Gigabyte 3d Galaxy 2 Liquid Cooling System Review

Let’s check out the CPU block itself.  It is a basic copper watercooling block with loads of pins to increase the effective cooling surface.  The top again is made of a kind of hard plastic, and again with solid hard plastic fittings running side to side, now again the same remark about the block as I did for the pump, it has no loose fittings, which seems more prone to snapping and cracking when using other clamps than the ones provided. Also the placement side to side looks like something that will bite us in the ass further on.  I much rather see the fitting on top like 99% of the rest of the blocks available.

The bottom of the block reveals the cooling surface protected by a sticker to prevent scratches but mainly from fingerprints and corrosion, the surface looks smooth but you can clearly feel scratch marks with your fingernails so it’s not a smooth base it could use some lapping to level it.

And last but not least the radiator itself.  Now here is something they thought about… or well… on the housing side that is.

The radiator is housed in a nice shroud that housed a 120mm fan and overall construction is very sturdy.  The way this kit is designed is that you can use it without modifying your computer housing, so they have opted to used an extrernaly mounted radiator, using your standard-performing two-pass radiator.  If you like you can dismantle the housing and use the radiator internally but you might end up modding your case a little.

Now here is one little big flaw they didn’t think about; they have used an aluminum radiator… which means if your coolant isn’t up to spec (or is contaminated) the copper block and aluminum radiator will eat each other through galvanic corrosion.  This will end up in a defective radiator and heavily corroded copper water block.  The same thing happened to me on a few older model blocks (see the results here).

Luckily they replaced the old series by new ones with Acetal/Delrin tops preventing the galvanic corrosion.