Thermaltake Water 3.0 AIO any good?

[Ranulf]

Anyone have experience with this cooler? Been looking at water cooling lately for one of my systems.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

No. I haven't had personal firsthand experience with the Thermaltake Water 3.0. And I expect someone may chime in to give you a better comparison with other AiO coolers. However, I read comparison reviews, I cross-verify and combine different comparison reviews in a rank-ordering of coolers. And over a few months' time, I'll then pick a cooler with some confidence that it will perform at some competitive level for some test-bed and overclocked TDP.

Here's a review from Anandtech for the Tt Water 3.0:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6984/thermaltake-water-30-closed-loop-cooler-roundup/4

Basically, the Tt Water 3.0 in this comparison review performs about 4C better than a single-tower heatpipe cooler -- the NH-U14S. A heatpipe cooler like the NH-D15 probably performs between 5 and 10C better than the single-tower cooler.

The test-bed for this review was a Sandy Bridge 2700K @ 4.4Ghz and something like 1.4+V VCORE. It gives me a ballpark idea I can compare to my own 2700K @ 4.7 and 1.38V. But whatever the overclock, the rank order may remain the same.

There are better AiO coolers than the Tt, if only for those outranking it in the review. For instance, the Kraken X60 has been superseded by the X61, and the Swiftech H220 has two big brothers -- the H240 X and the H240 X2. Somewhere just below the latter, the EKWB Predator 240 slips into the ranking. But both of them are an AiO ready-made for customization. The H240 likely has a bigger reservoir than the Predator, but both of them will require bleeding and maintenance after a year or later.

I believe I can surpass the performance of the Predator 240 with a ThermalRight heatpipe cooler and a delidded processor with CLU TIM replacement and re-lidding, and expect to show 16C less at load than some review results or what would be expected with an untouched retail-box CPU. I've been more or less assured that my processor shows a 12C improvement in temperatures over the stock Intel TIM under the same overclock. I think I can make that total about 16C improvement by pushing a bit more air through what is otherwise promoted as a "passive" cooler.

You could go either way on this -- air or water. Check for some more reviews, apply the simple transitivity axiom to cross-reference the rank-ordering.

For some of the AiO's, what was once upon a time promised for watercooling silence now seems to mean more noise as opposed to less. And to make water-cooling more effective with pusher and puller fans or 4 fans for a two-fan cooler, you take up more space or the case gets more crowded.
There are several ways to skin a cat, there are better coolers than the Tt, there is your pocketbook, and your perception of how much additional complexity you're adding to squeeze out a few more C degrees of cooling.

I would say that it's probably not a bad cooler, unless you do some customer-feedback research and there are indications of leaks in some alarming fraction of reviews.

 

[Ranulf]

Thanks for the response Bonzai. I think a lot of the appeal is just the fans, which I could buy seperately for another radiator. I've just been debating trying water on one of my AMD 8300s or my 2500k out of curiosity. For the most part I just don't see the point in water over a decent tower cooler.

 

[dlerious]

I had the Water 3.0 Ultimate running for a couple of weeks. My temps were pretty good for open air - I had everything except for my case and I needed to check my parts before the RMA period was over. Once my case arrived I went with custom water, so I didn't have a chance to compare.

For CPU only, it's your choice between water and air. If you add one or more GPUs , water is better in my opinion.

 

[AdamK47]

I've had my Thermaltake Water 3.0 360mm cooler for two years now. First with a 5960X and now with a 6950X. It does a great job cooling my 6950X @ 4.125GHz with 1.25V. I did replace the three 120mm fans with three Corsair SP120 LED fans even before using it. They do a litter better job cooling the radiator and look better. All Thermaltake 3.0 AIO coolers are built by Asetek (gen 4).