Although I am familiar with water-cooling, I was a bit reluctant to place a “bowl” of water in my case. You have to remember, electrical components and water aren't the closed friends. So always check and double check for leaks and spills.

Also remember, a pump gets cooled from the water it circulates, so never let the pump run dry, this will overheat the pump, and you will end up with a broken component in your setup. This kind of damage is never covered by warranty.

All components are packed in separate boxes filled with bubble foam, so the risk of damage due to transport is minimal.

Installation is made very straight forward thanks to every items having all components needed attached, so the risk of making mistakes is reduced.

Let's move on to the real work.

The manual is very complete; every thing you have to do is well documented with illustrations and photos. I did not run into any trouble during installation, everything went smoothly.

The components:



The tubing and clamps on the radiator and water block are already installed by default:



These preinstalled items are tested for leaks, and it saves you time during installation, when assembling this kit and make sure that the inlet on the CPU block is in the center. Adding the MCW50 to the loop is quite easy; just make sure you push the tubing all the way in the water block, as stated in the instruction manual. Last but not least, don't forget to place the hold down plate already on the MCW6000™ before completing the loop.

When finished, let the system run for a few hours to see if there aren't any leaks. I used a spare PSU to power the pump, you need to hotwire the PSU to do this (A howto can be found here)

The loop between the components was done in this order:

reservoir >> pump >> radiator >> CPU block >> VGA block >> reservoir.

There are other options, but found this the best way for my connecting all the tubing.




After a few hours of leak-testing (and not finding any leaks) it was time to mount the water block on the CPU. I used my AMD flagship, an A64 FX-55 which operates at 2600Mhz by default. It's not the best overclocker, but it does its job well.

You can use the original A64 retention frame, Swiftech didn't include one in this kit (to lower the cost), but you can always order one if necessary. Use the spring loaded screws to bold the water block down as seen below.





Let's see some performance numbers ->