The water loop and test setup:

My test system consists of an Athlon 64 which I not have installed inside a case, let's put the water blocks on the motherboard and VGA card first. I used the Vantec thermal paste that accompanied the kit.

I made the following water circle:

Pump => Radiator => CPU => Chipset => VGA => Reservoir => Pump

The manual advises a slightly different layout, placing the Radiator before the Pump, this leads to water coming to the CPU block straight from the pump, which in some case can result in higher temperatures if the pump is running hot.

Installing the water blocks

Installation of the CPU block is quite easy for the Athlon 64 platform; just put the block on the CPU and secure it with a clip:



Installation of the Northbridge and VGA-block is quite the same but quite a bit more complicated: You have to disassemble the blocks in order to attach the right mounting plate for installation. As pictures say more than words, a visual manual for installation:



Four steps to attach a suitable clip to attach your water block to the motherboard/vga card. First time I see a block where you need to disassemble it to mount it...

With the “hard” part over, only thing which rest me now is to "tube" the Stingray kit, which went almost flawless, except one "hard-to-attach" point:



Attaching the tube to the inlet of the reservoir is a bit hard, because of the restricted space.

It’s time to fill her up, get the coolant and fill that reservoir. You may NOT mix the coolant with water, apparently the coolant has been pre-made. The funnel is not needed to fill you reservoir, as it is big enough, but in case you want to our the coolant back into the original bottle.

Well, everything is in place, time to test for leaks! I suggest you turn the pump on for a couple of hours, you will have noticed by then if there are any leaks...

When the kit starts to run, what happens inside your reservoir is pure magic:


Download/Full Screen - click here

Tested and approved here, time to turn on my computer and run some tests ->