Installing the Koolance CPU-300-V10 water blocks was one of the hardest parts of the entire build, but not through any design failings by the manufacturer themselves. Additional adaptors are required to mount the blocks onto a Xeon CPU socket, and instead of sending the Xeon/Prestonia-type brackets  I needed, the usually reliable Tekheads actually sent two of the Xeon/Nocona style brackets instead. They are very similar, so I can see how the mistake was made, but the differences become extremely clear when I tried to attach them to my Prestonia motherboard... It looked for a while as if the project might be scuppered almost before it began, but some investigation suggested that the brackets from my previous heat sinks might be the right height to mount the Koolance blocks as well. I mixed and matched as appropriate, and as I gingerly tightened down the ratcheting thumbscrews that hold the entire assembly together it was clear that it was clear that it was going to work. A long sigh of relief was breathed, I can tell you...

One important fact to note is that the current Koolance documentation is written for the older PC3-720 series, with the motherboard mounted in the conventional orientation. The Lian Li cases that the 726/736 models are based on mount the motherboard upside down and facing the right-hand side of the PC, which means that when the documentation says that the output from the pump is on the side of the radiator housing closest to the motherboard, it is wrong.

I'd ordered a number of different water blocks for the video card, as I couldn't afford to leave a vacant PCI slot next door to it and it wasn't clear exactly how much clearance each of the designs would need. All three have the same rated 180W capacity, with the only real difference being the arrangement and style of the connectors. In the end I used the oldest model, the GPU-180-H06, which has the lowest profile of all and slipped in neatly without causing any problems with the neighbouring Adaptec DuoConnect USB2/Firewire card.

The final step was to fit the bundled RAMsinks onto the video memory chips, but I actually removed most of those again later on to provide clearance for various hoses and wires - not really an issue, as they are only generally necessary if the video card is being enthusiastically overclocked or if case ventilation is poor. I'm not a big fan of overclocking (I'd rather just buy a faster component, on the whole!) and in spite of the system being nominally purely water cooled I do actually have four 120mm fans - even though they're very low flow units the fingertip test confirms that there is certainly enough air movement to keep the passively cooled components comfortable enough.

Unfortunately my early Maxtor SATA drives don't seem to have the embedded thermal monitoring that more recent devices have, so I can't tell what temperature they're operating at or even whether the drive coolers are reducing or increasing the temperature. The latter is not out of the question, as the water passing through the drive coolers has just come from a pair of 3GHz Xeon CPUs - but they certainly look good and as for the other, well, that's what RAID is for!

There was a lot of frothing and bubbling as the air rose out of the system, and I kept adding more coolant as the various modules gradually filled up. The hard disk coolers seemed to trap a lot of air, with more appearing every time I laid the case down on its side to work on part of it, and one of the CPU blocks developed a little bubble in one corner that took ages to escape, but with patience and some gentle rocking from side to side everything eventually settled down very nicely. Anxious inspection every hour or so revealed no sign at all of leaks, drips or oozes, so I left the pump running overnight and called it a day.