Performance

The system being used to test the heatsink is as follows:
Ambient temperature was kept to 25° Celsius (+/- 1°) and was measured by a standard mercury thermometer.


With the system installed and running, the CPU was kept at 28° C idle and 40° C load, regardless of the fan speed. However, this may be because there are extra fans installed in the top of the test case which feed cool air directly into the radiator fan at all times.


With the CPU overclocked to 3.2 GHz at 1.4V, the Bigwater 760i kept the CPU temp at 34° C idle and a respectable 58º C load, again regardless of the fan speed. Most users will probably see a small temperature difference in their systems when adjusting the fan similar to that found on the Max Orb, which was 1 to 4° C.

Fan Noise

To measure fan noise we used an IEC Type 2 sound level meter on the dbA setting. Measuring distance was 10 cm from the heatsink fan hub. The short distance of 10 cm is necessary to get proper readings with very silent fans. All fans were tested outside of the case at 12V supplied by a lab PSU. On fans that come with a fan controller or allow control of fan speed in any other way, "low" and "high" indicate the settings on the fan controller.


The fan included with the system is not quiet, and can be rather loud at full speed. Since most users move to watercooling partially for the lower noise levels, it would have been nice to see Thermaltake include a quieter fan.