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Thermaltake Tide Water Review (http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/thermaltake_tidewater_vga_liquid_cooling_module/index.shtml)
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Water cooling has come a long way in the past few years. With Intel's recent innovation it could become more maintenance free and mainstream than ever before. In that same vein of relative maintenance-free liquid cooling, Thermaltake brings us the Tide Water All in One VGA Liquid Cooling Module. My first reaction to this was "neat, but probably too good to be true". Was my hunch correct? Let's find out.
Thermaltake Tide Water Review (http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/thermaltake_tidewater_vga_liquid_cooling_module/index.shtml)
superklye
03-21-06, 09:56 PM
Great review, Clay! :thumbsup:
Seeing that thing reminds me of the original FX 5800Ultra dust buster
Excellent review. Those contraptions take up some room.:D
Seeing that thing reminds me of the original FX 5800Ultra dust busterVisually is where the similarities end though. :p
Thanks guys, this was a fun review.
Nice review.
Any word on if there is going to be a ver 2.0 which allows you to "daisy-chain" the config to allow cooling of 2 cards when in sli (like your setup) ?
That would be neat.
I wonder about getting this and if at all possible hooking 'card 2' to instead a cpu on a mobo.... for some mild overclocking,surely with some retro fitting it could be done,attach a different waterblock to the second set of tubing.......
:D Hmmmmmmn...... I am going to pick one up later this summer and do some 'Research'
That's what I am wondering about, to see if there is anything on the horizon to allow them to be daisy-chained :cool:
Let us know how well your "research" goes.
:cool:
An impressive cooling solution that delivers excellent results. I wonder how much of an effect the lower GPU temperature would have on lowering room temperature. When your PC is on the second floor, it get's pretty warm in the summer even with central air conditioning.
Nice review.
Any word on if there is going to be a ver 2.0 which allows you to "daisy-chain" the config to allow cooling of 2 cards when in sli (like your setup) ?
That would be neat.
Thanks. I'll see what I can find out about that idea, it is a compelling one. I wouldn't think it would be too difficult either. The pump might need to be a bit more powerful but that should be it. Really no need to make the radiator any larger. There's a lot of evidence out there that fluid going from a CPU waterblock to a VGA waterblock (or vice versa) results in less than a 1 degree Celsius temperature gain due to the excellent specific heat of water and other water based fluids.
It might even be a neat modding job...would be pretty easy to do actually (hmmm) :) All one would need is some 1/4" I.D. splitters, some more tubing and another VGA waterblock (preferably the same kind as used in this setup from Tt).
agentkay
03-22-06, 10:02 PM
Great review! This product is quite promising, and it would be DEFINITLY interesting how it would cool two cards in SLI. I really like these small and almost completely maintance free water cooling solutions and I would love to try out what else could be done with them.
JonathanM
03-22-06, 10:28 PM
Yeah I'm definitly interested in seeing what can be done in an SLI setup... Though it's very sweet for a single-card system.
V. Slayer
03-22-06, 11:24 PM
An impressive cooling solution that delivers excellent results. I wonder how much of an effect the lower GPU temperature would have on lowering room temperature. When your PC is on the second floor, it get's pretty warm in the summer even with central air conditioning.
I second that. Clay, did this lower the temp in your case or room, or did those temps stay the same? If it stayed the same, then it probably won't help out much in Mike's situation (or mine, for that matter. :)) I know that my computer room in the summertime is 8-10 degrees warmer than the first floor, and 3-5 degrees warmer than the rest of the second floor. I attribute it to both my PCs and the heater on my Gecko tank. Darn cold-blooded reptiles...
I second that. Clay, did this lower the temp in your case or room, or did those temps stay the same? If it stayed the same, then it probably won't help out much in Mike's situation (or mine, for that matter. :)) I know that my computer room in the summertime is 8-10 degrees warmer than the first floor, and 3-5 degrees warmer than the rest of the second floor. I attribute it to both my PCs and the heater on my Gecko tank. Darn cold-blooded reptiles...I'm in a pretty big open room with 15' catherdral ceilings so not the best test environment for the effect on ambient room temp changes. I don't recall my ambient case temps dropping much. I wasn't really keeping track of them except for the initial ambient temp reading.
If you sit around your rig and it generally runs warm, you can typically tell when it cools down some.
Naturally if you had decent cooling before and it wasn't that noticeable, you won't feel a difference.
WLanMan
03-23-06, 07:11 PM
Great review (as always). :clap:
Did you try to OC? Was the memory hotter without any heatsinks?
Wonder if I could use it to cool my NF4 NB instead...
agentkay
03-23-06, 07:17 PM
Great review (as always). :clap:
Did you try to OC? Was the memory hotter without any heatsinks?
Wonder if I could use it to cool my NF4 NB instead...
If you got a NB waterblock (quite cheap, because they are small), you could easielly loop it with the TTW. ;)
I may have to get one of these!
I'm still using it and love it. The reviews on Newegg for it are very favorable as well.
Glad you bumped this SLippe since I had missed it. Nice review Clay and definitely a nice/interesting piece of hardware.
Thanks OWA, it is a nice little (well, kinda big actually) cooler. :D
XDanger
05-06-06, 09:49 AM
is there now way to set this thing elsewhere in a large case so its not taking up the slots ,I only have 3 pci slots so that would mean using onboard sound bleurgh!!. I really want to know about the OC capability of this thing .I read a review that used an ati card and they werent able to overclock any more than normal on that particular card even though they got great cooling.
is there now way to set this thing elsewhere in a large case so its not taking up the slots ,I only have 3 pci slots so that would mean using onboard sound bleurgh!!. I really want to know about the OC capability of this thing .I read a review that used an ati card and they werent able to overclock any more than normal on that particular card even though they got great cooling.
If you have 3 pci slots, why would you have to use onboard sound? This would only take up 2 of the 3, leaving the 3rd for your sound card. I've got my case all ready for this thing, when I get to order it.
is there now way to set this thing elsewhere in a large case so its not taking up the slots ,I only have 3 pci slots so that would mean using onboard sound bleurgh!!. I really want to know about the OC capability of this thing .I read a review that used an ati card and they werent able to overclock any more than normal on that particular card even though they got great cooling.
The overclocking capability is always going to be a YMMV kind of thing. It just varies from card to card. If a given GPU has the potential/ability to be overclocked...this cooler can definitely provide more than sufficient cooling.
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