Step 3: Connect the hardware and fill the system:

While I had the motherboard tray removed (to mount the water pump power connector.) I took a moment to install an engineering sample of the new Tweakmonster Northbridge Cooler to do some testing. It fits on the EPoX 8K3A+ perfectly, and looks darn good also. The Danger Den Maze3 water block can also be seen here sitting atop the AMD Athlon MP 1800+ chip that I am running @ 1800mhz. This Danger Den water block performs very well, and looks very nice at the same time. The second picture from the left shows the backing plate that I fabricated to go behind the ZIF socket and reinforce the CPU area of the motherboard, as the pressure from the water block mounting springs can sometimes warp the board in this area. This simple device prevents that from happening while also allowing me to exert more pressure onto the top of the CPU. Why would I want to do that? In my experience, I have found that I can get lower CPU temps if I apply more pressure to the waterblock/CPU interface. Pressure that would otherwise severely warp the motherboard, and so the backing plate is necessary. You must be very careful when doing this, though, and I highly recommend the use of a CPU Spacer for added protection from breaking your processor by accident.

With everything in place, it's time to connect everything with hose and check the system for leaks!

The coolant hose I chose was also supplied to me by Cooltechnica. It is called ClearFlex 60 Premium Tubing, and is supposedly just as good as it's more expensive counterpart TYGON R-3603. I was impressed with it's thick-walled construction and it's ease to bend and shape without kinking. Very nice stuff. The plastic hose clamps I used are easily installed and removed without the need for a screwdriver and work well to keep everything held together.

After all the hoses were connected, the system was filled for a 'test-run' and deemed leak-free after running non-stop for 24 hours. I then drained the plain water and filled the system with a mixture of distilled water, Zerex Racing Super Coolant, and some UV dye which gave the coolant the crazy looking color you can see in the far right picture.

I then reinstalled all the drives and reconnected the power cables, but I was not finished yet...there were a couple other cosmetic additions I wanted to make!