Verdict: Very kinky, and not in an exciting way

At only £59.96, the Thermaltake BigWater is the cheapest water-cooling kit on test . Unfortunately for Thermaltake, you can tell.

The CPU waterblock is fitted using a generic mounting mechanism that makes it compatible with almost all CPUs. It consists of a metal plate with an array of holes drilled in it. Bolts are passed through these holes and the motherboard to another similar plate on the back of the motherboard. So, for example, to mount it on an LGA775 processor, you have to hand-thread four nuts into position. Using a spanner isn't really an option on most motherboards, so perhaps Thermaltake should think about supplying wing nuts instead, in order to make the mounting process easier.

The radiator is cooled by a 120mm fan and quickly fits onto the case using four threaded screws. A variable resistor for easy modification of speed attaches to the fan. At full voltage, it's quite noisy, although it's extremely quiet at its lowest setting. The biggest disappointment is the pump and reservoir, which resemble the sort of cheap and tacky plastic toys found in Christmas crackers. The plastic is very thin and breaks very easily. The pump is also very small, and for some reason its input and output connections have an additional section of extremely flimsy clear tubing that has a tendency to kink and stop the flow of coolant. This means that you have to be extremely careful when installing the pump, and avoid knocking your PC.

However, despite the poor build quality of the individual components, the Thermaltake is actually pretty effective. It cooled the Pentium 4e to between 5ûC and 13ûC below the reference Intel HSF, depending on the fan speed. On the Athlon 64, it cooled to between 12ûC and 16ûC below the reference AMD HSF.

These temperatures compare favourably with the similarly priced Cool River and Cooler Master kits, but the Cool River has three waterblocks and a much better mounting mechanism. We also have major reservations about the Thermaltake's build quality, in particular the kinky tubes, and the awkward waterblock mounting mechanism.

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