Water Cooling Issues

Even though installing the water cooling was easier than I would have imagined, there were some long-term issues which need to be addressed. Originally, we were planning to include a full set of benchmarks pitting the stock Thermaltake water block against the venerable D-Tek Fuzion but that was not meant to be. While our experience may be the exception, this section will cover all the issues we had with the components Thermaltake includes with their built-in watercooling loop. It should be mentioned that on the whole, our experience with most of the included pieces was excellent.


P400 Pump Goes Poof

As the title suggests, the pump Thermaltake included with the Sword M self-destructed after a few hours of operation. Before you ask, no there weren’t any air bubbles in the system and yes I made sure of it on more than one occasion. From the second I turned on this pint-sized pump, the racket it produced was bordering on intolerable so I knew something was wrong so it was only a matter of time.

Since I didn’t have time to order myself another I decided to try my hand at a bit of pump rebuilding which meant disassembling the whole loop. Lo and behold, one of the wires going to the pump motor had fried itself and a bit of soldering made it good as new. Unfortunately, even after going over it with a fine-toothed comb I couldn’t find the source of the noise and it is still loud as hell.


More Blockages than a Toilet in Grand Central Station

When I began leak testing the loop I noticed that the second the water hit the Thermaltake CPU block it would slow down to a crawl. Thinking this was due to the restrictive nature of the block itself, I thought nothing of it but then during testing the temperatures of the Phenom started going through the roof. I opened the case only to discover the water was barely moving through the block at all.

After disassembling the loop (AGAIN) I tried a few things to get water moving through the block. I attached some leftover tubing I had, filled the tube up with water and tried to blow the water through the block. I could to it but only if I blew harder than necessary. I did not reinstall this block for fear of it overheating the processor once again. Since there is no way to open the block, I can only speculate that there was something in there causing a blockage.


Acoustics

Even though the Sword M comes with seven 120mm fans installed, the noise produced stays at a minimum. This is due to the fact that all of the fans are operating at a mundane 1300RPM though I have to cast some doubt on Thermaltake’s claimed 17dBA per fan. Yes they are quiet but they are not SILENT and no matter the lack of noise produced, having seven 120mm fans all running at the same time does produce more than a cursory amount of noise. I also noticed a fair bit of hard drive vibration due to the complete lack of rubber grommets on the hard drive tray.

To tell you the truth, it wouldn’t have mattered if there were seven 2000RPM fans installed because they would have still been drowned out by the pump. Make no mistake about it; that thing was LOUD and it could be heard from the other end of my condo. While this may have been a manufacturing defect, this thing will be changed out the second I have the chance.