MA XIMUMPC MAY 2005
Thermaltake
BigWater
Thermaltake puts a unique
spin on water cooling with
a kit that doesn’t require
a reservoir after the initial
installation (oh, and there’s also
that bling water block with the clear
acrylic cap and nifty blue internal
LED). Besides the extra-fancy CPU
water block, the BigWater kit includes
a 120mm fan and radiator, a 12V
pump, 1/4-inch tubing (the smallest
diameter tubing in this roundup), and
a reservoir that’s removed from the
system once it’s fi lled with a cocktail
of distilled water and UV-reactive
coolant.
If you know what you’re doing,
installation is rather straightforward;
if this is your fi rst time installing such
a kit, however, the instructions will
leave you utterly baffl ed. Many of the
pages in the postcard-size, black-and-
white manual are crammed with six
or more individual steps, complete
with postage stamp-size illustrations.
We had to laugh when we saw the
notation “see above” in many of the
instructions, because you’d need a
magnifying glass to make out thedetails in the image. To make matters
worse, many of the instructions are
not only as clear as mud, but entire
installation steps appear to have been
left out. This state of affairs forced
us to improvise at times based on
what we thought we should do, and
that’s a very scary proposition when
you’re routing water in close proximity
to thousands of dollars worth of
hardware.
We also take issue with the
LGA775 mounting hardware, which is
ridiculously diffi cult to secure. Instead
of using thumbscrews or large nuts
(like every other kit we tested), this
kit uses teeny, tiny nuts that are too
small to tighten by hand. Thermaltake
doesn’t provide any tools in the
kit, and we didn’t have a nut driver
anywhere near that small in the Lab,
so we found ourselves using a pair
of needle-nose pliers to tighten them
down. Needless to say, this rendered
installation excruciatingly diffi cult.
The radiator/fan assembly is also
whack: If you install it outside your
case, the fan blows the air—which is
now warmer than room temperature
after traveling through the radiator—
right into your case. We tried moving
the fan and radiator inside the case,
but it was much too large to fi t.
As a result, this kit’s temperature
measurements were the highest of the
bunch.TEST RESULTS
Cooling
performance
The BigWater achieved
temperatures that
were better than
the stock HSF, but
they were still the
highest temps in this
roundup. We blame
this result on two
design blunders:
The aforementioned
radiator/fan assembly
that blows warm air
into your case, and
the narrow 1/4-inch
tubing that restricts
the amount of cooling
water that fl ows over
the components.Ease of
installation
The instructions are a
joke: They’re diffi cultto read and comprehend, and they
omit entire steps; as a matter of fact,
the entire installation process was
grueling.Overclocking
We achieved a better-than-average
overclock of 450MHz, which is
surprising given the kit’s middling
cooling performance.Noise output
The fan-speed controller knob is
handy, but since it’s located in a PCI
slot, you’ll have to give your PC a
reach-around to access it. With the
knob turned up all the way, it was fi ve
decibels louder than stock (loudest in
the group by a hair); turned down to
the other extreme it was the quietest,
at 63db.MA XIMUMPC VERDICT (^4)
$120, http://www.thermaltake.com
The BigWater’s copper water block has a clear
acrylic lid with a blue LED that looks totally
bitchin’ all lit up.
This 120mm fan is adjustable
from 1,300rpm to 2,400rpm;
unfortunately, the control knob
is located in the back of your PC
amid the PCI slots.
In order to install this kit on an
LGA775 system, you must remove
the mobo and install this retention
plate beneath the CPU area.