Legit Reviews

Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer CPU Water Cooler Review

Thermaltake recently released their all-in-one series of closed loop water cooling kits. The Performer features a single 120mm radiator, but features two 120mm fans for maximum cooling performance. Read on to see how it handles the heat compared to our air coolers we have tested so far on our Intel Core i5 2500k gaming computer test bench!

In this day and age, computers are becoming more and more advanced and the cooling products we need have to do the same thing. The days of small air coolers are behind us, and Thermaltake has recognized that and brought forth a worthy solution with the Water 2.0 series. Without being large and loud this cooler is able to compete...

Article Title: Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer CPU Water Cooler Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1938/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $68.50 shipped

H2O on the cheap - and great results.
The nest rig will have 4 ram chips and big air coolers can be a hassle.
An affordable answer that clears up the volume in the case.

The little H2O cooler that could...

I see there is also an upper-end version, the 2.0 Pro. It would be nice to see how that one stacks up, perhaps it can beat the Frio.

Kaos Kid wrote:I see there is also an upper-end version, the 2.0 Pro. It would be nice to see how that one stacks up, perhaps it can beat the Frio.

Give me a couple days

Asetek is making a killing off of everyone. I wonder at this point how much of these designs are one-off or an off-the-shelf idea that someone finally bought (i.e Thermaltake licensed this design, Corsair licensed a different design, etc...).

I really like these fully enclosed water coolers as it makes it easy for anyone to add it to their setup.

On the other hand, I am always concerned with the fluid inside. Will it last forever? What happens if it starts evaporating?

I would also like to see solutions for video cards like this. Would be really cool if you could replace the plate with one for a video card just to see how it works. With how many programs are using the GPU for calculations, etc, it would seem reasonable to have water on it too.

KnightRid - I've used a custom cooling loop that I made for 3+ years and it was always evaporating and needing to be topped off ever so often (months apart). It was a pain and the tubing started to look crappy after several years along with the water tank as it had lines on it from the various water levels. I have not had this issue with any of the sealed kits as they are sealed. +1 for maintenance free solutions. I have run the CoolIT Eco II 140mm radiator for the past month and it's been trouble free so far on my 3770K.

Yeah with custom loops it is not 100% air tight, air usually gets in at the fill port. The the tubing will fog up from the plasticizer leaching out of the PVC tubing, and the coolant reacting to UV light. Why more than a few users go with solid color tubing and run straight water. In my custom loop I never ran coolant, just water. Never seen fogging like with coolant. The Swiftech kit I reviewed not to long ago already started to fog.

If the sealed kits ran clear tube I would bet they would fog as well, but they also run Neoprene tube little higher grade stuff from PVC. Some custom guys will run Tygon tube, but its like 3x the cost of PVC tube, with them changing stuff once a year, like video cards, the PVC is cheaper, and they just redo all the tube since they are tearing the system down anyway.

As for slapping on a video card, some are doing that. Seen places where someone has taken an H80 and modded the mount to fit a card. Hell there are some cutting up the sealed kits and splicing into them, I don't get it, to me defeats the purpose of a sealed kit.