How difficult is it to assemble the system and get it working?

It’s all very simple because the system comes to you already assembled. You can shorten the pipes if necessary. Then you insert the fittings into the pipes and secure them with clips.

Then you connect the pipes to the main unit, attach power and fill the system up. The included coolant consists of 94-96% propylene glycol, 3% water and 1-3% additives, but there’s not enough of it in the bottle to fully fill the system. You have to add some distilled water. The system takes in about 1 liter of liquid in total.

The whole assembly and installation procedure is described in the colorful illustrated manual (950KB).

How to mount the water-block on the CPU?

Corsair puts an emphasis on how easily and quickly the water-block can be installed on different types of processors. You don’t have to take the mainboard out of the system case to do that. To mount the water-block on LGA775, insert the plastic poles into the holes around the socket:

Apply some thermal paste on the processor and place the water-block on it. Then put the spongy pad and top it with the X-shaped plate that is hitched to the poles.

The water-block is installed in a likewise manner on Socket 478 except that you don’t use the poles; the H-shaped plate is fastened to the loops in the fastening frame.

Since the water-block is fastened to the standard frame, it can be mounted on any AMD K8 processor (Socket 754, 939, 940 and AM2). You put the identically shaped protective metal plate on the spongy pad and press it down with the bracket, hitching at one side of the frame. The other part of the bracket is hitched to the other side. Then you just secure the bracket with a screw.

It looks more difficult on paper than it is in reality. All the operations are performed easily and quickly with your own hands.