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NVIDIA. Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Thermaltch Water 2.0
Extreme. This is different from the Big Water SE that was my first water cooling
kit. So, I'm actually going to take the approach with this unboxing of comparing
the Water 2.0 no extreme to how far
Thermaltch has come in like the last 8
years in terms of their pre-done liquid cooling kits. Cuz let me tell you, the
Big Water SE was no easier to install
than a custom loop. It didn't really perform that well, but it looked really
cool. It used quarterinch tubing, so it was like not performance parts. I mean,
the water block on that thing was like it had a channel like this, and that was
like it. It was still way better than air though. And it got me. It was like
sort of like that first hit that gets you into something like um
school, which is obviously what we were talking about. Um so let's have a look
at what Thermaltch has to say for themselves first. Top-of-the-line liquid
cooler equipped with power and performance. No refills needed. there
advantage over big water SE which came with like jugs of coolant and you had to
actually like fill it and then drain it and then refill it and top it up and
stuff like that. 240 mm radiator doubles the cooling surface. I can tell you it
more than doubles the cooling ability versus the big water SE because that one
was 120 mil and it had the worst radiator design I've probably ever seen
in a liquid cooling unit. I'm not trying to rag on Thermaltch. an old product at
this point, but man, that thing had one tube that went through like this. So,
the flow restriction of that radiator was terrible. It also had like one of
the densest fin arrays that I've ever seen. And this one does not have that.
Universal socket compatibility. Okay, that the big water had, but the mounting
mechanism wasn't too great. Uh, high performance copper base plate
accelerates the heat conductivity. High reliability, lowrofile pump based on an
asetch design, so you know it's not going to die or anything like that. Pre-filled coolant reduces the liquid
replenishment hassle. Low evaporation tube reduces the loss of coolant and the high-tech sealed circulation system
prevents leaking issues. Double okay high reliability pump, high efficiency
radiator, powerful cooling fans, there are two, and fan control software
included, which is nice to see. Inside the box, we have a manual, which is in a
bajillion different languages, including
moa or I don't know, my French is kind
of rusty. Um, fan control software
version 1.3. Very nice to see Thermaltch
fans. Thermaltch's been doing fans for a while, so I figured they probably know a
thing or two about it. Uh PWM fans, so
PWM control is always nice to have, especially if you're going to be
programming fan control curves or whatever else like that because voltage
fans, voltage control, DC fans can be a bit of an issue. If you set a very low
fan speed, they might not start, for example. So PWM fans always are running
12 volts through the fan, but it just sends it in bursts so that it has enough
torque to start the fan pretty much no matter what. Uh mounting hardware
included.
Ascounting hardware versus previous generation products. This clip right
here is like the magic clip because it used to be you had to take the block uh
what's this? Product warranty policy. Okay, good.
Oh, this looks like it uses a thicker radiator than most of the other 240 mil
products out there. That's kind of interesting. I'mma be back in just a
moment here with uh with a Corsair
H100i. Where is my H100i? It's over here somewhere. Here we
go. I think it uses a thicker radiator. And a thicker radiator would go a long
way towards increasing the overall surface area. Because guys, liquid
cooling is not is not magic. It's just
the liquid more efficiently moves the
heat away from the CPU and towards the heat dissipator or the radiator. So in
this case, you can see ah like this.
Okay. So the big water 2.0 which big now
I'm doing doing that the water 2.0 to
has a very very very loose spin arrangement which is great for quiet
operation compared to the Corsair H100i
which is more dense. So if you did ramp up the RPMs of the fans, this kind of
design would start to pull ahead of this kind of design where you can see the
water channels are spaced more closely for more effective heat conduction to
the fins themselves. But check this out.
The water 2.0 has a significantly thicker radiator
than the H100i. That means that even though they are both 2x 120 mm water
cooling units, this one is probably I
mean that must be like at least 20 to 30% thicker, which won't give you quite
the same advantage as for example a dual
140 mm radiator, but it'll fit in more
cases because it's 2x120. Although some cases will have trouble with it because
it is thicker. If you have any clearance issues with your MOSFET coolers or
anything like that, that might be a problem. Um, but it gives you more
surface area. So, that's good. That's something I didn't know about the Water
2.0 until I opened it up here. I'm just going to put that away. Um, where were
we? Right. The mounting mechanism. So, it includes a high quality thermal
compound on the base here. And all we're going to do is remove the uh the cover.
And I'm going to show you guys what's so much better about this. So, you used to have to just take this thing and like
hold it on to the retention ring. and then like thread some screws through it
and all that. Now you just take this guy, clip it on. Oh, I'm really excited
about this cooler now. And I was excited before, but now I'm now I'm really
excited. I was all nostalgic about my Big Water SE. Now I'm all like, "Oh, I
don't need that anymore. Just use a water 2.0, which is like better with
thick radiator." Anyway, the point is that if you have two hands and you're
not trying to sort of lean over like this to do it, you just clip this piece
on here. Then you take all of the mounting screws, clip them through here
with the included plastic brackets. The instructions will cover all this and it
is quite straightforward. So you don't have to hold everything in place while
you're fumbling around with it inside your computer case because a lot of people do upgrade existing computers
with these pre-done liquid cooling kits. In terms of connectivity, you're going
to find pretty much what you'd expect. So the CPU block/pump unit itself has uh
here we go, a USB connector. So this is how you access the fan control software.
um or that's how you interface with the with the unit through the fan control
software. It has two black uh harnesses
coming off of it for the two four pin PWM fans. These are all using black
wires, which is going to look way nicer in your case than the uh the older
generation products that did not use all black wires. And finally, a three pin
connector for the fan pump itself, which is inside the water block unit. I don't
know if I mentioned I don't know if I showed the thermal compound that is
pre-installed. that looks like uh the
same kind that pretty much everyone uses. It's really good stuff. I've actually tried replacing this with
aftermarket stuff. Unless you're using really high-end aftermarket stuff,
you're not going to see any temperature improvements. So, I always use the
pre-applied one on the first installation. I think that pretty much
covers it. It's using quarterinch tubing. Although, I'm not entirely sold
on 38 in tubing making that much of a difference in terms of performance. We
actually ran the H100 versus the H100i and we only saw a what was it like a two
degree difference or something like that. I think it was only a couple degree difference using the same fans
which could have just as easily been improvements to the CPU block and not
necessarily any improvement from going from 1/4 in to 38 in tubing. I mean the
38 inch tubing looks baller but it actually doesn't have quite the same
tight bend radius as quarterinch tubing does. I think that pretty much covers it
for the water 2.0. Make sure you're subscribed to Linus Tech Tips so that
you see our performance review where we're actually going to take the Water
2.0 and find out how much of a performance advantage that thicker
radiator gives it when we put a high quality pressure optimized silent fan on
it. And of course, be subscribed because
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