Arrival

The kit arrived last night, and I got after it. The packaging was great, and UPS got it here without any obvious damage being done to the box.

It was well organized, and fairly easy to unbox, minus the peanuts.

There were no missing parts, and in no time I was ready to get rolling.

The acrylic parts were wrapped in a foam sheet and protected on one side by a film. The unprotected side appeared to be fine. To avoid scratches, I laid a towel out.

The directions were straight forward, and seemed to flow through logically ordered steps. The color-coded baggies were a blessing.

I was fearful about over-tightening, so I did everything finger-tight, meaning I considered screws set when I couldn't tighten them any more using just my fingers turning the screwdriver.

Some of the holes didn't line up with the non-Puget parts, but something tells me this is due to lax standards by their vendors rather than their laser-cut parts.

I did a little cleaning up of the cabling by heat shrinking the pump's wires. I wish I would have done this BEFORE installing it.

All the barbs and connectors were provided and seem to be of high quality.

Prepping the radiator was easy. I just removed a little residual protective film and installed the included feet.

Installing the fans wasn't difficult, but was time consuming. Be sure to plan this out it terms of flow direction, fan position, wiring, etc.

I decided the have the fans push air through the radiator.

Then, after dropping in the standoffs (hand-tight, no tool), on went the motherboard.

And then I got the tank out. I'm not happy with the tank. As opposed to the Puget acrylic, the Eclipse plastic feels thin and potentially brittle. What do I mean by potentially brittle? When you tap the Puget acrylic, it feels solid and heavy. Tap the tank plastic and it feels like it may be thin and light. It may also be easy to scratch, because it came out of the box with a scuff in the upper right corner, and long half-moon scratch on the inside, front-facing wall.

These flaws were easy to notice, but impossible to photograph. Amazingly, Puget has already resolved this issue for me by initiating an RMA. While I wait for the resolution to arrive, I will keep working on this:

I'm still excited, but anxious about the next tank.