Thermaltake BigWater 760is – Liquid Cooling Kit Review

Methodology, Test System & Limitations

Methodology

For the duration of the testing, the system was running in an air-conditioned room regulated to maintain a steady 22 degrees Celsius ambient temperature. This was important because this would be the constant, while I test the variables (the coolers).

This temperature was verified using a temperature probe connected to a digital multimeter. The probe was placed adjacent to the 200mm intake fan at the front of the case.

To measure actual CPU temperature, Real Temp 3.00 was used because over time it has been proven to give accurate readings for Intel Core based CPUs. It was also easy to record the minimum temperature at idle and also the peak temperature during load.

Idle temperatures were recorded at the desktop with minimal system activity, resulting in the CPU being at less than 2% load across all four cores.

For loading the CPU, OCCT 3.1.0 was used. Two separate tests were used to load the cores of the CPU to 100% for a sustained period of time. These are as follows and are described as stated by the program’s help section.

• CPU: OCCT – OCCT CPU test, where you’ll find the famous OCCT test that has been around for years now.
• CPU: LINPACK – Linpack CPU Test, based on a library provided by Intel. Similar to IntelBurnTest. CAUTION, it is VERY extreme and will make your CPU real hot.

Default settings were used for all tests.

Test System

The test system consisted of the following:

• Case: CM Storm Sniper – Black Edition
• PSU: Cooler Master UCP 1100w
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S
• MB: ASUS P5E Deluxe X48
• RAM: G.SKILL 4GB DDR2-1000 PQ
• GPU: AMD Radeon HD 5830
• 3 Hard Disk Drives
• 1 Optical Drive

The purpose of keeping all three hard drives in the test system is to further simulate a real life scenario, instead of using only one so as to cut down on internal system heat.

Limitations

The stock settings for the CPU are 2.83GHz with its VID of 1.175V and this was used throughout the testing period.

The overclocked and overvolted settings were chosen based on a limitation. The CPU itself can attain a maximum stable clock speed of 3.85GHz on air with 1.400V and as such became the common ground in testing both cooling solutions.