Koolance RP-452×2 (Rev2.0) Dual D5 Pump Dual Bay Reservoir Combo

The main body is one single lump of acetal.  This is unusual.  Afterall a big lump of acetal is expensive and will necessitate a lot of machining down.  Most of the competition use several smaller pieces in order to save costs.  The advantage of course is a stronger and less risky structure.
It’s really impressive just how complicated this one piece is and how much machining it requires.  Every surface is machined with some kind of detail.  This becomes apparent when it’s flipped:
If this isn’t heavily machined acetal pornography, then it’s hard to know what would be:
Even the pump volutes are carefully designed:
This is quite simply a thing of beauty.  The effort and detail that went into it simply stunning.  It’s also worth noting that the two pumps almost identically setup in terms of the connections to the reservoir.  If we spread out the myriad of parts you can see just how much stuff comes in this unit (though the pumps are not included:
Now after rebuilding and after the faceplate is reconnected, the stop fittings can be reattached if you want.  These stop fittings can be used to more easily fill and bleed the unit.
In fact we would heavily recommend using the two pumps in series, not only because of the performance benefits but because it means the two front fittings can be used for bleeding/filling simultaneously.  Oftentimes when filling through a narrow fill port, water going in can block the air coming out causing water to “burp” out.  The second port means that air can flow out the other side while being filled without any “burping”.  It should be noted that these fill ports are simplest to use when the case is rotated on it’s back, however if you still want to use them (instead of the top mounted ports which may be blocked by the case design), then barbs can be fitted and a section of tube used instead.

In order to mount the reservoir in a drive bay there are 5 possible mount points per side and 4 screws are supplied to use with them.  Note that these holes are threaded into the main acetal body, so if you strip them, then they will no longer be usable.  A better choice would be use rubber isolated brass threaded inserts.  These will be harder to strip, while possibly giving a slightly boost to vibration reduction.
Note that the pumps are “upside” down in comparison to most cylinder setups.  Indeed Laing does not recommend this because air can become trapped and the pumps might run dry.  However Koolance uses a complicated acrylic structure on the intake to the pump to deflect any bubbles from entering the pump.  A vigorous shake of the unit should be done after filling the reservoir for the first time to try and prime the pump.

Bleeding of the earlier revisions of this pump was troublesome.  This version is better, but it’s certainly nowhere as quick to bleed or fill as a cylinder reservoir setup would be.  The upside down pumps, once primed, combined with the acyrlic bubble shield/screen and the low intake point means that almost the entire reservoir volume can be used to fill the loop before the pumps run dry again.  This is extremely helpful because most reservoirs of this type render half the volume of water useless of filling purposes.  My only complaint of course is that the reservoir (even with both shared) is still quite small in volume and must be refilled many times to fill a loop.  A larger version would be desirable if it wouldn’t then have clearance issues due to the length of the entire setup.  Sadly this is a compromise that we have to live with.

Note also the strange grooves on the side of the main body extending to the acrylic window.  These are for LEDs.  Two 3mm LEDs can be used either side to light up the reservoir.  Sadly these LED’s are not provided.  It would be great to see them built in, like the Monsoon S2 reservoir.

Overall the design, finish and quality is really impressive.  So now that we know  that it’s awesome in quality and very flexible it’s time to look at the performance.