ok last weekend i installed the Thermal take big water liquid cooling sysetme in to my computer. so far i like it, it really cooled my processor temps down. my processor.it cut my tmps from 95 deg. to 40 deg. now in all fairness i did several things differant to the system than system that help me in this and ill go over them with you.
first off i am running 2 power supplies with a total of 950 watt, so that helps keep my case cool. i am also running a cooler master stacker case, so that make a big differance as well since there is so much air flow in the case and it is all aluminum to disipate heat as well. in total i have 3 120 mil. fans, 1 80 mil. fan, 1 40 mil fan, and 3 hard drive coolers. i am running my mother board, 2 sticks of 512 ram, a radion 9800 all in wonder video card, and a AMD athlon 64 3000, 1 optical drive, and 2 hard drives on a 500 watt power supply, and all my fans, 3 hard drive coolers, and my water pump on a 450 watt power supply. (the hdd coolers are only partly for show. they actually serve a purpose, and it is not to cool the hard drive, but to free up the hard drive cage in the case for me to mount my radiator to.
i am using the cooler master cool 3 hdd coolers, so they fit in a 5.25 slot.) i also modified the flow chart of the liquid cooling system a little bit to make it work better, and some of the parts. here is what i modifyed. i lapped the bottom of the water block to a nice mirror finnish, i figgure that alone droped my temps by 2-4 degrees. i also changed the flow order. Thermaltake suggests that the order is, [water block-radiator-reservoir-pump-water block], i moved this to [water block-reservoir-pump-radiator-water block], not only does this make more senese, i had read somwhere that it reduces temps. mabe 3 degrees. also the manual sais to mount the radiator on the back of your case and circulate air from inside the case to out side.
well i used my hdd cage to mount the radiator and circulate cool out side air across the radiator in stead of hot case air and so this proble droped that temp about 2-3 degrees. and then i had an extra 120 mil. fan laying arround so i sandwithced the rediator between 2 120 mil. fans. this increaces the air flow across the radiator a little bit cooling it mabe 1-2 degree more. all this 1 and 2 degrees probely dosent sound like any thing to wast your time with, but when you add it all up it is 6-12 degrees cooler than if i had not done any of it. pluys when you are to the point of liquid cooling, most of us are looking at pulling any thing we can out of the system so that we can overclock that much more.
ok all of that out of the way, i was fairly pleased with this system. a good high quality radiator, ok looking reservoir, the water block is a simple "S" shape, but the copper bottom was not at all well finished on the bottom and i would highly recomend lapping the bottom. being that bottom eof the block is so thick i was curious about how case temps, might affect the proformance of this block, but i have no idea since my case temps are almost the same as my abmient air temps. out side the case.
the pump was not near as powerful as i would have hoped it to be. and the tubing was small and kinked very easy. i would have like to see larger tubing and mabe somthing that did not kink that bad, but there is plenty of tubing to run extra inside of your case so that you can avoid that. the hose connectors are nice screw compression fittings, so no leak worries when putting them togather, one thing that did bother me was the manual was not verry well put togather and there was absolutly nothing about leak testing, and leaking is very important. all in all i happy with it. it cut my processor temp by over half, but in all fairness I did modify it so that i could make it a bit more profecient. i hope to include some pics oabout installation and other pics of it in the near future, i just have to take the time to take some more photos and then upload them
I hooked ya up Mac
Thermaltake Bigwater 
Linear Mode
