Zalman Reserator 3 Max AIO Review

Installation

The back plate is nice and easy to install, just slip the four bolts in to the holes that correspond to your motherboard socket type, then hold the bolts in place with the four slide on plastic clips. You can then use the plastic applicator block to attach a two-sided bonding strip that will hold the kit on to the motherboard to ease installation.

Flip the motherboard over and you can see that the only thing showing through are the four little screw holes on the other end of the bolts.

A little trickier to mount was the bracket, this required 8 small screws around the edge of the pump and can be a little fiddly at first, but I’m certain that it will stay firmly in place as a result.

The hardest part was screwing the pump to the motherboard. Since the pump sits directly on the CPU and tends to slide about until you have the first two screws in place, which was no easy task and having someone to assist in this part of the build would be a big help.

Once powered up we can see the fan and the pump light up with a gorgeous blue LED light. The fan cable that runs from the pump looks neat and tidy, almost stealth like thanks to the black cables, the same cannot be said about the brightly coloured cables for the fan, not sure why these two do not have a matching design.