This kit includes a 4-pass Black Ice Pro radiator specifically developed for PC watercooling. This radiator has a lot of cool features such as: a built-in plenum chamber for increased performance and noise reduction, 1/2″ pre-angled inlet/outlet barbed hose connectors, and high-density copper fin configuration for enhanced heat dissipation. This radiator is designed to accomidate a 120mm fan which is the standard for watercooling. It comes in a plain brown box with the screws taped on that are inside of a baggie. It doesn’t really matter what kind of packaging this radiator has, it’s whats inside that counts.
As soon as I opened up the box I was impressed, the paint job on this heater core is astounding. Typically heater cores come straight out of a car so they dont have any paint or much care given to them. This heater core is obviously not out of a car but it uses the same heater core design. Both fittings are professionally welded, however there is not a very good barb on them. The only difference between the front and back of this radiator are the fittings on one side. There are fan mounting holes on both sides of the radiator so you can choose which side you want your fan on, or you can have two fans.
From the side of the heater core you can see that it is fairly thin which means that it will be able to fit places other radiators might not. My previous heater core that I owned years ago was about two times the thickness of this one so I am glad to see they are thinner now. From the top of the radiator you can get an idea of about how wide it is (you could have also seen this from the above pictures.)
The reservoir that I received with this kit is a 5.25″ Bay-Res which installs to a free 5.25″ drive bay in your case. This is a really cool idea which has been out for a short while now. This kind of concept would compliment a clear case nicely and improve the overall look. The reservoir comes packaged in a good amount of bubble wrap which is necessary because it is made of acrylic and could easily crack. Underneath the bubble wrap the reservoir is still protected with some of the adhesive paper that acrylic comes with to protect it. I like that this protection was left on due to the fact that acrylic scratches really easily, not to mention it would get fingerprint marks all over it. You can also see that the mounting hardware is taped to the top of the reservoir in a plastic baggie.
I took the protective paper off of the reservoir and examined the design and quality of it. The reservoir has two elbow barbs on the back of the unit which are used for intake and outtake of water. The reservoir is divided in the middle by a piece of acrylic which separates the in from the out so the flow of water is better, instead of just filling in and flushing out. Overall the reservoir looks pretty good, but we will see how well it works during installation and testing.
