I ordered the G-Cooler and waited for it. It came in about 4 days, which isn’t bad since it was through UPS and they’re usually pretty slow for me. I opened the packaging and pulled out what I was expecting to be some super-cool device. I was a little disappointed when I finally pulled it out in its entirety – it looked bigger online. This thing is freakin’ puny. I’m not even kidding, I should have read some reviews on it or something, ’cause if I saw it mounted inside of a computer, I would have known what to expect. I’m replacing my sweet heatsink and fan combo with tight blue LED lights in it for this thing? Oh well, I guess I might as well give it a go.

Installation of this water cooler wasn’t too difficult. It would have been a lot easier if I had a different case, but even with mine, it wasn’t too hard. You see, the biggest problem I had with the installation was the fact that this product is meant to bolt onto the back of your computer, where the fans normally reside. With my computer case, since it’s a super-slick Antec Model 4785470548-jjfjdfdfjj-484, the fans in the back were held in place by two pieces of plastic. They were put there in order to be able to change out the rear case fans easily and quickly. Why anyone would need to change their rear case fans quickly, I don’t know, but they were given that ability with this case. Unfortunately, by having these plastic things in it, there were no screw holes in the case for the fans to bolt to, but instead some big square holes that the plastic pieces fit into. As a quick workaround, I used superglue and some metal washers and successfully fit the radiator to the back-inside of my case. In this picture, you can see the remaining superglue after I took off the washers to uninstall the assembly, along with the wire that I used to hold it on. There’s also a picture of one of the plastic things that holds a rear fan in.

To do this installation, it was necessary for me to take out my motherboard since my old heatsink wasn’t fitted onto the motherboard via the spring-n-bolt method. This part kind of sucked because I didn’t really feel like getting that into the whole business, but I already bought the water cooler so I figured that I had to do it. Out the motherboard came, and I placed the mounting piece behind it. I didn’t take pictures of this process because I wasn’t planning on writing a review on it at this point. Anyway, the piece was in place, so it was time to screw on the waterblock. I did so using the spring-n-bolt method and it went through without a hitch. Something that I thought was kind of weird was the fact that the waterblock’s copper slug in it had four areas where it was rather crudely sanded down. I don’t know if this is why the system was in the “Garage Sale” area of CoolerGuys.com or not, but either way, it wasn’t pretty. I just added a little extra thermal grease to fill in the sanded down areas of the copper and slapped it on the CPU. Installation after removal of the motherboard couldn’t have been easier. If I didn’t have to take the motherboard out, I would be able to say that this installation method is much easier than the annoying spring-clip method. (Edit: I took pictures of the thing while I took it out of my computer.)

Something interesting to note at this point: after I got to play with the product, I noticed that it’s very, very cheaply made. It’s like 90% plastic by volume – flimsy plastic at that. It was a little disappointing to see that it wasn’t the quality that I was hoping to be. The sanding on the copper slug was probably the most quality lacking part of the machine, so I’m a little unhappy I didn’t get any pictures, but I assure you, it was lame. If I would have judged the book by its cover at this point, I would have said that this water cooler was just a complete waste of time. Luckily, though, it proved to perform better than it looks.

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