News SilverStone Tundra TD03 Review

We take a look at the smaller SilverStone Tundra closed loop liquid cooler.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cooling/2013/07/19/silverstone-tundra-td03-review/1

 

Haven't even read the article yet, I am about to, but just wanted to say straight away, what a stupid naming idea. Why not keep it simple and logical and call it the TD01? Use the numbers to indicate the radiator size you muppets Silverstone. Oh well... back to the article.

 

I haven't read it yet either and wanted to say exactly the same thing. Oh well... back to the article.

 

OK, read it all now. These coolers seem like a great entry for Silverstone overall but there are certainly improvements to be made. The simplest and quite obvious one for me is for them to upgrade the tubing to thicker, rubberised, but still white tubing. Looks wise, everything else looks stunning.

The other issue is for them to look at the airflow issue and the lack of any sort of gain from upping the speed settings of the fans. I can't see the pump, tubing or water block having any impact there as surely these items only slow the water flow and thus give more time for the heat to transfer through the radiator which doesn't seem to improve with extra air. So I can only assume (as I can't test my theory) that the radiator's patented (is everything patented these days?) fin design is at fault.

 

What if the water is flowing too fast for the "patented" fin design to have time to reduce the temperature any further? Would that explain why upping the fan speeds has next to no effect on the temperatures?

 

Personally I feel that air only plays a part in cooling. The rest is down to other factors, like for example the amount of coolant in the loop.

A couple of years back I had a GTX 470 with a Zalman V3000F fitted and switching the fans to maximum (and they were really bloody noisy) netted me a 1c difference over running them just at the lower point of being audible (IE I played with the fan mate until I just about couldn't hear the fans at all).

The tubes on this cooler obviously play a part, because the H100i has thicker tubing than the H100 (yet the same rad and pump design) yet the i is 2c or so cooler. Again, I would imagine that the difference is created by the extra bit of coolant in the loop.

 

Someone should open one of these up and replace the tubing

 

That's a very eye-candy unit.

Thanks for the review

 

Don't really understand the fuss for all these single fan WC systems. Basically you can fit a single fan and a heatsink directly on top of the cpu (standard air cooling). That works just as well, but is cheaper, simpler, more reliable and often quieter (no pump noise).

For water cooling to really be worth it you need a radiator bigger then the sort of thing you could fit directly on a cpu (i.e. 2-3 fans, with sufficiently beefy piping + pump). Then you get cooling capabilities well in excess of an air cooling system and the extra expense and hassle could be worth it.