The 3D Galaxy II Liquid Cooling System from GIGABYTE

Introduction:

    Just a few months back, Temujin did a Mega Watercooling Roundup of several kits from a bunch of different manufactures. Oddly enough, GIGABYTE wasn't part of this round with any of their watercooling kits, but that's about to change here and now. What we have here is the GIGABYTE 3D Galaxy II Liquid Cooling System. This system has the ability to be expanded upon due to the included valve system. This allows the end user to add cooling components to other hardware within the system without the messy hassle of disconnecting hoses (which I would call plug and play.) The 3D Galaxy II also has some other nice features like LWP (Low Water-level Protection) and OHP (Over Heating Protection,) along with many other features that will be mentioned in the review.

About the Company:

    GIGABYTE, one of the most well-known IT brands in the industry, started as a motherboard technology research laboratory with the passion of a new young engineers two decades ago. With the vision and insight to the market, GIGABYTE has become one of the worlds largest motherboard manufactures. On top of motherboards and graphics accelerators, GIGABYTE has further expanded its product portfolio to included notebook and desktop PC's, digital home entertainment appliances, networking servers, communications, mobile and handheld devices. GIGABYTE has risen from and eight-man office to a world-class enterprise in the IT industry.

Specifications:

Features:

• Large, pure copper base with unique water path design

• Long-life, quite and powerful ceramic bearing pump

• Low water-level protection (LWP) and over-temperature protection (OTP) (Patent pending)

• Clear blue LED tank for straightforward coolant refilling

• Large aluminum radiator with 4-part water-path design

• Radiator-- easy installation

• Multi-purpose Nano-scale GIGABYTE coolant

• 1/2 inch special UV tubing material allows for extreme angling and flexing

• Fully compliant with MOSFET cooling solution. (Patent pending)

• GIGABYTE excusive 4-way splitter valve design for faster replacement and add new cooling equipment

• PCI rear fan controller

• Free heat sink for memory

• Optimal chassis solution: Gigabyte 3D AURORA Triton and Poseidon series chassis

Packaging:

Retail front

Retail rear

Snug as a bug in a rug

    The retail box for the 3D Galaxy II is bright orange, and can be seen from the next galaxy away. A large window displays the product within, and the carrying handle on top allows you strut your stuff while showing off your package. The contents are secured in foam so nothing can move around inside the box. Ok, now it's time to rip open the box and sort through the gear. There are 26-plus items included with this kit. In order to get a better understanding of what they are, I will go over the main components in the review and some of the other gear in the installation portion.

A Closer Look:

Front

Back

In/Out ports

Blue LED's

    I'm going to start of with the first thing listed in the Quick Install Guide -- the radiator. The radiator is made from aluminum, measures 127x197x64mm in size, and mounts to the rear of the enclosure. The radiator is enclosed in a light blue aluminum housing, along with a 120mm blue LED fan that draws air from the enclosure.

Back

Front

    Next is the pump and tank assembly, which is a combined unit to save some space. The pump tank assembly has some safety features built in to keep thing running fault free. These are LWP (Low Water-level Protection) and OHP (Over Heating Protection), which will shut the system down to protect the cooling system of the computer. A early warning system is included into the assembly as well, consisting of a red LED and buzzer to alert the user that bad things are about to happen. The pump itself uses a ceramic bearing for long life use, around 70000hr (MTBF), and generates about 20dBA of noise. The top of the tank uses a screw-on filler cap that should allow for easy filling.

Top

Bottom

Shiny

    Moving on to the waterblock with MOSFET cooling fan, another combination unit, but this time the parts can be separated. The waterblock is constructed from copper and sports an acrylic top. The inside view of the copper waterblock through the acrylic is unique. What I mean by this is there are over 200 copper pins inside the cooling chamber, and I would say closer to 300 since I was over 100 pins before the half way mark and lost my place counting. Unfortunately, those pins get covered with a metal clip that serves a dual role.

MOSFET fan

Top

Bottom

Blue Led's

    Those roles are to help mount the waterblock to the CPU and the MOSFET Air Cooling Fan. This fan is 80mm in size, and comes mounted to a housing that clips onto the top of the waterblock and has some blue LED's with it. This fan is intended to help cool the gear around the CPU, which tends to be neglected in most watercooling setups.

Valve Front

Valve Back

Side view

Tubing/Springs/Manual

    The next bit of gear is the splitter valves. A set of two valves are included with the kit, and this is where the plug and play feature comes to light. The splitter valves are constructed from Acetal Polyoxymethylene Copolymer, or POM for short, and two of the valves have shut off on them. The main opening to the splitter valve is 1/2" along with the openings to and from the CPU. The other two openings are 1/4" in size and are the ones with the shut off valves on them. The included hose with the kit 1/2" UV reactive with a bluish tint. One length of hose is included and needs to be cut to size during installation. The hose is soft and flexible and two spring like devices are also included, which slide over the hose in areas that may have kinked.

Electrical gear

Mounting gear

Nano scale coolant

    The rest of the gear in this cooling kit includes the wiring for the pumps and fans, a fan speed control module, which includes a PCI bracket with a speed control knob, the mounting hardware for AMD or Intel CPU installation, the mounting gear for the radiator that hangs on the back of the case, and of course a bottle of blue coolant. Eight aluminum heatsinks for the RAM modules are included with thermal grease, cable ties, and Velcro. The only thing missing is some duct tape, bubble gum and an appearance from MacGyver.