Water Cooling Basics - Installing

Installation is fairly straightforward. Basically it’s like putting new coolers on all your parts.

First I will start with the video card. Start by removing the stock heat sink or any other cooler you may have put on the card. For my 6800, it was as simple as removing the screws from the back mounting bracket on the back of the card. The next thing I did was figure out which holes to use. If you have a generic mounting block, this may be harder than you think. After getting it in the holes and through the card, you need to secure it. This cooler used a back plate like the stock cooler and some nuts. Make sure the barbs are pointing away from the AGP/PCIe connector. Don’t forget the thermal adhesive.

Next is the CPU block. The Northbridge works basically the same way, so I’ll cover them both here. Like the video card, the first thing to do is remove the old coolers. If your new blocks need the plastic CPU heat sink holder removed, then your next step is to remove it. For the Abit Ai7 and many other boards it just requires a pinch of the tabs and it will fall off. This particular block requires four screws to go up in the holes where you removed the heat sink holder. All that is left is lining up the screws to the holes and tightening them down. The Northbridge is done nearly the same way. The Intel boards use spring like hook and eye connectors. The way it will be connected is similar to the way the stock cooler was attached.

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