Since bluebarracuda posted his new build, I'll chronicle my new-ish build/mod

Back in September, I decided to tear my rig down and revamp it. I needed to drain and clean my watercooling loop anyway before the plasticizer got too bad, add in my second 6950, and upgrade my pump. I got carried away and decided to truly clean up the look.

Specs:
Case: HAF 932 Advanced Blue
Radiators
XSPC EX240
XSPC RS240
Swiftech MCR-QP 120 (the one with extra g1/4 threads for parallel)
Blocks
2 X Swiftech MCW82 GPU blocks with ramsinks
Swiftech XSPC Rasa CPU block
Pump/Res: Dual Bay Res top for Laing D5 Vario
Fittings, etc.
Swiftech Crossfire Bridge for parallel setup
7/16x5/8 Durelene Tubing
XSPC compression fittings
Bitspower Rotary fittings

PC
ASUS P8Z68-V Pro
i7-2600k @ 5.0Ghz
CORSAIR Vengeance 4 x 4GB (16gb) DDR3 1600
Samsung 830 256GB
WD Caviar Black 1TB
COUGAR-1000CMX 1000W
MSI 6950 (Reference Design) - unlocked shaders, dual bios
Sapphire 6950 (Dirt 3 edition, picked it up on ebay) - unlocked shaders, dual bios
NOTE: I recently took out the 6950s in favor of a single 7970. Best decision ever.
Sunbeam PL-RS-6 Rheosmart 6 Fan Controller
Some old LG Blu-Ray burner

So here's a before pic:


Not too bad. I suppose. Cable management is poor. No real color scheme with the orange PSU, blue tubing, and coral snake sleeving. I also wanted to see if there'd be a significant/measurable performance decrease if I didn't use push/pull.

So starts the adventure.

I took off all the cable sleeving. And the cat took notice.



Time to gather up all my colorful cables.





I think you can guess what I'm about to do.

The water has to be really hot for the rit dye to be most effective, so I went to the dollar store in search of marbles to line the bottom of the pot (preventing the cables from touching the bottom and getting too hot/melting). Found these decorative gems instead, which did the job just fine.



Filling the sink for easy cable rinsing.



Into the pot they go. My wife thought I'd just ruined my cables. But I knew better.



After a five-minute soak, I wanted to check on the progress. It was pretty clear they needed more time to let the dye penetrate.



I let them sit overnight in the pot with the heat off, and that did the trick. I did the same with the other cables.



PSU balancing act, courtesy of pop tarts. It looks way more unstable than it actually was.



Drying out.



Put my durelene tubing in the dye as well. Now my brand of choice.



Now to take care of that orange PSU.



I know most people open the PSU and desolder the connections in order to paint the metal safely, but I decided I could be careful enough with the taping method since I didn't have to paint everything (such as the fan grill).



Rustoleum primer and high heat black paint, 2000 grit sanding, then polishing compound. Came out ok I think.

Took out my brand new dremel and started by making room for my new RS240 radiator.


Then cut the holes for the radiator.



I had to adjust some of the screw holes again because I messed that part up in the template, but I made the holes wide enough that some misalignment didn't matter. And this is the bottom of the case, so functionality was the only thing that mattered. So, circles aren't perfect. That actually takes some time on a dremel, so it wasn't worth the hassle.

I had to cut the radiator holes out of alignment with the fan grill already there. This is because my PSU extends slightly past the rack and doesn't allow clearance for a radiator to line up with the pre-existing screw holes. In addition, I had to move the radiator forward (on the Y axis) slightly because the fittings would be blocking some vital PSU cable connections.

I covered the holes with some cheap fan filters from Amazon.



This time I decided to go with straight distilled water and silver. Instead of a silver coil, I went with silver plugs, to replace the worn plastic ones on my 120 rad.





(I also spraypainted the back of the crossfire cable)

And then, I put everything back together and took a shitty cell phone pic



Then a little better pic.



So, overall, it's an improvement to the original setup. I wasn't patient/brave enough to start removing PCI slots to paint them, and likewise I decided to leave the mobo heatsinks as is.

I recently replaced all the fans with Gentle Typhoons, because I didn't like running sleeve bearing fans horizontally like that.

And as I said earlier, I got rid of the crossfire setup and now have a single 7970, but I was too lazy to break out the lights and backboard to take a new photo. Maybe the next upgrade/mod.