Mass Effect 3 - NZXT Switch 810 Build by mybadomen

Mass Effect 3 - NZXT Switch 810 Build by mybadomen (David Lane)

Project log: Here

Game-themed PC modding projects have produced some of the best feats of eye-candy, innovation and inspiration we've seen in this community of ours. It's not surprising, though, that you generally need a good game to create the kind of inspiration required to undertake an extensive mod or scratchbuild - what better game than Mass Effect 3 to base your project on? That's exactly what forum user mybadomen, aka David Lane has done and thrown plenty of racey looks and water-cooling awesomeness for good measure. This is David's account of how Mass Effect 3 - NZXT Switch 810 Build came into being...

Hi, my name is David Lane or better known in the Overclocking / modding Community as MybadOmen. I have been modding everything from Cars, Motorcycles, Boats, RC Cars etc. You name it - at one point in my life I have modded it.

I went to school for Auto and Machine Shops and graduated with Honours, then got ASE Certified at Wenthworth Intstitute (Automotive Service Excellence) and opened my own shop at the very early age of 17. After becoming successful at that, after nine years time I got bored of it and moved into the semiconductor industry which was a whole new challenge for me. That’s where I met my friend named Elvis. Yes that his real name but his surname isn't Presley, in case I got you excited.


The words he said to me changed my life completely. He said “Benchmarking a PC is like drag racing, and overclocking is like running NoS”.

Seeing I was a hot-rod fanatic and speed demon I was hooked on PCs immediately, and built my first liquid cooled PC, which was based around one of the first single core 64 bit AMD CPUs. I remember the tubing was the size of a straw back then and RAM cost more then an arm and a leg is worth.

Now that you know a little about my history how did MybadOmen come out of nowhere, with three award-winning PCs in a row?

Well the first build that I competed with and won Best Modded NZXT Phantom for was named 'Requiem'. It was called that because I just lost my brother this year who also was a PC enthusiast just like me, and he was only three years older then me.

I didn’t know how to deal with the pain so i started modding like crazy and I still couldn’t find peace. Next I came out with a build named 'Venom'. That blew up everywhere. It won Mod Of The Month right away, and was featured on tons of websites. Loads of articles were written about it. After receiving this attention, an NZXT rep liked my build, and gave me an email to contact the company.

They wanted a phone conference, and to make a long story short, the decision to Mod a NZXT Switch 810 to the theme of Mass Effect 3 came out of that call, along with my very first sponsor. Others followed right after: Primochill, EKWB, Mnpctech, Mayhem’s, Plextor, Modsmart, atxpcrepair and DaFrontlineTrooper. So with all that being said, let's get to the Mass Effect build itself. I started with a Plain NZXT Switch 810 (Black) right out of the box.

My plan to make this build unique was that I wanted the cooling to go through the roof of the build through Primochill tubing and be on display as it flows. The idea was to have Myahem’s Red Pastel coolant on one side, and his Ice White Pastel on the other side. This ended up being a lot more of a challenge then I imagined. I will explain more as we get to those parts.

Here are my Mass Effect 3 - NZXT Switch 810 build specs:

• CPU: Intel i7-2700k runs 5Ghz 24/7 stable but can bench with it at 5.3GHz
  
• Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Pro Z68 Gen3
  
• RAM: 4 Gig Corsair Dominator GT's @ 2136MHz 9.11.9.27 1T (i think)
  
• GPUs: 2 Powercolor (Reference) 6970s @ 1000/1500
  
• PSU: NZXT Hale90 1000w
  
• SSDs: 2 128Gig Plextor M3 Pro series in RAID 0 (Over 1000mbs)
  
• Case NZXT Switch 810

Cooling:

• EKWB on everything - RAM, CPU, both GPUs plus RAM plates on the GPUs
  
• 2 EKWB DCP4.0 Pumps
  
• 1 EKWB XTC 420 Rad
  
• 1 EKWB XTC 280 Rad
  
• 2 10" EKWB 8 port advanced tube reservoirs
  
• 1 EKWB dual loop Spin Res.
  
• Mayhem's Light Red Pastel coolant
  
• Mayhem's Ice White Pastel coolant
  
• Mayhem's red dye
  
• Primochill red see through tubing
  
• Primochill clear tubing
  
• 12 NZXT 140mm FZ Series fans
  
• 1 Sentry Mix fan controller.
  
• 1 Antec Veris Premier Multimedia Station
  
• Bunch of little Parts from Mnpctech including molding, a sheet of Di Noc and some of the stuff I didn’t use yet or haven’t decided where to fit it. He sent a lot!
  
• 50+ ekwb compression fittings and adapters.
  
• Also some Primochill Ghost fittings in places.

And tons of other stuff, including five two foot x two foot sheets of 3M Carbon Fiber Dinoc. So with all that, I started with a plain NZXT Switch 810 (black) right out of the box.