I figured that while I was at it, I'd throw a couple of tips your way about putting together liquid cooling components.
1. Do not use grease or any other lubricant to ease the process or push/pulling tubing over nipples or flanges. Doing so will contaminate the cooling system. In this case it will probably have no more effect than discoloration, but if you must use something, make it a dab or two of the coolant.
2. Do not use tools such as pliers unless they're extremely well padded. Even then they allow you to apply too much force in the wrong direction making it way too easy to damage components. Instead, use a rag to cover the tubing for added grip. Most people have the strength, but not the gripiness or pain tolerance to force the tubing on. Work gloves with grippy palms are optimal. You won't believe how much of a difference this can make in all sorts of lifting and grabbing applications. I learned about this simple but remarkable trick when I had a moving business back in the day.
4. DON'T SKIP USING CLAMPS, even if you forget to put them on the tube the first time, Pull it off and start again or you WILL have liquid all over the interior. While the connection may seem uber-tight now, heat and pressure will soon loosen it and have coolant leaking all over the inside of the case.
5. Use coolant, or if you simply must use water (it actually dissipates heat better), make sure it's distilled. Otherwise, you'll soon see minerals and other gunk lining the tubes and the same gunk will be reducing the effectiveness of the radiator.
Notice that there's a fan on top. Why liquid cooling if you're going to put a fan on top? Actually, as far as I can tell, it's not actually for anything except to keep air flowing in the case in the proper direction (front to back). It lights up though!
Cheers Jon
P.S.
6. Once you've added liquid and started the machine, leave the cap off for a few minutes so the air bubbles work their way out more quickly with the zero back pressure.
7. You'll need to add more coolant once the intial batch has worked it's way into the tubing and radiator. It took about 800 - 900 milliliters to fill the 3D Mercury.
8. You might want to use a funnel as these bottles have very narrow necks and just in general to reduce spillage.
The Gigabyte coolant is very thin, much thinner than automobile coolant so don't go trying to use the latter without reducing the concentration significantly.
So far the BIOS monitor says the CPU is running at 36 centigrade which is about 5 degrees cooler than with the Zalman. However, don't put too much stock in that. I've seen the monitor jump between boots for no apparent reason. The thermal diodes aren't always as accurate, or interpreted as accurately as you might suppose.
