CritiCool Powerplant Relay Card

Hooking it up

We start by cutting the power cable plug off.  There needs to be plenty of slack so that the Powerplant Relay Card and your mounted pump can be connected.  I’d recommend cutting a foot from the pump.  This provides plenty of length to route the cable out of the way for a clean look.  This done we need to strip the cable’s outer covering to expose the three wires inside.  CriticCool recommends stripping the outer covering back 25mm.  The three exposed wires are power, ground and neutral.  North America and International power cables are colored differently.  See below.

North America Cords

1 = Ground = Green
2 = Hot = Black
3 = Neutral = White

International Cords

1 = Ground = Green with Yellow Stripe
2 = Hot = Brown
3 = Neutral = Blue

Next we will need to strip the wire covers, exposing approximately 6mm of copper wire on each, for connection to the Powerplant Relay Card.  Each connection is numbered and you connect the wires as we noted above in the North American / International wire explanation.

  

Here is a pic of the solder points on the underside of the relay card.  This points out how easily it can be to accidentally get shocked if you stick your hands in your case as much as me.

All that is left to do is to install the Powerplant Relay Card and your water pump.  An open PCI slot should be left immediately above the relay card.  Something I didn’t notice or think about until I installed the product was the utility of the card being cut diagonally allows more room for your pump inlet and tubing. 

Conclusion

The CritiCool Powerplant Relay Card is a must for any water cooling system.  It makes the chances of cooking a chip slim while simplifying the start up of your machine.  The design and installation are straight forward.  The only down side is that no instructions were included.  This was somewhat mitigated with the excellent documentation on the CritiCool website but only mitigated, not excused.  The other issue is running 110 volts into your box.  Touch the wrong thing with your PC under power and you will definitely have trouble.  All things considered, the CritiCool Powerplant Relay Card is a worthy purchase we can recommend to any H2O junkie.  You can find the CritiCool Powerplant Relay card at Sidewinder Computers. 

Pros

• Simplifies powering up of any water cooled system.

• Saves you from modifying your case to deal with a normally powered AC water pump.

• Simple design.

• Ease of installation.

Cons

• No included instructions.

• 110 volts running through exposed solder points is hazardous to your health.

• Let me repeat: 110 volts running through exposed solder points is hazardous to your health.

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