Thermaltake Pacific RL360 D5 RGB Water Cooling Kit 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: Thermaltake Pacific RL360 D5 RGB
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe

Unfortunately we had the CPU_FAN header go out on our previous test board which has resulted in our switch to the UD4H. The good news is that it is a very similar board and during our testing we found it works well with the same overclocking settings.

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

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

Ambient temps: 23.33°C/74°F
Idle temps: 34°C/93.2°F core average
IBT temps one pass max memory: 63°C/145.4°F core average

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Impressively for a water cooled system, the idle temperature is well below the baseline air cooler and that is before you even factor in the warmer ambient temp. As for the stock load test our custom loop is 1.61°C cooler. This is good, but we have had AIO coolers perform better.

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: 23.33°C/74°F
IBT temps: 79.25°C/174.65°F with one core hitting 83°C

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Oddly and unfortunately this custom loop doesn’t quite perform where we would have expected it to. After adjusting for ambient the Pacific- RL360 D5 RGB only barely makes it into our top ten. However for 4.5ghz it’s still very respectable temps, on with the testing! We’ll go ahead and take a run at 3DMARK’s Firestrike with our CPU left at 4.5ghz to see what gaming temps we might see.

Ambient temps: 23.33°C/74°F
3DMARK: 65°C/149°F with two cores hitting 68°C

Again, the result from 3DMARK is totally acceptable if not entirely disappointing in that it would seem that it should be running cooler.

Still a bit curious about how our results could be so high from a setup with such a great pedigree on paper we went ahead and ran IBT again after the Tt X1 thermal paste had a couple days to cure. Here are the results:

i7 3770K @ 4.5ghz with 1.248V vCore:

Ambient temps: 21.67°C/71°F
IBT temps: 74.75°C/166.55°F with one core hitting 79°C

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Now we are seeing some results that look more like a 360mm radiator and a custom loop! Still not a new leader, but this moves the Pacific RL360 D5 RGB firmly into 6th place.

However we were still a little bit confused as to why we would see results that are essentially too high for this setup. After talking with Tt they decided to send us a new CPU block. We drained the loop and refilled with distilled water since we would have to run the replacement blocked with distilled. This gives us an even comparison between the two loops. Here are the results after simply swapping the Tt coolant for plain ol’ distilled water:

i7 3770K @ 4.5ghz with 1.248V vCore:

Ambient temps: 23.33°C/74°F
IBT temps: 72.89°C/163.2°F with one core hitting 78°C

Compared with our previous best result we see that we are actually 2.41°C cooler when adjusted for ambient with distilled water than when running the blue Tt coolant. This moves the Pacific RL360 D5 RGB up into 2nd place in all of our testing!

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Once the replacement CPU block arrived from Tt we installed it in the loop leaving everything identical aside from the block itself. This loop was also filled with the same plain distilled water from our local grocery store. Here are the results:

i7 3770K @ 4.5ghz with 1.248V vCore:

Ambient temps: 23.33°C/74°F
IBT temps: 72.39°C/162.30°F with one core hitting 77°C

RL360 (95)

Finally we are seeing the types of results we had expected! Though it is only a fraction cooler than our previous test, the new block with distilled water is now the ThinkComputers all time cooling champion!

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As far as noise is concerned we find the three Riing fans to be absolutely pleasant even at the 1500rpm setting with pump noise being negligible as well.