MountingImpatient as I am, I find reading any manual a big waste of time ;) but in this case I quickly backtracked and took a look in the well illustrated 24 pages thick (thin?) booklet. Just making sure I don't skip any more steps (like placing the thermal probe on the CPU jacket) and especially for connect the electrical wiring correctly.
For starters, you have to find out how long the tubing needs to be and cut it to the right length. Then put the tubes on the water jackets, feed them thru the slot interface, close the clamps and part 1 is finished. Sounds easy, but it's been a long time since I heard myself swearing like this.
The clamps are a real pain in the ass, although closing those looks really easy but in fact in some positions you need four hands (thx JMke) and even then you're likely to destroy them. I solved this by rushing of to a local car parts dealer and buying those good old clamps you can tighten with a screwdriver.
After connecting the tubes, it's time to put the CPU jacket (isn't it shiny btw?) on your CPU as well as any other optional jackets or hard disk coolers.
On the next picture you can see the CPU jacket mounted on an AMD CPU, but rest assured that you don't have to buy any other retention modules to make it fit on a socket 423/478. Every piece needed for mounting on any possible main board is included with the jacket!
Place your main board back on its tray and put it in the case. The slot interface uses just one pci slot so installing this is very easy. For the next part the manual comes in handy: hooking all the wires up.
You'll find 6 headers on the interface: one for power, just connect this to an empty power outlet of your cpu, one for the thermal probe (which you really should have installed by now ;) ), one that goes to the power switch on your main board, one that connects to the power button on your case and two connectors for additional fans. "Why are there so many connectors?" I hear you ask.
Well, engineers @ Koolance aren't stupid: for powering the pump on a home build system you often need 220/110V, forgetting to power the pump at the same time as your pc will cause a disaster if left running like that for an extended period of time. Not so with Exos’ system, the pumps run on 12V and thanks to the electronics on the slot interface they always starts up together with your system.
Connecting the inlet and outlet tube to the cooling unit is a breeze thanks to the two quick release nozzles that fit right into the build-in reservoir/pump.
Next we start filling and bleeding the system. This one is easy, just turn the cooling unit upside down, open the refill tap with a coin and empty the coolant pack into the reservoir. Probably the whole content won't go in there but don't worry, it will shortly! Close the refill tap again and connect the external power cable to the interface. Then hotwire your power supply (pins 4 & 6, usually green and black wire) with the included jumper wire. The PSU powers up, together with the pumps and starts bleeding the system. After two or three minutes, the level in the reservoir might have dropped so you'll need to add the remaining coolant.
This is also a good time to check for leaks, let her hum along for 15 minutes just in case... After this time, you can remove the jumper wire again, connect your main board wires, pci cards etc back the way it was and close your case.
By now, the day has shortened with one hour, unless you didn’t go to the car parts shop to buy some decent clamps. The urge to power up the pc is growing and growing so what are you waiting for? Lets hit that power button and continue to the next page.
The clamps to secure the tubing could be easier to close