Gigabyte 3D Galaxy II Watercooling Kit

Product(s): Gigabyte 3D Galaxy II
Provided By: Gigabyte
Price: ~$138.99 USD (~$163.27 CDN) (newegg.com )

Introduction: 

Watercooling, the word alone makes many computer enthusiasts cringe, while the remainder of enthusiasts welcomes the challenge that is watercooling and the advantages it brings. It seems if you ask power-users, half of them will tell you how great watercooling is, while the other half will tell you why you're crazy to watercool your computer.

I personally have never watercooled any of my systems in the past. Back in the days of the Athlon 1400 when almost everyone I knew jumped on the watercooling train, I stuck with my mind-numbing noisy heatsink and fan. That all is going to change, as I'm going to plunge into the world of watercooling with the Gigabyte 3D Galaxy II. This watercooling kit contains everything you need, and prides itself on being a kit for all users.

In the past few years the watercooling crowd has definitely started to die off, with new advances in CPU's that produce less heat, many people have switched back to the old heatsink and fan approach to cooling. Let's see if this kit is going to make us trade in the heatsink and fan for this watercooling kit.

Test System:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
MSI P965 Neo - Provided by Memory Express
XFX 8800 GTX - Provided by Memory Express
2 GB Kit of Crucial Ballistix PC2-8000 - Provided by Crucial
Western Digital 250 gig (16 MB Cache)
Enermax Liberty 500 Watt Powe Supply

What's in the Box:

Front of Box	Back of Box
Accessories	Accessories

Ok, so like I said before, I have never boarded the watercooling train, unlike almost everyone else here at BCCHardware. This kit from Gigabyte is aimed at all computer users, so let's see how a watercooling newbie like myself can handle the installation.

Right out of the box I immediately noticed that there are A LOT of pieces contained in the box, and it really makes you scratch your head about how installation is going to go.

Reservoir/Pump

Back of Radiator

Front of Radiator

Ok, after taking all the pieces out of the box, you realize that everything is pretty straightforward, and you don't find any pieces that you can't figure out where they go.

Heatsink	Coolant
Heatsink Fan	4-Way Splitter Valves

I guess the biggest thing I noticed after pulling all the parts out of the box was that all the components that were included were all of very high quality, I was very impressed. Also the amount of tubing that comes with the kit was more than enough for my entire installation, I had about 3 feet left over in the end, which is nice because I didn't have to cut any corners when installing the tubing and was able to even run a little extra in between the components.