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Opinions on the thermaltake big water se

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dugdremel

New Member
Joined
Oct 17, 2005
I'm thinking of buying this kit. Anyone use it. I do overclock (obviously) and right now i run the stock heat sink and fan on a barton core athlon xp 2800+ at 2390 mhz (stock = 2075). Right now it runs about 48c idle and 54c load. What kind of temp drops can i expect and how much further can i push this thing. I want to push it a little more but I don't want temps up to high.
Thanks,

Lanboy case
abit mobo with barton core xp2800+ (o/c to 2390 mhz)
bfg geforce 6800GT OC
512 mb corsair xms memory 2-2-2-6 mem
dual maxtor 120 mb SATA in raid 0
 
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you will get flamed soon. i highly recommend NOT buying a kit unless it's the H20 Apex Kit from swiftech. try the watercooling section. welcome by the way

-1cem4n
 
well, getting flamed on the internet is nothing new. I just saw the kit and figured for the price why not. I'm not crazy into the overclocking thing (yet) but my system is getting older now and if i smoke some parts than oh well just have to upgrade! :santa: Keep in mind i don't want to spend a thousand dollars on a water set up!

sorry i did not see that there is a special water cooling section that this could be moved to at the moderators earliest inconvievience (spelling)! :bang head
 
I think you would be better off buying a nice high-end heatsink instead. You would get nearly the same performance, but for quite a bit less.

If you want to go water, however, I recommend that you build your own system. Kits are nice, but you learn a lot doing it yourself, and you can do it for dirt cheap. If you're interested, browse the water cooling forums and get a better understanding of what you're dealing with. Then make the decision on what to do.
 
1cem4n said:
you will get flamed soon. i highly recommend NOT buying a kit unless it's the H20 Apex Kit from swiftech. try the watercooling section. welcome by the way

-1cem4n

There will be no flaming on this forum. Otherwise I get out the banhammer.
 
I will check it out! Thanks for the replies.

BTW, if I don't go water than what high end heatsink fan setup do you suggest? I'm seeing temps in the low 50 at idle to 56 57 under load with stock amd heat sink and fan. What temps can i expect with either set up.

Thanks,
Ian
 
I installed a bigwater kit in my computer. The pump died after about 3 months. I bought a DD pump and reservoir to replace the combo unit in the BW kit. That was another 70 on top of the cost of the kit. BW also uses a nonstandard tubing size, so it was hell getting an adapter to use the 3/8 DD pump and res with the block and radiator.

EDIT: I should also mention I had to replace the fan, for some reason it would make a rattling noise at higher speeds. It was mounted properly, so i figure it was a bad ball bearing or something.

The good thing out of all this is my temps, with the cold weather right now im getting 42C and my fans are running quiet.

I dont recommend the BW kit, its a cheap entry level kit. I got it because its better than air (and its HOT here in the summer) and i was on a budget.
 
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I just pulled the Bigwater out of my main computer and replaced it with the Swifttech Apex H2O kit and added a vga block to cool the ATI X800XT card.
It dropped the cpu temps below what the Bigwater kit could do by more than 10 degrees centigrade under load and idle...

The quality of construction is better by a little bit in the radiator and a lot better in the pump, the water block internally is much better with the new Storm block that comes with the Swifttech kit, most importantly the overall performance of the Swifttech kit is extremely better than the Bigwater kit.

No question, go with the Swifttech kit. I tried to price individual components to build a set up like this one and couldn't come close to the quality and price that this kit gave me.
 
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