Test Bed

EVGA P67 FTW Motherboard
G.SKill 2X4 Gb DDR3 1866Mhz Memory
Kingston 3K SSD 240 Gb Hard Drive
Intel i7 2600K  Processor

I tested both water 2.0′s at idle and load, using the stock speed and voltage. Then we overclocked the CPU to 4.5 Ghz @ 1.3v, and then retrieved the idle and load temperatures. For comparison with an air cooling solution, I chose the EVGA Superclock cooler. I thought the EVGA Superclock would be a good comparison because it typically ranks right up there with the best air coolers on the market, and as such, should give you a good idea how these water 2.0′s fare against a high end air cooling solution.

All testing was done in a room at 72° F, and I chose Arctic Silver Ceramique as the thermal interface material. LinX stress test was run for 10 passes and the highest temperature of all cores was recorded. I let the system sit idle for 30 minutes and again recorded the highest temperature reading from all cores.

First the stock CPU speed results.

As expected there is not much difference between all of the coolers tested when at stock speeds and voltages. The two Water 2.0 units were pretty much equal during this test, with the EVGA Superclock cooler right there with them.

Next we raised the CPU voltage to 1.3v in BIOS and turned off vDroop, which resulted in 1.325v when under load. We set the CPU speed to 4.5 Ghz and ran the tests again, below are those results.

Still not much difference between all the coolers at idle, but the gap widens when under load.  There was a 6° C difference between the EVGA air cooler and the Water 2.0 Pro. The Performer version did well in this test as well, besting the EVGA cooler and just a few degrees behind its bigger brother. As cooling demands increase, the bigger of the two radiators begins to show its advantage.