ThermalTake’s Water 3.0 Ultimate is the biggest baddest of among their All-In-One liquid cooling solution, a stark difference compared to the Water 3.0 Ultimate range.
The Ultimate uses a 360mm radiator, that’s 3 times more heat dissipation area than those of 120mm radiator AIO solution.
Here’s the unit itself, it’s VERY LONG and you shouldn’t be getting one UNLESS you’re very certain that your casing is able to house a cooler of such dimension.
While the radiator unit is huge, the water block / pump unit is exactly as what you saw in the other products.
As for the package contents – wow, there’s just so many things. Fret not about the fan power connection, ThermalTake included a 1 to 3 splitter unit so all the fans are able to run at the same RPM.
What I like about the Ultimate model is that the cooler mounts are pre-installed with the holder sockets.
It looks beautiful those fan installed.
Specs below taken from the official product page.
Benchmark
I used the Intel Core i5-4670K overclocked to 4.3Ghz @ 1.25vcore for this test.
CPU load was done by converting 10bit MKV video to 8bit using x264, set to -veryslow mode.
Cooler | Idle (°C) | Load (°C) |
ThermalTake Water 3.0 Ultimate | 30 | 61 |
ThermalTake Water 3.0 Ultimate (Max fan speed) | 28 | 46 |
ThermalTake Water 3.0 Performer C | 32 | 60 |
ThermalTake Water 3.0 Performer C (Max fan speed) | 29 | 57 |
Stock Cooler | 33 | 79 |
I was expecting the Water 3.0 Ultimate to perform much better regardless of fan speed but I’m somewhat disappointed to see that the temperature for the Ultimate on normal fan speed (set on BIOS) resulted in similar readings as the one on the low-end Water 3.0 Performer.
Once the fan RPM were cranked up, the readings were stunning, the Water 3.0 Ultimate was a whole 11°C cooler than the Water 3.0 Performer.
The fans bundled with the Water 3.0 Ultimate are different from that of the Water 3.0 Performer and that might be the reason why it didn’t perform as well as what I hoped for.
The Verdict
The ThermalTake Water 3.0 Ultimate retails at a whopping RM 499, it’s a convenient solution but certainly not a cheap one. One thing’s for sure is that you will get very good cooling for your processor.