Gigabyte 3d Galaxy 2 Liquid Cooling System Review

Lets have a closer look at the contents inside the plastic bags we find all kinds of clamps heatsinks screws springs an arrangement of retention clamps hose pass-through PCI slot covers and a pump starting system thing ;) and my favorite a special filling cap for the coolant.

Lets go in detail about the various components, I first want to have a look at the splitter. First thing that comes to mind is WHY? A splitter? The idea isn’t bad if it wasn’t for the fact that water flowing usually goes trough the part with gives the least resistance, now I know the splitters can be used for add-ons for this kit but if there going to decrease the diameter of hose used I can see a bottleneck, personally id rather have seen a few Y or T hose connectors, but you can leave out the splitter altogether like I did.

Next up is the water pump / reservoir, the reservoir itself is made of a hard plastic and it has a filling / bleeding screw cap at the top, all water will go straight to the pump and will be introduced into the system via the bottom fitting.

The floater inside the radiator is hocked up internally to the pump as a failsafe, remember the pump starting system thingy I talked about well that’s where the magic happens ;) the small starter box is connected to the molex plugs of your power supply, you connect your pc case power button lead into the starter box and the other lead of the box onto your motherboards power on connector, leading into a failsafe mechanism, which will switch off  your pc when the fluid level drops below a critical point.Which is also very handy if you forgot a hose clamp or anything in that matter. (most early watercooling users know the feeling of forgetting a hose and powering on the pump :X )

There are only 2 things I don’t like about the pump/reservoir  combo and that’s is the fact that is has a hard plastic fitting instead of a metal screwing fitting, this just seems more prone to breaking, and the fact that you cant get near the pump without wrecking the reservoir, I always love to get to the moving parts of pumps for maintenance if needed and most important for extra anti vibration padding, as installing this kit I noticed some feedback of the pump vibrating into the case chassis.

Included with the kit is a bottle of coolant and if we follow the descriptions it’s a sort of antifreeze / anticorrosion mixture to prevent any algae and corrosion when using different metals (wich should be avoided at all time).

Funny side note if you read the directions the last line of the product description it contradicts itself I quote “In addition, this product is an environment-protection product, and it is safe to use.  Only to discover that a few lines underneath it says “If the product accidentally comes in contact with eyes and skin, please flush the areas with clean water immediately. If the product is accidentally swallowed please seek medical treatment at once” I thought it was safe ?…. darn I was just feeling thirsty ;)
On a side note this fluid is not UV reactive instead the hose used is blue UV reactive.

Next up is the Mosfet cooling fan, this 80mm blue LED fan can be snapped on the cpu waterblock when its installed, to provide some airflow to cool the surrounding mosfets around the cpu socket with otherwise would get some flow by the use of a normal heatsink, now I can hear people saying but wait a minute I got one of those things with my motherboard, well yes so did I but it dint fit… I’ll show you later on in the review.