Thermaltake BigWater or ... ?

I was looking at this as an inexpensive solution for cooling my Pentium 930 (when I get it). The review here was positive. I was wondering if anyone here has had experience with it or other Thermaltake water cooling solutions. As you can see, I'm mainly worried about cooling my CPU but I don't want to invest a ton into it. I also don't want to buy a piece of crap that's going to leak on me.

I've got a Thermaltake Super Tower case which was designed to house a pretty good size pump so no problems there.

I'd stay far away from TT's watercooling solutions personally... You can put together a hand picked system for probably $100 - $150 that would be WAY better than anything TT could come up with.

I agree with nikhsub1, I had a tt wc system and it fell a part. Pump/resevior began to have cracks around the hose barbs which lead to major leaking in my pc. Dont recommend getting TT for WC

my bigwater fell apart to. so i got it replaced and sold it. now im diy

I too want a Water Cooling kit, but Im afraid of "hand-picking" the parts because I have NO idea of what to buy

Dude,
I'm not trashing no ones advice here BUT
i got the TT Big Water to start off with

it dropped my 840dual core from 60c to 40c - thats a lot for a cpu that produces about 130watts of thermal heat

people have said the acrylic top would crack - look up how durable acrylic is - i don't believe this is true

if you want a cheap and nice looking water cooling system TT BigWater is a great buy in my opion

I owned and tested and it worked fine and did exactly waht it should

I just had the $ to put into a setup of all best products that cost about $500

I just wanted 1/2" tubing and to show off a bit with the black ice extreme 3 rad

do the math
a cpu with 130watt thermal heat
TT BIG WATER was a -20c drop

is that worth 149.99 complete? sure

last of all - don't let the little pump fool you
many people said if i added anything to the loop the pump would not work at all

heh - wrong
that little pump run 2 TT rads - 2 TT gpu blocks - and the cpu block just fine

here is proof


rated 5 year life time on pump

TRUE FACT
with the BEST cooling products available
you will only gain around 10 to 12 degrees lower than factory TT BigWater kit

if you got the $ go for the extreme
if you just need to oc and keeps temps down with a cheap budget - TT BIG WATER

its up to your pocket

~RD

***** EDIT *****
As you over clock - TT will not hold temps as low as the better products
example
with 2 prime 95 set at max heat burn in on both my cores - TT temps were up to 56c from 40c

with my new custom setup with BIX3 - oc@3840 temps only reached 32c from about 26c

Thats the difference in paying the extra $

RDWest2005 said:

TRUE FACT
with the BEST cooling products available
you will only gain around 10 to 12 degrees lower than factory TT BigWater kit

Click to expand...

<snip>

RDWest2005 said:

with 2 prime 95 set at max heat burn in on both my cores - TT temps were up to 56c from 40c

with my new custom setup with BIX3 - oc@3840 temps only reached 32c from about 26c

Click to expand...

So going from the prefab to the top of the line, you had a drop of 14C at idle and 24C at load? I'd say that's pretty significant, myself.

I don't know much about all this, but I'm planning on DIY just because the OVERWHELMING majority of the advice out there is to do just that. Not that pre-fab kits won't work, but if I can get better performance for approximately the same cost, with a little elbow grease and research, I'll definately go that route every time.

Check my sig for my vote! And that is 24/7 settings.

diy is more fun

DIY is very easy and adictive though. After the first build you start thinking oh if I get a storm my setup is better, why not cool the GPU, dual rads must be good, and eventually you get to thinking wow my Iwaki just isn't cutting it time for 2 of them :0

i will say this ... i just got the tt bigwater just before xmas ... cpu water block is aready cracking and ive had a very hard time getting any kind of drop in temp from what i was getting running my giga-byte 3d cooler pro ... finally got it down to 47-48c from 51c

we'll see how their customer service is ... so far not real happy ...

i also discovered that eventually im gonna have to completely replace everything since you cant get the fittings for larger bore tubing and the kit doesnt come w/ em its all 1/4" which also makes it difficult to add later parts even tho if you buy the parts separately they do

im thinking of going to watercooling, swapping from the TT big typhoon... what do you guys think about these parts?

1/2 inch tubing at home depot(enough to make it work lol, probably 10+ft)

swiftech apogee cpu block

GPU block(would it be worth it to even cool a 6600gt? temps hit close to 80c oc'ed and playing bf2

pump - Swiftech MCP655

misc fittings from home depot

77 bonneville heatercore from autozone

custom fan shroud and 2 120mm fans

anything besides coolant/water i left out?

just an update to my dilema ...

i did manage to get ahold of tt on my block and was very pleased to find that they will cross ship ... so should have my replacement wb by next tues or wed

Maybe I'm lucky, but my "KIT" has performed flawlessly for eight months+
24/7. I have not seen one of the problems that others have had with this "bad"
kit.