As long as you have enough heatshrink you might as well redo them with ties under the heatshrink; but as reelfiles said it was mostly a suggestion for future improvement.

I see more cases in the background. Is that a Lian Li cube case or something?

They're a few older cases. The cube is two CM Mystics joined together, this was the case I used before the 690. The other case (you can just see the bottom) is a Chenming, this was for my nF4 expert.

More Progress:

Made another cable Thanks for the suggestion. I used 1/4� sleeving and 3/8� heat shrink.




Redid the front mesh ….. no more cm emblem.





Tracing the template onto the masking tape made it easy to cut the pattern out.





I had to grind some off once I bent it to shape. Made a good match!





Painted and installed

Looks great...!!!!!

Sweet dude!!

Looks better without the CM logo

And the sleeving looks better too

Agreed!

This is really inspiring me to finally mod my CM Stacker, great job.

I can't count the number of times I've looked at these pics and said "Damn." to myself.

Looks very classy!

The "carbon fiber" accents are a nice, understated touch.

I was just looking over this again and I finally noticed you have the same CPU as me. Did you ever have the E6850 in another board? Do you think your OC is better with this DFI P35?

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.....it's nice hearing what everyone thinks .

I wanted to highlight the hd slots, so I cutout three pieces of acrylic to fit above the hd's; these are some test pieces (one piece has an air bubble in the acrylic and drilled ends to the set the leds).....maybe a uv led at each end of the acrylic..... or just keep the ccfl behind the hd cage, it's does a pretty good job highlighting.






I'm trying to think of a window cutout/design?







@ t_ski; I've ran the E6850 in a P5N32-E SLI (680i), could reach the same OCs but the P35 is a lot more stable. The 680i had FSB holes and was hit & miss on stability, this drove me nuts so I upgraded to the P35 with no regrets.

Thanks for the info. Still on the fence as whether or not to upgrade. Part of the problem is the lack of availability of the X38 boards

More Progress:

Another CF film mod, covering the front of a card reader plus usb.






Film applied, making sure it matches the cf pattern of the fan controller and dvd drive…..a sharp xacto blade will make clean cuts and for an easy job.








Painted the card reader (top metal casing) flat black, along with the 5¼" bay converter.




Installed and working…..no drivers needed




Swapped power and hd leds. The power led was bright blue and the hd led was a red you could barely see…..it's hard to tell but both leds are lit up, the blue is overpowering.




The new power led is uv and the hd is green.



Redid the sleeving for the front panel cable…..shows both; the redid front panel cable heatshrink and the new card reader's usb connection. The memory cooler is connected to the MB fan header.




A few pics of new stuff; ide cable and anti-kink coil.






I had trouble coming up with a window design. My first idea was three squares with rounded corners…..I did not like this!




Here's the pattern I went with…..I'm painting it flat black….it should be ready in a couple days. :nod:








What do you think so far?

Looking good. Are you planning to put some mesh behind the window?

I thought about using mesh behind the window but figured it would effect the air intake flow; front and bottom are the only intake, 4 exhaust - three on the rad and one out the rear (front rad fan can pull intake air in through the front mesh). Mesh would look nice in the lower two corners. I'll test it out before I do anything final.

I have three colors of acrylic; clear, uv green, and clear uv blue. I was thinking clear behind the entire window. I'll see how it works and looks with some mesh

Wow. Amazing mod, wish I had the money to do something insane with my case . Thinking about getting one of these vs. an Antec 900. Any thoughts?

Or you could keep with the design of the pump cover and do the mesh on top, with the UV green in back.

Thanks! Haven't had or seen (in person) an Antec 900.....I do however like the CM 690 its been a easy case to mod. Really like the front power/reset mount. You can remove the case front without disconnecting (never had this on cases of mine) the small things matter, lol. A bad thing is the mesh infront of the fans makes for noise (still have it in the bottom)





I'll keep that in mind....your making more work for me.....was getting close to the end, I thought


Edit: I like the look of mesh and uv green acrylic..... Thanks t_ski! :nod:


sneek peek

TIGHT ! keeps getting better and better OP keep it up !

You're welcome. Just thought it would look good to keep the same theme going, especially since it worked so well before

Edit: Oh, and modding is never done - there's always something else to tweak or try.

What are you going to use to hold the window? Carl will suggest his famous 3M tape here in a few minutes.

i would remove the mesh from the bigger windows and keep it on all other spot

with a clear windows we will b e abble to see all your hardwork from the outside

Not sure I agree eb.
The mesh is really part of the case "theme" at this point.

Gotta agree with you Carl, the mesh does look good

I'm with rad. and Carl. the mesh has a great look.

Thanks everybody All your ideas are great! catkicker gave an idea of keeping the top, mesh only - stealth look. Thought about using acrylic only (no mesh) ebdoradz, but t_ski kept me on track saying to use the mesh in the window. Keeping it stealth and using the mesh/acrylic window makes it a little hard to see in, but hey, up close looking at the right angle and your able to pick out the hardware.


More Progress:

Side panels painted flat black.....mesh was cut out, bent, and painted.....the uv green acrylic cut to size.




A few tabs were left on the mesh to help secure the acrylic.






Scotch clear mounting tape was used to hold the mesh/acrylic window to the side panel.



The tape is applied, just hard to see




While the side panel window was being complete, I changed the fluid and added UV Water Dye-Lite (green). First pic shows the fluid full of air, second pic 99% air is out, third pic; one or two air bubbles left and the side panel is ready to go on.








All put back together!

That is by far the sexiest case I've seen . I really like how you kept with the colors all the way through (everything is black and green) and you really blended it all together quite well (nothing is overdone/exaggerated). Wish I could do something like that, but I'm still on the old nF4 mobo's so mine would have to be black and yellow. Maybe i could dress it up to look like a bumble bee...

Sweet :beer

Looks Great

Thats one of the nicest, clean, pro looking, case mods ive ever seen. Your rig looks hella efficient too!
Nice Execution Man.

Thanks!

Black/Yellow would look good. The LP nF4 was a one of the first MB that got me into modding. Just start it; sleeve a couple cables and cut a few holes....... it will be to hard quit then.




Thanks for the compliments and ideas! Glad you helped with the H2o loop, no more 90s and res. to mess up the front.



Thanks!

The case mod was fun experience, learned some things along the way.

such a nice pc

Lookin good.

Looks great. Anything left you want to do with it? How's the watercooling working out? I've just built a new loop with a DD MC-TDX and a MPC-975X chipset block. It's taking forever to get the air out

Thanks everyone, this has turned out to be one of my better mods. Posting my progess pushed me to do a good job and complete the project. I have a few small thing left to do (cables and lighting mostly), other then that I have no idea of what to mod next.....so far, I really like how the case has turned out.

I been OCing some, seeing what the 8 multi can do. soundx98's ocing results with the new 45nm were impressive, making me want to push my 65nm to a higher oc. Seems I'm topping out at 510FSB. 511 fails prime within mintues, CPU and NB voltage helped a little but still fails my quick stress test (run prime 95 v255 and start a 3DMark). The 1:1 memory divider is the only option I can choose when running high FSB, everyother divider runs over 600Mhz. So if I want to keep the voltages within my limits, 510 FBS looks to be my max.

The watetcooling is working good. Waiting for the air to purge out of a loop is never fun, almost as boring watching paint dry. During my latest testing @ 4080 MHz (510 x 8) 1.4875V using prime 95; loaded core temps were topping out at 63-65 C - idled at 31-32 C - ambient temp of 20C.

This is good news. Ever since I once was stable on the 680i board at 1.52v, I have not been able to get back to it, needing 1.6v to be anything close to stable since the RMA's board came back from eVGA.

The reason I say "good news" is that I have a DFI P35-T2R board coming this week along with some other goodies (major sig rework will need to be done).

My ambients are usually at 20C or lower and my idles are in the high 30C range right now. I don't even want to talk about load temps, especially at 1.6v. So I am taking it easy until I can make some changes.

You'll like the P35 chipset . One of the same reasons I switched from the 680i was I couldn't maintain a stable oc. I wonder how the Asus Striker II Formula or EVGA 780i does? I'm itch'n for a new challenge......for some odd reason I like the nvidia chipsets.

I thought about the 780i briefly, but after having my hands on a 8800GT for a while, SLI just doesn't make sense to me...and with the stability problems on my 680i, going to the 780i - since it has many common components with the 680i - just doesn't make me happy.

So back to DFI (eVGA can kiss my ass)

I was much happier with the Nvidia chipsets up to the 680i. The DFI 590 board I have still works fine for me...actually is BETTER as my Linux box than it ever was running XP...oddly enough. it always had boot issues with XP. Ran like a champ for days on end, but I dreaded rebooting.

Thanks for the info. Right now I have my E6850 running at 3.6 GHz @ 1.45v, and temps are high-20's idle and mid-40's load. But then again, I have the CPU and a chipset block on mine right now, where you have the CPU and GPU. I'm planning on pushing the CPU a little higher with my new mobo, and I'm curious if I'll see temps like yours.

Here's a SS @ 4080 MHz 1.4875V (bios), 100% loaded with P95v255 - 8hr 23m runtime. Core Temp reports 60C and Everest 59C for both cores. The P35 chipset runs cool with the stock hs (1.45V set in bios), NB temp is 41C, might reach 45C.

Its been awhile but here's a small update:

Old memory cooler




Replaced the fans with some sleeved UV green 40mm fans, added the side cf film, and cut the side mounts shorter.



Side mount top and bottom (comes close to touching the video card so I installed a protective backing).






Sleeved the rear CPU fan.




You can see how close the cooler comes to the video card, appears we have contact




Now if anybody can help me *>here<*, I might have a new voltage display panel to add. I started the mod but figured I better test out the meters, making sure I could get em to work and read properly.






Here's a few Hi-Res pics.....now you'll see all my mistakes

Mistakes? That rig came out sweet, love how you even covered the fan hubs. The memory cooler looks a million times better :cool:

just read the through the whole thread. awesome work man.

hi there wow very nice mod I'm new to mod community but this had been the best mod i had see so far quick question were the you get the mesh from any links i really want to do some mod with that mesh thanks in advantage

I believe he's using A.C.Ryan MeshXPanel; performance-PCs should stock it

You might also be able to find the same stuff at McMaster-Carr

radodrills correct, I'm using A C Ryan MeshxPanel

Out of stock but here where I got it >>>> http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ind...roducts_id=3398

Or try http://www.frozencpu.com/products/4099/ele...l?tl=g44c11s450

Huh, wonder how I missed this thread over a period of 3-4 months.

Must be getting old.

*sigh*

Small update on dual voltmeter:



t-ski's quote is so true!


The 8800 GTX, GPU and memory voltage measurement points and ground connected to a male 3-pin fan housing.




Backside of voltmeter: male 3 pin connector for INH and INL sensing wires, molex connector for 5V supply power and 0V (ground).




The next pictures aren't much, just showing switch positions.
Right switch is the master power (MPS). Left switch turns backlight ON/OFF (only works when MPS is powered ON).








more on dual voltmeter display in this thread >>> link <<< Thanks for all the help

Hey, I'm just speaking from experience.

The Voltage reader looks Pro, dude :drool:

Yes sir, definitely an awesome job!