Sometimes it starts with luggage. In this case it all starts with a box. Or two. Or about a half dozen. This is the box that started it.


Before we open the box, lets look at some naked parts:


The naked shell of the Mountain Mods U2-UFO. The OCZ Silencer is sitting in there chilling out.


Here's my storage media. The HDDs are already attached to the MM HDD brackets.

Okay, back to the unboxing:


Taking a look inside these boxes reveals a trove of water cooling goodness. On the table is (from left to right) the Koolance Liquid, XPCS reservoir, SB cooler, case lighting, nozzles, Danger Den IONEs, Zalman fan controller, and a kitchen knife.


A close up of the IONEs. They're pretty hefty for a one piece water block.


A shot of the Zalman front panel controller. It took one night to sleeve up the wiring included with this unit. It looks MUCH better internally when the wires are sleeved up.


The Evercool VGA cooler. This will be used on the 780i MCP chip.


A shot of the Swiftech pump & clamps, the Thermochill PA 120.3 Radiator with gaskets, and some sleeving. The butane soldering tool is hiding in there too. (:

Okay, enough unboxing


In this photo I'm beginning to align my radiator fans on the Thermochill 120.3 shroud. Initially I wasn't going to go with the shroud, but I changed my mind when I got a closer look at the radiator:


Yeah, that's right, the Thermochill is bent on the back side. This kink renders the screw holes on the top right half of the radiator useless. Unfortunately, I ordered from NCIXUS.com. They have a strict no return policy on water cooling hardware. But they also have the best prices. I guess I know why now. Grr. So with the shroud I must go!


After measuring how much wire on each of the three fans I needed, I moved on to sleeving. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of my awesome wiring and sleeving skills. It's a lot of fun though. The whole time I was building this system I was having a blast. Too bad it's an expensive hobby to have (; In the above picture I am taping the shroud with a 6-32 taper. This is so I don't have to mess around with nuts on the bolts that pass through the front of the case, through the fans, and into the shroud.


Here is the complete radiator assembly mounted to the front of the MM U2-UFO. Yeah, I accidentally installed the middle grill on backwards... I need to fix that sometime... (:


Below is a shot from a naked 8800GTS 512 and of my Q6600: