Installation

Hardware

Installing my hardware in this case was a breeze because there was so much room to move the components around in. To start off with I installed my motherboard which is a GIGABYTE P35C-DS3R based on the P35 Northbridge. It's standard ATX form factor and installation was easy. I just put the back plate on the motherboard and the brass standoffs in all the right holes and installed it.

The motherboard tray in the 3D Mercury aren't removable, but that didn't cause a problem for me because there was so much room inside the case for maneuvering the motherboard into position. The spacious interior of this case makes installing any piece of hardware a breeze.

Besides being larger than your normal case, both height and depth wise, it's also 10% wider than a standard case. This is really nice because it gives you more options when it comes to cable management and cooling installation options. Further improving room conditions inside the case is the fact that GIGABYTE hasn't left any room behind the motherboard tray. The fact that the motherboard tray is fixed almost on the back side panel means that less space is wasted in the main chamber. This does, however, create a minor problem for the user and that is cable management because you can't hide any connectors behind the motherboard tray (there is not even enough room for a Molex connector laying flat against it!), however, I can't see this becoming a real issue with this case because it's so large that you can easily stuff your excess cables in a 5.25" drive bay.


The finish of the edges on this chassis is immaculate. I didn't find any sharp edges. All of the edges that a normal user might come into contact with feature a bent aluminum edge which is nice and skin friendly.


Above you can see the hard drive cage with my two normal drives installed. Even with the hard drives installed right underneath each other there is still enough space between them to allow air to pass by. This is quite important if you plan on filling the drive cage up with Western Digital Raptors or other high performance disks.


The two 120 mm fans at the back of the case are quite close to the socket of your motherboard. The fans are mounted with anti vibration grommets helping to reduce the noise transmitted from the fans.


As you can see on the picture above there is plenty of space around the socket of my motherboard. The PSU is mounted above the motherboard, but they don't interfere with each other’s installation because there is about 10 cm of clearance between the edge of a ATX motherboard and a standard form factor PSU.

Water cooling

Installing the water cooling was a relatively simple operation in this case, but it can still be tricky if you aren’t used to handling water cooling. I definitely recommend to go through the manual to everyone who is not familiar with water cooling to ensure proper installation.


In order to see what the contact was like between the water block and the CPU I applied some Arctic Silver 5 to the surface of the water block and then mounted the block. The water block itself was quite easy to install. All I had to do was put a back plate on my motherboard and screw the four spring mounted screws in place.


Immediately after installation I pulled off the water block to see what contact was like between the block and my CPU. As you can see on the pictures above the contact between the CPU and water block was close to perfect. The thermal paste was evenly spread out from the center out and only left a paper thin amount at the center of the core. When screwing the water block's screws in place I tightened them up diagonally which helps to ensure a good fit and equal distribution of pressure. Due to the way the mounting system is made, the water block is slightly off centered compared to the CPU socket, but it’s still centered enough to cool the CPU properly.

After this little test I pulled off the water block and started to fill up the system. In order to prevent damage to my hardware I unplugged everything I had installed in the case and hot-wired my PSU with a small paper clip. All you do is short-circuit green and a black cable on the 24-pin ATX cable, this enables the PSU to start up without being hooked up to a motherboard.

As with any water cooling system you should bleed the system before use. With the PSU hot-wired I filled the reservoir to about 80% of its full capacity and then started the PSU making the pump turn on. It only took about a second or two before the low water level alarm came on and then I shut down the PSU. It's all the process of filling the reservoir up to about 80-90% of its full capacity until every piece of the water system is free of air. It took me about six refills in order to get like 95% of the air out of the system. In order to get the last small air pockets out of the system I gently tipped the case from side to side forcing air bubbles stuck in tubes and in the cooling head to escape. After doing this there were still some small bubbles of air left inside the tubing, to get rid of those I gently struck the tubes with the tip of my finger with the vibrations causing the air bubbles to lose their grip of the tube. When all the air was out of the tubes I topped off the water level and started leak testing. I left the system running for four hours with paper tissue around all the fittings and at the lowest point in the system. After four hours without any leaks I plugged off power and hooked up everything inside the case.