Product Showcase CPU cooling (installation)

With the back-plate and mounting pins installed we can now place a drop of included thermal grease (TIM) on the CPU and put the cooling block in place. EK includes a small tube of pretty good TIM, so you can use that.
 

Installing the CPU block is nothing more than lining it up with the mounts and securing four thumbscrews + springs. These have spring tension. Simply turn them until you feel they cannot go any further. This can be a little hard going, don't be afraid to use some grips for a couple of turns but do make sure they can't turn any further.
  

The fan header cable here is now connected to the motherboard. The rest of the wires leads out from the Radiator.

You can now connect the tubing loop. By pressing the QDC 'button' the plastic insert with rubber balloon can be removed, you then connect it to your loop, it's a male/female style of connection so you cannot go wrong there. Since it is a disconnect, the chances of coolant oozing out of there are pretty much NIL, however, connect it above a towel, as if for whatever reason a single drop of coolant would fall onto your motherboard PCB... well you don't want that. Better safe than sorry right?

You connect the SATA power cable to the radiator connector, one fan wire from the radiator HUB leads to the CPU FAN, and as mentioned there is one wire for the LED on the CPU block. Mind and be careful with that one. The connector used here is not a standard FAN connector and you could easily reverse and short it. I think EK needs to address that! Take a good look, the way I connected it is the right way.

And yeah, that's basically it, installation wise. This unit installed inside a chassis would look tremendously good being all black in design and with the lack of many cables. We like it very much. For the initial part of this article we test the CPU only.