Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme CPU Cooler 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: 250 GB SATA II Drive
Cooling: Thermaltake Water2.0 Extreme
Case: Antec 900

Testing was done using Intel Burn Test (IBT) with the AVX instruction set.  The reason to 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 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.

First I did some testing with the stock Intel cooler, at the stock motherboard settings, in the test rig with results as follows:

Ambient temps: 18.89C/66F
Idle temps: 27.25C/81.05F core average
IBT temps: 69.25C/156.65F core average

Next I ran the Water2.0 Extreme through the same test at the same motherboard settings:

Ambient temps: 20C/68F
Idle temps: 26C/78.8F core average
IBT temps: 43C/109.4 core average

Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme CPU Cooler Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme CPU Cooler

I have to say right away, wow!  6C above ambient during idle, only 43C during load, these are already some fantastic results.  And the true power of water cooling is in scaling and holding temperature.  It is certainly time to see how far we can push this loop with some overclocking.  Amazingly this is what I found it could do:

Ambient temps: 20C/68F
Max overclock: 5.0 ghz/1.52V vCore
IBT temps: 69.25C/156.65F core average

Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme CPU Cooler

5.0ghz on closed loop cooler at those temps!  To be honest it’s almost unreal.  I decided to take it a little further and see how stable it was.  Switching to the Maximum stress setting in IBT, it froze and crashed pretty quickly.  So in truth it was not terribly stable at this voltage.  I kept bumping up the vCore until I got a stable run out of it with these results:

Max overclock: 5.0 ghz/1.528V vCore
IBT temps: 76.5C/169.7F core average

Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme CPU Cooler

With one core hitting 82c this was about the top for the cooler so I called it quits.  But the results are still nothing short of remarkable.

During this session I used the fan controller software that comes the cooler from Tt.  You can see it in the upper left hand corner of the screen shots.  I found it to be superb.  It is well designed, has plenty of information and is very customisable.  I did almost all the testing at the “Custom” preset.  this setting is preset with a curve that ramps up the fan speed as the water temperature increases.  The fans at this setting were mostly unnoticeable.  When I switched it to the “Extreme” preset the fan speeds jumped to 1800 rpm and were quite annoying.  Also too there was little to no difference in temps with the increased fan speed and noise.  Likely this is due to the design of the radiator.