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For the last 6 years I have been a very active player in the computer cooling community. I have done everything, passive cooled, watercooled, Peltier cooled, and phase cooling, so I have seen just about everything. When I had finished building my most recent Phase cooler, I noticed how much noise my case was putting out. There were whirring fans, a vibrating compressor, and a very loud Western Digital hard drive. Luckily for me about a week ago, this hard drive failed me and I had removed the phase cooler and then enjoyed the silence. Remembering how loud my computer had been, I decided I would try to re-build my computer utilizing near-silent components. With this requirement, air-cooled heatsinks were out, and so were loud hard drives, and small fans. For my cooling solution I picked up a Thermaltake Bigwater SE and I also grabbed a Seagate 7200.9 300GB drive. Since I have never reviewed any hardware on this website, lets make this first time a good one.

The kit

This watercooling system is the base model that is sold by Thermaltake. While I could have dropped more money on a more elaborate system, for my processor this system was a perfect fit. Featuring a 120×120mm radiator with a slow 120mm fan, this system should be capable of handling most overclocked single core processors. Besides the radiator, the kit comes with a 5.25″ bay reservoir, 12VDC pump, and a copper and acrylic waterblock. Between the packaging and the quality of the actual components I got a feeling of solid construction and . One feature that is truly perfect is the hose attachment system. Instead of just pushing the hose over a barbed nipple, you then secure the hose with a nut that screws over the connection, compressing the hose. Both the radiator and the waterblock feature high quality construction with the radiator using a copper core with aluminum fins and then waterblock using a copper base with acrylic cover. The one weak link that I noticed in this system is the pump. With a maximium rated flow of 90L/hr you are limited to just a single block and radiator. The more expensive system from Thermaltake features a 400L/hr pump which would be great for multiple waterblocks and radiators, but that isn’t a budget cooling solution. Just keep this in mind if you buy this specific system, you’ll be limited with your cooling capacity.

Installation

I ran into only one issue when installing this particular system into my case, compatibility. With this system, to mount the radiator within the case you will need a free 120mm fan slot with about 40mm extra space above or below the slot. Even though I used a full sized Antec server case, I only had 80mm fan slots which forced me to improvise. Thermaltake has included plate to be used on a PCI slot if you must mount the radiator externally which was nice but it still makes me nervous with those tubes exposed to a wandering foot. Besides this issue there were no other problems during the installation process. I highly recommend using the manual that is provided with this kit, it was designed for the water to follow a specific path, if you don’t connect it properly you’ll just end up with a burnt out processor and pump.

Preparing to Install

This kit comes with a mounting kit for Socket A, Socket 939, LGA775 and Socket 478 motherboards so your specific installation procedure may differ slightly from mine however the end result will be the same. With s939 motherboards you will need to remove the OEM backplate and install the custom mounting bracket. The only system that doesn’t use the H brace mounting system is the Socket A kit which uses a special brace that mounts to the actual socket. For my particular setup I was forced to remove most of my insulation that remained on my motherboard from the phase cooler which was understandable considering that there was nearly 3/4″ of insulation. Once you have the H brace mounted on the back of the board, mount your board in your case and insert your processor. This kit comes with some pasty excuse for thermal compound, for best results I would recommend purchasing some decent thermal compound, I prefer Artic Silver Ceramique with its excellent temperature range and non-conductive nature which will help prevent any short circuiting. When applying your thermal compound remember that the less you have the better. The purpose of thermal compound is to replace air pockets between your processor and heatsink, not to act as a bridge between your core and heatsink. Since I am using a naked chip, I applied a tiny drop, smaller than a BB and spread it thinly over the core with a flat edged object like a razor blade. If you can barely make out the chip’s surface through the paste then you have a very thin layer and have done well. Don’t fret too much about this, just don’t put a 1/8″ layer on your processor.

Once you processor is prepped, make sure the waterblock surface is clean and then gently place it over the processor. Once the heatsink is settled in, place the H brace over it and begin to tighten down the screws. I would recommend tightening them till they touch the H brace and then start alternating so that you apply even pressure. If you are using a naked chip be very careful, it is possible to crush your core or chip off a corner if the pressure is uneven. Once the heatsink is in place, clear out space for the 5.25″ reservoir and put it in place. With those two pieces in place, lets turn our attention to the radiator. I used two zip ties and strapped it outside my case, if the radiator will fit in your case I highly suggest putting it inside. With the radiator and hoses exposed you risk damaging both items and it causes the case to look less uniform with a huge block sticking on the back. Now with all the pieces except the pump in place, you can begin to cut the hoses and connect the components in correct order. I suggest placing the pump on the bottom of your case, I stashed it near the PCI slots to keep it close to the plate with the fan controller but you can place it anywhere you wish.

Priming the System

A funnel should have been provided with this kit, I improvised with a piece of rolled paper, just find something that will make pouring the provided liquid easier. When priming the system, it is best to do this with the pump inlet and outlet facing up as recommended in the manual. Simply fill the reservoir, engage the pump for a few seconds, and then repeat process till you have completely filled the system. I would recommend either using another computer to power your pump or hotwire your powersupply. It has been a while since I have hotwired a powersupply but I believe the proper way is to connect the green pin to a black ground pin on the motherboard plug. I will look into this when I can disconnect my powersupply, however if you try this your powersupply should power on if I have the right pins. Once your system is fully primed and all air bubbles have been removed from the radiator and waterblock I highly recommend giving the system a few hours of leak testing. I let my system run for 16 hours and then used a tissue to detect if there was any moisture around the connections. Even if there is a slight hint of moisture, remount your connections and retest, even a small drop of water can short your board and toast your components. Once you are certain your system is sealed and safe, you are ready to get your computer up and running.

My impression

When I first powered on the system I heard a harsh gurgling sound which was due to the pump sucking on bubbles, but once these bubbles cleared from the system I could barely detect the hum from the fan and pump. Besides these two components, my PSU has 2 quiet 80mm fans, I have 1 fan cooling my RAM, the nForce3 chipset fan, and my Seagate hard drive. With the computer running with the case sealed and the fan on the lowest setting I couldn’t hear the computer in a silent room from 6 feet away which is really good. I really like how the radiator fan has a dial that lets you adjust the fans RPM which can be useful if you are gaming and need maximum performance or if you are web surfing and want silence. My only desire would be a switch to completely turn off the fan since this fan creates the only detectable noise from my case.

Stress Testing

The point of this stress test was to see how the system would handle both idle and load temperatures and to see how stable the temperatures would be. To stress the system I ran an hour of Prime95 and then recorded the temperatures. After this run, I would let the system idle for 15 minutes with the case door off, then seal the system and repeat the cycle with the system overclocked. I performed this test with both maximum and minimum fan power to show both extremes. Within Prime95 I used the Torture test running large FFTs starking with a 1MB FFT. The technical specifications of the computer are as follow.

• Processor: Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester 2GHz @ 1.55V and 2.6GHz @ 1.65V
• Memory: 2×512MB OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev 2
• Motherboard: MSI Neo2 Platinum
• Video Card: AGP ATi X700 Pro 256MB
• Hard Drive: Seagate 7200.9 300GB
• PSU: Ultra X-Connect 500watt

After running the tests I noticed one important thing, with this processor the fan speed doesn’t matter. I don’t believe I am putting out enough heat to stress the radiator even when overclocked. The ambient temperature was a balmy 29 Celsius with the processor idling at 35 Celsius both at 2GHz and 2.6GHz. Under load the processor held to 49 Celsius at 2GHz and 51 Celsius at 2.6GHz. With a 2 degree difference between stock and 30% overclock, I see no reason for running the fan above the minimum setting, I didn’t gain anything. Perhaps if I had a hotter processor like a Pentium or Pentium D then I would need the fan, but with this Athlon 64 I am not having any heat troubles at all. I will run Prime95 for 8-12 hours and add those results to the end of the review tomorrow but I have a feeling they’ll be around 50 Celsius.

Conclusion

While the tests don’t seem very troublesome, there was a whole lot of work involved, it took nearly a day because of the hour long sample times. I feel that an hour at full load was more than enough time to fully load the watercooling system and return adequate results. One thing that should be noted is that if you have the radiator mounted externally, you should flip the fan so that it is sucking air from the case and not blowing hot air into the case. While this may not seem smart, I guarantee the air coming off the radiator will be hotter than your case air unless you are running SLI or have a large RAID system. If I were to rate this system I’d have to give it a 8 out of 10. The main reason why it didn’t get a 9 or 10 would be the pump, even though the kit is a budget kit, the pump could be a bit more beefy. Besides the fact that my case wasn’t prepared which was my fault, installing this system was a pleasure, hopefully I can get a few more kits to review and perhaps do a comparison.

Pros

• Cheap
• High quality radiator and heatsink
• Plenty of tubing
• Great mounting system, very adaptable

Cons

• No provision for 80mm cases
• Limited pump flow @ 90L/hr
• Reservoir filling hole was too small, needed a funnel

Update

For the last 14 hour or so I left the computer running at 2.6 GHz with Prime95 beating on it with the fan on the lowest setting and the results were inline with the rest of the data. The current ambient temperature is 26 Celsius and the loaded 2.6GHz temperature is 48 Celsius. Even though there was a three degree drop in the ambient temperature compared to the previous results, I believe that a 14 hour stress tests shows that this system is both stable and very capable of handling the heat that I am throwing at it. Once I get either Conroe or a Pentium D I will add some more data to see how this kit handles those chips.