Excruciating Details

When I say 'excruciating detail', I mean an opportunity to show you even more pictures.  Behold, a feast for the eyes.

Now the flash used for the photo's really doesn't do the photo any justice. But that is a  regular Octopus's Garden, eh?  It's an undersea playground in there.  The attention to detail is the first thing.  They painted the bottom panel and even matched the color of the case to the mesh on the wiring.  Nice. 

The fish on the reservoir is actually a little jarring, given the rest of the Neptune is all airbrushed goodness.  I almost expected to see a deep-sea diver floating in the tank.  Which, now that I think about it, would have made an awesome flow meter.

This is where I started, just press the START button and it fires right up.  Once the shock of the Neptune starting subsides, the first thing you notice is the lights.

Ah, the money shot.  Peer into its depths, be lost in the abyss.  The nymphs are calling.  Noise.  Vibration.  Windows Vista.  And then you hope the water is flowing.

I didn't get a good shot of it, but the water pump is a Danger Den/Laing D5 mated to a Koolance nozzle base.  I'm not up on my water pumps, but with 1/2" Tygon tubes, it moved a lot of water.  If it makes any noise, you'll never hear it over the radiator fans.  Also note the compression fittings throughout. 

SmoothCreations shipped us the Neptune fully filled with coolant.  I was prepared to fill the system, but when I saw it came with everything pre-filled, I nearly had a heart attack.  Yikes.  I think it feels a little bit risky, and I went through the system checking for leaks.  SmoothCreations has had a rough time with shipping methods in the past, and the Neptune did encounter some pretty rough sailing on its way to the lab.  When we unpacked the Neptune we found that the Koolance/D5 pump came off its mount and was rattling around inside.  But since they stuffed the insides with styrofoam, the scuffs on the radiator seem to be the extent of the damage.

It's not clear if something other packing material like Instapak would be a better choice than chunks of foam padding and styrofoam, but the Neptune arrived otherwise well protected in its doubled box container.

The next big fish in the Neptune are the twin BFG Tech GTX280 in SLI (actually only one is BFG Tech branded, the other is an nVidia reference board, confirmed with Everest), with the Danger Den waterblocks.  The bulk of the heat in the cooling system is coming from these.  They are shiny.

The CPU is the heart of the beast, and of course it is water cooled.