SilverStone TD02-E Liquid CPU Cooler Review

Testing
The test rig consists of the following parts:

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H
Video Card: Zotac 560 Ti
Memory: Samsung Green MV-3V4G3D/US – 16GB
Power Supply: Enermax Maxrevo 1350W
Storage: OCZ Vertex 3 240 GB raid 0 Running Windows 7 64bit
Cooling: SilverStone TD02-E
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe

As always 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 i7 3770K a whole lot harder. This gives us a better sense of extreme load temps. Most of the testing was done at the max memory setting for a single pass. While admittedly this in no way would qualify the chip as stable while overclocked, it gives us a realistic idea of what temperatures the CPU will be hitting. Additionally we are going to run 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme to give you a realistic idea of performance while gaming.

Our baseline was established using a bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 with the 3770K on stock settings:

Ambient temps: 22.22C/72F
Idle temps: 38.75C/101.75F core average
IBT temps one pass max memory: 63.5C/146.3F core average

The first thing we did was to test the cooler with stock motherboard/CPU settings:

Ambient temps: 22.22°C/72°F
Idle temps: 32.5°C/90.5°F core average
IBT temps one pass max memory: 63.25°C/145.85°F core average

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As you can see we are actually at the exact same ambient as our baseline which makes for easy comparisons. At idle we are about 6° C cooler than ambient which is great. Under load however the margin drops to only .25°C cooler. The temperatures are still pretty good, so let’s move on to a little overclocking shall we?

As opposed to simply going for a max overclock, we are simply going to shoot to hit 4.5ghz pass or fail. If the cooler will allow our 3770K to hit 4.5 ghz we note the temperatures and move on to test it on 3DMARK Firestrike. If not then back down to a more acceptable and stable overclock. Not as extreme as our previous testing, but slightly more consistent and far more analogous to normal use such as gaming.

Here are our results for our i7 3770K @ 4.5ghz with 1.248V vCore:

Ambient temps: 22.22°C/72°F
IBT temps: 79.5°C/175.1°F with one core hitting 84°C

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While I still feel we are in the safe zone for our overclock it’s definitely at the higher end of coolers for performance. Unfortunately the cooling is more on par with some of the 120mm coolers that we’ve tested.

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Like I said we are still in the safe zone even while run a full load in IBT. So lets go ahead and see what kind of temperatures to expect while gaming. We’ll do a run of 3DMARK Firestrike @ 4.5ghz and see what gaming temps might be like.

Ambient temps: 22.22°C/72°F
3DMARK: 62.5°C/144.5°F with two cores hitting 64°C

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So obviously while being in the low to mid sixties under load isn’t amazing, it is perfectly acceptable. You could easily game 24/7 at this overclock with the TD02-E.

As far as noise is concerned the TD02-E was perfectly well behaved and couldn’t even be heard over the GPU fan while running IBT and especially while running 3DMARK.

The blue lighting on the pump is a really nice accent especially if you have other matching case lighting.

SilverStone TD02-E Liquid CPU Cooler SilverStone TD02-E Liquid CPU Cooler