Thermaltake Water 3.0 Closed Loop Cooler Roundup
by Dustin Sklavos on May 31, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Thermaltake
- Water Cooling
Silent Cooling Performance
Testing the Thermaltake Water 3.0 kits at their quietest reveals not just how important having a good fan control solution can really be, but also how important it is to pick good fans for your kit. The two 120mm kits do an absolutely horrible job of keeping noise down; they offer strong thermal performance, but the fans are extremely noisy in the process.
You can see for thermal performance they're near the top of the list, beating all of the air coolers. The problem is that, as you can see below, the air coolers are nowhere near as loud. Noctua's excellent NH-U14S is able to produce performance only 4C warmer at a staggering 14dB lower.
Balance is the name of the game, and our stress test forces the fans to eventually run full tilt. Only the Water 3.0 Extreme and its "Silent" fan control setting is able to keep the noise down. On balance, it looks like the best deal for quiet performance short of the Swiftech H220 or NZXT Kraken X60.
While I'm not a fan of absolute performance and prefer a more balanced approach to thermals and noise, I know my esteemed colleague, the good Dr. Ian Cutress will just run his cooling systems to the hilt to eke out as much performance as possible.
Under those circumstances, the Water 3.0 Extreme comes out looking a lot better. Of the closed loop coolers, it really continues to be between the NZXT Kraken X60 (280mm), Swiftech H220 (240mm), and Water 3.0 Extreme (240mm) for giving the widest latitude of performance and acoustics.
You'll pay dearly for that performance in terms of acoustics, but the 40.5dB of the Water 3.0 Extreme is still nowhere near as nasty as the 120mm Water 3.0 kits get.
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Wetworkz - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
I do not remember where I saw this but some guy hooked his water cooler to his toilet. No, I am not kidding. He ran plumbing to the tank on the back of the toilet and every time his temperature began to climb he would flush the toilet and get a new surge of cool water. I am pretty sure you could find the article if you wanted to look it up, it was pretty entertaining to be honest.EJ257 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
That's actually pretty brilliant. Was it this guy?http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/124677-how-to-c...
jkresh - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
that could work depending on your usage, if you are always running at load (folding at home or something along those lines) it wouldnt help because eventually all the water would get warm (and without a radiator it would continue to heat up), but if you only run for relatively short periods of time (lets say an hour or two for gaming) then that might work. The most impressive system I saw, was someone ran a a server farm in his basement, with water running outside to copper pipes which ran deep under his yard, so he basically used geothermal cooling for his computers, kind of a crazy setup, but using the Earth as your heatsink has its advantages.Adamantine - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
You didn't setup the radiator like people who do full PC liquid cooling setups do, which is going to perform better than how you did it. Fans need to be setup as intakes on the radiator, not exhaust. It almost guarantees the radiator will get the coolest air possible which isn't possible when setup as exhaust.dwade123 - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
They should start making those compatible with CPU & GPU. Now that is truly a All-in-One design.Galcobar - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
Copyediting error in the second paragraph of the first page."The variety of coolers is pretty simple: you're dealing with a traditional 120mm radiator in the Water 3.0 Pro, you get a double-thick 120mm radiator with the Water 3.0 Pro, and then you go back to standard thickness and double-length with the 240mm radiator in the Water 3.0 Extreme."
That first "Pro" should be "Performer."
vishwa108 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Whilst being prejudical is an unwelcome trait, being prejudicial on behalf of Truth is an asset all men strive for. Truth be told, "Thermaltake" might sound both Tojo-ish and English, but as all know, this beastie is but a mere pretender to "watercooling", mediocrity being its forte when it comes to watercooling. Not when "Asetek" is supporting one's watercooled butt, that is. After some Bavarian ariy-fairyness having levelled Ten on the religiosity crapola. That is what you'll get for mixing Taiwanese panda greeny-loony cutieness with sophisticated Western gender-bending taste.Even so, DNA being thicker than water, the same nonsense prevailed. LOUD and LOUDER. What is "entry-level" watercooling if it is not about lowering loudness? What? Eets about pandering to fairies and their pirouettes? This has to be some Choseness Frivolity & Nonsense masquerading as Sense & Sensibility. It looks like fashion has finally caught up with PC, Performance and Overclocking. Either that or the fairies have accidentally beached themselves on the PC Cloud Cuckooland. C'mon chuck, give us the other one will ya.
xaml - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
What is this, if not an attempt at pooetry? Is it that your head case is the one thing in urgent need of water cooling? Thermal it. Take!