cough*
 

 
Guess who?

 
...ya guessed right!  Working a 680 into the build!
 
Working with this Corsair case (a Corsair Obsidian 650D) was, I have to say, a real joy.  It made cable management just a snap - everything fit easily, all the cables ran around pretty well, although there is still a heckuva lot of cables involved in any kind of system build.
 
The new cooling system (a Corsair H100) already allowed me to bump my 24/7 clock speeds up 200mhz, and I'm still running cooler than the H80 I had in that old, tight case.
 
I mean, with the core components in place (motherboard, etc), I'm looking pretty good on the visible side...
 

 
 
...the back, though...YIKES!

 
THAT'S STILL A LOT OF CABLES!!
 
Anyway, being able to easily segment them into a 'front' of the motherboard, and a 'back' helped with routing a lot.  Particularly useful was the hard drive bay being rotated at 90 degrees, so their power jacks and SATA cables all face the 'back' side of the case...although I'd note that my plan to use 90-degree-pivot SATA cables to keep the cable routing short proved to be...less great an idea than I'd thought.  Worked awesome for the full-sized hard drive I have, and for the optical drive up top, but all the SSDs were just...
 
Well, they don't really "fill the bay", if you follow.  They sit very close to the front of the drive slots, and so there is a HUGE space behind where the connection plugs would be that is metal (the 'tray').  I was able to get around that by basically mounting the SSDs upside down, and just turning the cable over (so the bend in it 'pointed up' instead of 'pointing down'), which was...eh, less ideal, but it actually still worked really well.  (And, heck, will prevent dust from collecting on the drive, itself - instead, the tray will get it all)
 
So this is basically the "done" shot of the insides.  Literally, everything is connected and finished, all parts I'm using are in place.
 

 
It's just...it's sooo much cleaner than the old case.  Even if you can see the cables sticking up off the back of the SSDs. 
 
So, based on the work, here, I've got a few things in mind I need to do next.  At least one thing - based on the side panel and cleanliness of the case...
 

 
...I'm thinking...I gotta light this one.  I've used CCFLs before, once, ages ago...and LED 'spot' lights mounted inside the case, too.
 
Based on my blue/grey color scheme of my parts, I'm thinking white would be the right color to use, but...?  Thoughts?  Suggestions?
 
Other things I have in mind:

• The power supply I'm using (Corsair TX750) has plenty of kick for what I'm doing with it, but geez it has a lot of really, really long cables.  In fact, I'm having to hide some of them (a string of 4-pin molex adapters and another pair of PCI-E adapters) in a space under the drive bays as I have just no use for them).  I'm sticking with Corsair, as I have for many parts in the build, and thinking a modular power supply is a must...which is nice, as their modular line is branded with blue and white lettering, which is a perfect fit for my color scheme, anyway.  Sooo...thinking an HX750.
• For some reason, the front-panel USB*3* adapters on this case have regular USB-A plugs, rather than the 'motherboard header' adapters.  The front-panel USB*2* adapters do have a 'motherboard header' plug, so those were easy to use.  Of course, the mobo I'm using (Asus P8Z68-V) does have headers on it for USB3, so I just have to buy one of those 'USB3 header to USB-A plug' adapters, and I'm good, here.  Obviously, this all gets run through the wire management ports to the back panel.  Something like this should work fine, but I'll probably try to find it in black.
• I really don't like how...obvious the PCI-E connections and motherboard main power connection is.  Soooo...colorful.  I'm thinking I'll pick up some sleeved extensions for those two connections to help hide them better.
• The ram is basically the same Corsair Dominator GT sticks I'd used in that earlier system build...I just took the glaring red fins off.  Appears to have no impact on stability of the ram, and works better with the color scheme.  Still...only 16gb of DDR3-2133?  Would sure like to bump that up to 32gb, as Photoshop and Blender keep hitting my 16gb...and that means Dominator Platinum.  Wow, that's spendy stuff.  Nice bonus, though - more grey and blue, so will work with the color scheme, too.
• As noted - lighting is needed!

So far, loving the improved airflow of better case design and better cable management combined with a better watercooling system.  As noted, I've gained 200mhz on my 24/7 clock (I could benchmark at 4.5ghz, before, but it wasn't 24/7 stable - had to run at 4.4ghz for that.  Same chip is running at 4.6 ghz right now, and still 10C-15C cooler.) 
 
I guess, if I had to criticize a few things about the case (well, in addition to the silly mix of header-vs-plug adapters for the USB powers)...the top near the front has a slide-away panel that has the gripes.  That exposes, first, a ramp that you can plug...a hard drive into?  A regular, SATA and molex-adapter, internal hard drive?  I mean, I get that SATA allows hot swap and all, but...wow, what a weird thing to "dock".  Why not, like, a port with an interchangeable adapter to support a USB connection for a phone (with adapters for iPhone/Android/etc) - seems a more common thing people temporarily 'dock' to their computers.
 
And the other item in that panel is a 3-speed fan controller.  Only thing is that of the three speeds, given the provided fans, even the 'low' option is about as loud as I'm willing to get a system get (it's roughly the same volume as my previous system's cooling).  The 'medium' is just annoying, and the 'high' is "**** WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?!".

Still, overall, it's good stuff.  A few nit-picks, but the case IS great.  And I like how the build came out - pretty solid, but plenty of room for improvement...so...any thoughts or recommendations welcome!

Looks awesome! What'cha gonna do with the old 560Ti?

Nice clean build, liking the tidy new cable management.
Your previous wiring exercise bought back memories of my very first cable management attempt.
Mess
Maybe you could swap out the stock fans for the Corsair Air Series 140 AF's and 120 SP's, they're really good fans and the custom blue rings may fit your color scheme.
[edit] unless you're happy with the stock fans.

Definitely a major improvment...  very nice job on the redo...

HeThing

Looks great to me :D

You can also try mounting your SSDs on the back.
You can see how I did here:
http://forums.evga.com/fb.ashx?m=1203303

That's not a bad idea - I'd definitely have to get the 'straight' SATA cables for that, the bent version is...it sticks up pretty far.

rasta_nz
Maybe you could swap out the stock fans for the Corsair Air Series 140 AF's and 120 SP's, they're really good fans and the custom blue rings may fit your color scheme.
[edit] unless you're happy with the stock fans.

Hmmm...I do have a few fans around from a previous build.  Maybe some of them run quieter at the higher speeds...I dunno, these do run okay volume at the 'low' setting, just seems like maybe it'd be nice to get some more kick out of them.

I do actually have some 38mm fans, too...hrmmm...may be worth playing around with this, some.  It's pretty easy, with the current arrangement, to pull the radiator components out and re-attach things.

The Corsair Airflow 120's look really good (see my rig - even has the blue rings so you can see how they look)
be careful screwing fans into the H100, depending on what the surface you are screwing them into is, sometimes the screws can be too long and you end up screwing them into the radiator - even with the washer in place. [ I found that if the surface is indented away from the rad, the screws are ok, if it's flat or indented towards the rad, the screws will end up going into the radiator ]
 
what temps are you getting with the H100?
i have my 2600k @ 4.5 and at 100% Folding the cores are 58-65 at around 25c ambient temps on the low setting
 
Rig looks great otherwise!
 

xanderf

Simba123

The Corsair Airflow 120's look really good (see my rig - even has the blue rings so you can see how they look)
be careful screwing fans into the H100, depending on what the surface you are screwing them into is, sometimes the screws can be too long and you end up screwing them into the radiator - even with the washer in place. [ I found that if the surface is indented away from the rad, the screws are ok, if it's flat or indented towards the rad, the screws will end up going into the radiator ]

Yeah, I....noticed that.  Wasn't expecting it, as the H70 I have shipped with screws of totally the appropriate length - you screw the fan in, it goes into the threads, that's it.  With the H100...nope, screws go into the radiator.  No harm done, upon inspection, just a few bent fins, but...pretty annoyed at that.

Simba123 what temps are you getting with the H100?
i have my 2600k @ 4.5 and at 100% Folding the cores are 58-65 at around 25c ambient temps on the low setting

I'm also on the 'low' setting, and pushed it to 4.6ghz.  At the 'low' setting with ~21c ambient I peak at 71c on my hottest core after a day of Prime95 (cores are from 60c to 67c at the moment, I'd guess the peak was hit once during the day when the furnace came on).

But I have a rather crap chip, I suspect - it's always taken way more voltage than others I've seen to get any kind of stable clocks.

Simba123Rig looks great otherwise!

Thanks!

 
Yeah, bed design on Corsairs part.
I think mine may be running cooler because I'm running push/pull.
I put the stock Corsair fans in the push position and have them attached to the
Pump/fan controller.
I have Corsair SP120's in push running off the psu so they are at 100% all the time. 
(I actually had AP120's there, but swapped them for the SPs (more static pressure) today.
bit noisier, but much cooler under load.
It's 27c here, 100% load folding plus the GPU and I'm at 57-65c.
 
 
 

xaanderf are you satisfied with Obsidian 650D??? 
 
Fantastic mid tower case.
Excellent build.
 
Only it's bad because that USB 3.0 external cables we must connect to motherboard on back side or adapter for Internal USB 3.0 and than it's so long unnecessary cables. That is good only for motherboards without Internal USB 3.0. Never Mind I hide that behind  H100 and fix with two cable tie for top mash panel...

Simba123

xanderf

Hrm...sadly, system is not proving to be 24/7 stable at 4.6

So far, 10-12 hrs in, it seems to fail on one core (of the 8).

Frustrating.  I've boosted the 'phase control' to 'Extreme' (from 'Asus optimized'), and bumped up the load line calibration...apparently to a pretty huge temperature increase.  Peaking at 76C, now.  Core Temp showing 1.3611 voltage.

GRRRRR...

More phase control = more heat. that is a lot of Vcore
actually, are looking in the box that says VID? because that is not the Vcore reading.
Grab a copy of CPU-z , that will give you a reading of your Vcore.

 
Huh, somehow I didn't know that about Core Temp.  I do have CPU-Z installed, just checked that, and...wow my voltage is high.  Uhhh...nuts.  Too high for my taste, by far (it reads 1.47?!).  It is Prime95 stable for 18 hrs, now (just shut it down because I got bored).  But that's...insane.  (Why on Earth would it be so high?!  I have the BIOS set to use 'offset' voltage adjustments, and it's at +0.120, that shouldn't go as high as 1.47...)

Simba123also, go into the BIOS and make sure that the FSB is set to 100.  The asus control suite quite often bumps it to 103 which causes instability.
try setting it 100x45 = 4500 and see what happens.

 
Oh, I'm fine at 4.4ghz with a lot less voltage.  In fact, I seem to recall running Prime95 for 12 hrs at stock voltage with my current cooling setup.  It's just that...well, since 4.4 was so easy, I kinda wanted higher...
 
[EDIT: it was 4.4ghz, not 4.5ghz, that I could hit with stock voltage.  4.5 is apparently taking more, I'm stepping back to that and re-testing to see what I need for 4.5.  And I definitely already backed down on the bclk - I'm actually running it at 100.1mhz, as a flat '100' seems to actually yield clock speeds on CPU and memory as if it was actually 99.95 or so.] 

don't you just love how easy Corsair cases make it do do clean wiring

rjohnson11

Corsair has really done quality work with their cases. That is why I have one.

nookie420

don't you just love how easy Corsair cases make it do do clean wiring

Yeah, gotta say, it's definitely one of those cases that, having finally made the jump, I totally see they are unquestionably worth the price.

Cable management...the arrangement of the drives...cooling and airflow...just...wow.
 
Awesome case.  Only a couple complaints, as noted above, but they really are kind of minor nit-picks.  I'm absolutely sticking with these for future builds.

You cleaned up the insides very well, congrats! Looks good.

Just to add, hopefully once you make those changes, you will see something like this as a result
 

I had started out like that - at what amounts to 'stock' voltage, I can get to 4.2ghz stable at Prime95 for 24 hrs, but I have to start increasing LLC *at least* to get higher.
 
As I think I mentioned, kind of a crap chip (it's a year or so old at this point, too - re-using the old proc from my last build)
 
If you have time, humor me and give it a go. I think you may have had a setting wrong, because 1.47 is insane!
 
I really do think you had a setting wrong somewhere.  I've set up quite a few systems on these motherboards and never failed to hit 4.5 with these settings, and I've never seen a Vcore over 1.35 with it either.
 
 

Dejahboi

My chip was lame, I can hit 4.4 and skip to 4.6, but 4.5 .. I got issues for stability. 

 
Yeah, I've seen chips like that.  Never really worked out why they would not be stable at a certain clock, but be
fine higher.
i've read about the cause being more to do with the motherboard power control than the actual chip itself, or a combination
of both.