Preparation for any watercooling project is always a somewhat tedious process. Not only does your system have to be torn down and moved to a nice location with plenty of room, but it'll also take about a day of leak testing (perhaps more!) before all things are ready to get going again. Thankfully, Gigabyte has made installing this kit but a matter of placing and securing components, routing tubes, clamping, filling and bleeding. While all these steps may sound overwhelming to the novice, you can rest assured that it's all really rather simple, even more so if you're using one of Gigabyte's own cases.
We started the show with removing the motherboard and stock Heatsinks, bolting down Gigabyte's standard mounting bracket, and then securing the water block to that. After installing the motherboard back into the case along with all manner of cabling and cards, we stowed the pump in the most logical location - butted up against the hard drive cage, then connected that to the CPU water block with a short run of tube.
Next, we ran another length of it out of the case through the pre-routed holes, where the helping hands of a hardware editor held the radiator. After screwing the radiator into place, the Mofset fan was clipped into place, and the final length of tubing came in from outside, heading straight to the pump's outlet. With tubes installed and securely clamped down, it was time to pour the liquid in and start the pump with an auxiliary power supply, so that the main system wouldn't have to go without cooling while we filled up the kit. When the last bubble finally rolled off, it was time to leave the bulk of the system outside the case on some white paper, so to trap any visible leaks. Overall, installing this water-cooling kit on a system which doesn't require removal of the motherboard will probably take you less time than it takes to read this entire review! All in all, that was a pretty darn simple instillation.
