Step1 :The Coolant Reservoir and Radiator:

A coolant reservoir in this system is technically not needed, but it is a nice, simple way to not only fill the system with coolant when the time comes, but also to bleed the system of air quickly. The reservoir I chose is manufactured by Danger Den, and was supplied to me by my buddy Bruce over at Cooltechnica.

Along with the reservoir, I also ordered a bottle of Zerex Racing Super Coolant, and a bottle of UV water dye. While neither of these are required for the system's operation, the super coolant could only help in a small system such as this, and the dye will look damn spiffy flowing through the system when lit up by a couple of black light cold cathodes. More on that later.

The reservoir must be mounted as high as possible in the case as air trapped in the system will move to the highest point and needs to be 'bled' out when we are done setting up. Bearing this in mind, I decided the best place to mount the reservoir would be in front of the radiator, which is also mounted to the top of the case. Now, doing this takes up two 5 1/4 drive slots, but the Digital Doc that I use for fan control is empty on the inside, and I have only 2 other drives in the system....a 48x12x48x Liteon CD burner, and a Creative 52x CD-ROM, so this should not be a problem. I began by laying out the radiator, Digital Doc and the reservoir so I could get a general idea of how they would all fit together, and then I marked the top of the case for taking one of my favorite case modding tools to...my trusty Dremel! I actually used a 1.5 inch hole saw to remove the bulk metal of the hole, and then touched it up with my Dremel. This method gave me a nice, round hole to mount the reservoir through so that only the red cap will be seen outside the case.

Done, and looking good! The radiator I have chosen is a Black Ice PRO that I picked up from Danger Den. It mounts inside the top of the case and sits underneath the120mm Sunon exhaust fan that mounts to the outside top of the case. That should cool the liquid in this system quite well while looking very nice at the same time and staying nice and decently quiet.

With the coolant reservoir and radiator installed, let's move on to the coolant pump!