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 Thermaltake water 2.0 Extreme at idle and load, using the stock speed and voltage. Then I 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 the water 2.0 Extreme fares 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 while idle. The water 2.0 Extreme bested the field when under load as expected. It’s no big surprise when comparing the Water 2.0 units against each other that the bigger the radiator gets, the better the cooling is.

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 with the fans at 100% (2000 RPM). If you are wondering about the noise when the fans are running at their maximum level, they are noticeable but not annoyingly so. Below are the cooling results while overclocked..

Still not much difference between all the coolers at idle, but the gap widens when under load.  There was a 9° C difference between the EVGA air cooler and the Water 2.0 Extreme. To be totally honest, every one of the coolers in this cart did admirably, but I am impressed with the 61°C temperature the Water 2.0 Extreme was able to achieve. As with the stock testing, as cooling demands increase, the bigger of the three radiators begins to show its advantage.