Gigabyte 3D Galaxy Water Cooler    

     By following the instructions in the users guide almost to the letter, we come to installing the water pump/reservoir combination unit. I say 'almost' because the instructions would have us cutting the hoses to their required length before installing the rest of the hardware. Sure, without installing the hardware it is possible to get a rough estimate, and if that's fine with you then by all means - go ahead. I chose not to pre-cut any hoses but to install all of the hardware first, then go back and cut hoses.

     Obviously a pump has to have power and this pump will use existing 12 volt power to operate. There is a special plug that will be connected into the reservoir side of the unit. This plug contains the safety switch and power leads for the unit.

     The safety switch is nothing more than a 2-pin lead that spices into the existing Power Switch header on the motherboard. When a float inside the reservoir sinks to the bottom, it connects the circuit shutting down the PC. A nice idea, but if the coolant level gets that low, more than likely its because of a leak. Still, it's a very good idea and is implemented very well.

     The 3D Aurora enclosure has a set of holes tapped into the bottom of the enclosure which line up with holes on the bottom of the pump to secure the pump and reservoir unit into the enclosure. The size of the pump and reservoir is going to greatly impact the expansion of the computer. For instance, for demonstration purposes, I have used an Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe inside the 3D Aurora enclosure. With the pump and reservoir installed, there will be NO way to install an SLI Video card configuration with full size nVidia graphics cards. Of the three PCI slots, only one will be completely unobstructed, the bottom two can be used, but only with small form factor cards. This will be shown in greater detail once the whole system is assembled.