Testing the Kit
Kit Testing:
At this point I was still a bit hesitant about making that final leap from air-cooled to watercooling. It's not that I was scared, but it's a big step when you do it for the first time, jamming lots of liquid-filled tubing and gear into your PC. Agg suggested setting up the kit somewhere outside the case, connecting it all up and checking that it was all working and not leaking, before re-assembling it inside the case. This seemed like a good idea, so I cleaned up some of the bench space in my bathroom and started laying out parts, as well as hooking up a power supply to power the pump.
The first thing I noticed is how difficult it is to get the hoses onto the barbs on the various components. Without using some form of lubricant (no snickering) it's almost impossible, but the two suggestions of dipping the end of the hose into some hot water for 20 seconds and some liquid hand soap on the barb made things fit a lot more easily. Also, don't do what I did a couple of times and leave the clamps sitting on the bench, rather than actually threading them onto the hosing first.
After connecting all the hosing, I arranged the radiator with its hose points at its top, so it could self-bleed (remove air bubbles), and put the reservoir at the highest point in the system so that all air would gather there. Air in a watercooling system is A Bad Thing as it reduces the cooling efficiency of the system.
I checked the circuit one last time, filled the reservoir with coolant, and hotwired the power supply (so I can turn it on without a powerswitch, no, I'm not going to tell you, google for it, OCAU is not responsible for you killing a power supply or yourself) and hit the switch on the wall.
The water pump gurgled to life and instantly drained the reservoir, which it's supposed to do, so I quickly switched it off, and refilled the reservoir. For those following along at home, you do this over and over until there's no large sections of hosing left empty of coolant. It takes about 5 minutes and it's actually kind of interesting to see how the pump 'charges' the circuit with each 'load' of coolant.
Finally, I got to the point where the system was pretty much solid with opaque, light green liquid, which had lots and lots of air bubbles in suspension. This isn't great, but with a properly setup circuit (reservoir being at the top, remember?), all the air will filter to the top of the reservoir and the coolant in the circuit will slowly be purged of bubbles. You might want to tap and rotate the various components while the pump is running, so that bubbles will dislodge and be carried to the reservoir by the coolant.
 
While all this is going on, the only way to tell that the system is running is by the way the coolant in the reservoir is bubbling and roiling about. With the pump resting on a small adhesive pad provided with the kit, the whole setup is silent.
I let the system run like this for about 12 hours, then checked for any leaks or other problems. Luckily there were none, so I could get ready to install it in the case itself.
I drained as much of the coolant as possible into the bathroom basin for later re-use and began disassembling the kit. It was relatively easy, and I didn't have to disconnect all the hoses, just the ones that stopped installation.
FYI, the hose clamps are pretty damn fiddly to open, so make sure you clamp it only when you're certain you won't want to remove it any time soon. I'm actually pretty sure the gauge of hosing included is tight enough to stop any leaks anyway, but it would stretch over time, and of course it's good to have backup.
After a bit of swearing at the clamps, it was time for...
|
