Thermaltake BigWater SE + Volcano 4005

Performance:

Consisting of this water cooling setup for testing was the Thermaltake BigWater SE, and the Volcano 4005 replaced the CPU water block. No other water blocks, flow indicators, or other cooling accessories were used. Rather than using the included fluid, we had used our standard mixture of using Swiftech HydrX coolant and steam-distilled water. We had also adapted a 120mm fan to one side of the Volcano 4005 to provide some airflow through the cooler as well as providing circulation for Abit's Silent Q-OTES. All of the fans used were run at their maximum speeds during testing. The thermal paste used was Arctic Silver 5. The motherboard used was Abit's AW8, which is i955X based, and in the past has allowed for remarkable overclocks. The memory used was 512MB of GeIL's DDR2-1000 at 5-5-5-15, while the CPU was simply a Pentium 4 530 (3.00GHz), which has also yielded high overclocks while not outputting nearly the amount of heat as a Pentium D 800 series processor.

As this is not our traditional water cooling review, but rather an experiment when it comes to Thermaltake water cooling solutions and overclocking, our results were reported a bit differently today. When it comes to the temperature results being reported today, we had recorded the CPU idle measurements as well as the reservoir temperatures. LM_Sensors presently does not support the monitoring of Abit's AW8 series due to the uGuru technology involved, thus, we were unable to attain these live readings from within Linux. The CPU idle temperatures were monitored after the system was idling in the BIOS for 30 minutes, and the end temperature was reported through uGuru. BIOS 16 was loaded on the AW8. For the reservoir temperatures, we inserted a thermal probe into Thermaltake's 5.25" tank to monitor the fluid temperature during the idle process. With these thermal results, the tests were performed at various frequencies and voltages. Our tests were carried out with the ambient room temperature being maintained. When it came time to seeking the maximum overclocking possibility with the system, and the BigWater SE + Volcano 4005, we ended up reaching a 290MHz FSB before falling prey to stability issues. Running a 290MHz FSB, the Intel Pentium 4 530 was operating at 4.350GHz and 1.5V.