Coolant Refill
This was a bit tricky. First of all, I popped the processor module in place (on bubblewrap and antistatic plastic) and measured out the pipe lengths. It turned out that the return pipe to the radiator from the pump was fine in length, but 7cm needed to come off the feed pipe. I was armed with some sharp scissors, numerous plastic containers for catching runaway coolant and... err...
...a catheter tip syringe. I was happy that it was going to have a much nicer job than what it was originally designed for. :o)
First off, you need to get the radiator higher than the pump block, otherwise all of your coolant will just come rushing out. Also, when moving things around you have to make sure that you never have more than one open end, otherwise your coolant will come rushing out. All this rushing around of coolant isn't great when you're not detaching the block from the processor module, so I attached 'safety j-cloths' to prevent it running down the pipes and dripping onto things that just shouldn't get wet.
I cut the feed pipe 7cm from the radiator and immediately attached the full syringe of coolant (drained from the R120 system that was donating the radiator), which luckily was a perfect fit. If you're interested, I can't tell any difference between the coolant in here and the stuff you can buy from Halfords, so if I was refilling, I'd just use car coolant. The squeezy clips that hold the pipes on are pretty easy to remove with pliers, but don't expect the pipes themselves to come off without a fight. After doing this I was no longer worried about them 'just popping off' inside the computer - in fact, I was more concerned about snapping the mounts off the radiator!
With the syringe attached, the return pipe was removed from the 80mm radiator and attached to the 120mm one. Now I proceeded to gently push the coolant out of the syringe, through the pump block and into the radiator, keeping the open end the highest point in the system to allow air to escape. You will probably need to give the radiator a bit of a wiggle occasionally to free any air bubbles, but eventually you'll get a drop of coolant out of the open mount. It takes more than one syringe to fill it, so three hands would be useful at times!
I also had a spare machine sat next to me during this so that I could power up the pump for a while and shift the coolant around, the aim being that any air should end up at the highest point where I could bleed it out and force more coolant in. If you hear much gurgling, you've got air in there and you'll need to wiggle the pump block and the radiator around until you can get more coolant in. It doesn't take much air to mess things up and it takes a bit of patience to get it all out. Whatever you do, don't shake things too hard though! You'll just create lots of smaller bubbles that are even trickier to get out. Try gently tipping the pump block upside down: that seemed to work pretty well for me.
Don't forget to put the clips onto the pipes before attaching them to the radiator!
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