Elluzion - My main goal was to make the ultimate WC case so I would never have to do it again, no matter what they developed in the future. I feel I have done just that and there is nothing this setup cannot handle, no matter how insane or hot it is. Yes, it's overkill today, but will it be in a year?, 5 years? 10 years? Will I EVER have to upgrade the case to handle the technology? I doubt it, and thats the REAL reason I did it. Sure, MB, Video, Memory, waterblocks, cant get away from that, but the case and WC setup, I DARE them to make this obsolete!
And since its such an insane system, I went ahead and built it with the most insane parts available, and this is important, WHEN I bought them. Been buying stuff for a year, waited as long as I could for the main things. Thats why its the QX9650 and the 3870X2's. If I built the ultimate case, then I wanted the ultimate parts in it. If I am not mistaken, the hard drives are the only things that could have been better, and MAYBE the MB, but not when I bought them. No sense in embarrassing the case, now is there....
If I had it to do over I would change the MB to whatever one it is that ASUS makes that is DDR3, dual 16x PCIe slots so that when Xfire does work, both cards would be maxing out in bandwidth. I believe the Maximus is only 16x-8x, I'm not really sure.
Voigts - I had no clue how I was going to put in all the tubing and make it look nice. I didn't think it could be done neatly. I played with the thought of hard piping most of it but decided no, that it was too much trouble and not easily changable. Then when I found the bitspower fittings, well, that decided it for me, tygon all the way. I put the first 2 pieces in thinking to keep each piece as short as possible and not caring about the flow of which part was first, sat back, stared at it for about 30 min, didn't like it and decided to route each loop exactly the same way. Pump - Block - Rad - Res. I'm glad I decided that, it made it easier to look ahead on the routing. But what amazed me more was that it was going in very compactly and looked good, not the jumbled mess I thought it would be. I treated the tubing like I was wiring it, so there is alot more than there could be so it would route together and stay bundled in a neat bundle, splitting off when it needed too. I would say there is about 35 to 40 feet of tubing in there, don't know the exact measurement, all I know is I kept getting to the point of, damn, I need more, order it, put it in, damn, I need more, order it, put it in and on and on and on.
