Thermaltake Bigwater 760 Pro Water Cooling System Review

Testing
The test rig consists of the following parts:

Processor: Intel Core i5 2500K
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 EVO
Video Card: SPARKLE Calibre Series X480 GeForce GTX 480
Memory: Corsair Vengence 8 GB @ 1600mhz
Power Supply: High Power Astro PT 700w
Storage: OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB Running Windows 8 64bit
Cooling: Thermaltake Bigwater 760 Pro
Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 1

Testing was done using Intel Burn Test (IBT) with the AVX instruction set. The reason I use this instead of Prime95 with this setup is that it pushes our i5 2500K a whole lot harder, giving us a better sense of load temps. Most of the testing was done at the high memory setting for a single pass. While admittedly this in no way would qualify the chip as stable when overclocking, it gives us a realistic idea of what temps it will be hitting.

Here are the stock cooler results:

Ambient temps: 22.22C/71.99F
Idle temps: 31.25C/88.25F core average
IBT temps: 78.5C/173.3F core average

And here are the results for stock settings for the Bigwater 760 Pro:

Ambient temps: 21.11C/70F
Idle temps: 30.25C/86.45F core average
IBT temps: 45C/113F core average

graph1

This is actually pretty impressive for a water cooled system in which the strong point is not usually low idle temps. With the Bigwater 760 Pro though we have both a lower idle temp and a much much lower temp under load. Very intriguing, lets carry on with a little overclocking to see what it can do.

Ambient temps: 21.11C/70F
Max overclock: 4.8 ghz/1.432V vCore
IBT temps: 76C/168.8F core average with one core hitting 80C

graph2

Huh, I have to say not the results I was particularly expecting. Although 4.8ghz is plenty fast for anything short of benchmarking I really did believe this kit would set some records. Unfortunately it allows the CPU to overheat faster than even the Tt Water 3.0 Pro we recently tested. Here are some results from trying to go to 4.9 ghz.

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Until this point I have been running the fan with the knob turned all the way down. I figured that possibly that was the problem, as with the Water 3.0 Pro we had the fan at full speed. So turning the knob all the way up (and the acoustics coming from the case as well) I tried again to get stable at 4.9 and not overheat. Keep in mind this is at the same exact voltage that we were able to get the Water 3.0 Pro stable at 4.9 ghz.

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So with that core one hitting 89C it was time to throw in the towel and accept the 4.8 ghz overclock ceiling.