Silverstone Tundra Series TD03 CPU Water Cooler Review

Introduction The Silverstone Tundra TD03 is one of the most unusual 120mm water coolers I've seen, it stands out in a market that is crowded by Asetek water coolers that are all pretty much identical. Silverstone have a legendary reputation for their engineering prowess and there's no way they're going to import a 3rd party design for their cooler. It was this unique design that meant I had to get one in for review, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and I really wanted to see if Silverstones design was better than all the other models that are available on the market these days. Water cooling is big business these days, what was once the plaything of the enthusiast system builder can now be bought as an off-the-shelve product, installed with ease thanks to the closed loop / all-in-one designs and in many cases you can find a good 120mm water cooler for less than a high-end air cooler. Water cooling has a lot of benefits, it can often cool more efficiently, it's got great potential for overclocking and many water-cooled systems are quieter than their air-cooled counterparts. The Tundra Series TD03 is an all-in-one cooler with a closed loop design, so it doesn't need re-filling or require any special maintenance aside from an occasional dusting. It's a little on the expensive side at £85 shipped, but if the build quality and performance are as good as previous Silverstone products I have tested, then it should be worth every penny. Of course if the performance isn't that great, then this is a very expensive 120mm water cooler. As you can see from the specifications below it comes fitted with a copper base and a nickel-plastic aluminium unibody, a nice change from all the plastic that often features on AIO water coolers. There are two high quality 120mm fans included that run from a 4-pin PWM cable. On the front of the box we have a quick rundown of the major features and socket support, pretty much ever major AMD and Intel socket in recent history is supported. You'll also notice a hole in the box, that was my fault (whoops). Around the back we have an international break down of the same details we saw on the front of the box. The cooler is nicely packed with protective covers on all the major components, will plenty of space and packaging between each so that they don't get shaken around during transit. In the box you'll find everything you need to get the cooler installed in your system, including some very nicely finished screws and bolts, thermal paster, a back-plate with the retention clips pre-installed, a Y split fan cable, some spacers, AMD mounting arms and some sticky contact pads. A Closer Look The two included fans are nicely designed, featuring 9 white fan blades each and a high quality black sleeved cable, each with a 4-pin PWM connection. The pump, pipes and radiator and a single piece unit out of the box. Unlike many of the other coolers on the market, the TD03 isn't just a black coloured lump of plastic and metal. The side has a grey finish to its nickel-plated aluminium, the fins are finished in black and there is a glossy white trim to the top and bottom edges, very different from everything else on the market, but it certainly looks great. The fins are very durable, with many water coolers I can bend the fins easily with my finger, but that is not the case here and they're what I would class as heavy-duty. The white finish on the water pipes have been kept neat and tidy thanks to some white shrink tubing at the base; the pipes are really flexible too, more so than any other water cooler I've tested, which should make the installation process a little easier. The radiator looks unique and stunning, but not as much as the pump which comes will a stunning aluminium constructed body, the Silverstone logo in the middle features a blue LED backlight and there is a hard-wired black sleeved cable on one side. The water pipes are mounted to the pump on swivel brackets, meaning they can be angled to best suit your installation. The Intel bracket is pre-installed, but you can unscrew it and attach the much longer AMD mounting arms if required. The oversized contact base is highly polished copper. Installation The retention clips are easily attached to the back-plate, then it's simply a case of pushing the four long screws through the back and attaching it to your motherboard, which should only take about 1-2 minutes in total. Four plastic spacers are then slid over the screws and will hold the whole thing in place, ready for you to attach the coolers pump. The pump fits easily over the four screws and you can attach the final four bolts with ease. The fans are screws in place easy enough and you can easily mount the cooler to your chassis thanks to the easily positioned pipes. The only thing to keep in mind is the size, as with both fans in place it's around 95mm deep. Test System and Methodology We always use the same test system and tests with CPU coolers that we compare against each other. The full specifications of our test system are as follows: Test system: ASUS P8Z77-V, LGA 1155 socket, Z77 chipset Intel Core i5 3570K with Gelid GC Extreme under the IHS 8GB G.Skill Trident X 2400MHz DDR3 128GB Kingston SSDnow V100 (Boot Drive) and Samsung F3 1TB (storage) Antec High Current Gamer 620W Cooler Master Test Bench v1.0 We’d like to say a big thank you to ASUS, Antec, Kingston, Cooler Master and Intel for providing components that makes this testing possible. Testing Methodology: We always use Gelid GC Extreme thermal paste to make sure testing reveals the efficiency of the tested coolers not the efficiency of the bundled thermal paste. Prime 95 is run for 10 minutes and then the average maximum temperatures as recorded by CPUID HWMonitor are noted The average temperature across the four cores is taken on our quad-core processor Fans are mostly left to operate at default PWM profile speeds and with maximum fan speed for reference.If PWM functions are not supported then fixed fan speeds are used and sometimes a low noise adapter if appropriate/provided. If fixed fan speeds or low noise adapters are used it will be clearly pointed out either on the graphs or in the write-up. All default result entries on graphs are for PWM performance unless otherwise specified. A variety of fan speed results are done for a particular product review and then removed from the graphs in future reviews of other products to avoid clutter. If you would like to see more fan speed results for a particular product please check its individual review. For watercooling tests all pumps have been operated at 12 volts directly from the power supply Delta temperatures are always used (Observed temperature minus ambient temperature) and we keep the ambient at 22 (+/- 1) degrees for all testing . Delta temperatures should correct for any marginal ambient differences between 21-23 degrees. Acoustic measurements are taken 10cm horizontally away from the CPU cooler with the VGA fan disabled, hard drive in idle and power supply isolated. These are taken at desktop idle and Prime95 load. The cooling performance tests are run at stock 3.4GHz (with Intel Turbo up to 3.8GHz) and overclocked 4.5GHz (1.35v) settings. Voltages are fixed to prevent inaccuracy between comparisons. All other coolers in the graphs have been tested under identical settings so are fully comparable. Each test is repeated 3 times with 3 remounts for consistency of results There is approximately a 1 degree celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software CPUID HW Monitor There is approximately a 1.5dBA margin of error with our Benetech GM1351 decibel meter Software Used CPUID HWMonitor Prime 95 Since I recently took over our cooling reviews section we have started our graphs again to keep things consistent with my own testing methodology. If you wish to view any of the previous results you can do so on any of our prior cooling reviews in the Cooling section. We currently have four main categorisations for CPU coolers that are: Budget CPU coolers (sub £40 in typical RRP) Low Profile CPU coolers (Often top-down design, but any CPU cooler that is designed to be small) Water cooling AIO CPU coolers (Both closed loop and expandable water CPU coolers that come pre-built - no custom kits) Performance Heatsink coolers (Heatsinks designed for performance, typically cost upwards of £40) In all these graphs we may have a few "reference" results of particular products that do not fit within that category for comparative purposes. Performance At stock temperatures the TD03 is pretty average, that is of course no bad thing because our i5 3570K will run happily at these mid-range temperatures 24 hours a day. The numbers are about on par with that of the Antec 650 and Corsair H75, both similar size and specification water cooling units. The Tundra was a little louder than the other water cooling units, although none of the coolers on this chart are really that noisy, it's rare that you'll hear the fan from a cooler from within your chassis at stock loads unless your running a tiny stock Intel / AMD cooler. However there is clearly some room for improvement regardless. This is where the Tundra really shines, it is the third best CPU cooler for overclocking on our chart! Just beating out the 280mm radiator of the CM Nepton and ever so slightly behind that of the Enermax Liqtech 120mm radiator. The added win for Silverstone is that they've got much lower idle temperatures than nearly everything else, same as the Liqtech 240 and the Nepton 140XL, all of which idle at just 3c above ambient. The Tundra ranks in around the same level as the Antec 650 in terms of acoustics, it could be quieter and there is an audible fan noise, mostly air turbulence noise rather than motor / pump noises. Perhaps Silverstone could improve the fan noise a little bit, but with such great cooling performance from a 120mm radiator, I think a little wind noise is a fair trade-off. Final Thoughts Price The Silverstone Tundra is one of the more expensive all-in-one water coolers on the market, especially given that it only has a 120mm radiator. You can pick one up here in the UK for around £85 shipped at Scan.co.uk and $98 in the US from Amazon.com, it is expensive, but you've seen in our overclocking test that it is worth every single penny. Overview I am really surprised by the Tundra, I was expecting it to be high quality and high performance, much like every other Silverstone product I've seen roll through the eTeknix office, or from my own personal experiences with the brand, but I wasn't expecting it to be as great as this. Sure it's not perfect, but it really does shake up this sector of the market by doing things a little differently to the competition. Silverstone could have done what most brands do, stick their own fans and badge on an Asetek product and most users would have been happy with that, but they've taken the risk of creating a unique pump / block design from solid aluminium, which not only looks stunning, but it's also a heck of a lot more durable that the thousands of plastic construction ones that are on the market these days. The radiator design is very nice, it's a little thicker than most other 120mm designs, but that extra surface area is what gives the TD03 such great performance when overclocking. The nickel-plated aluminium finish is a welcome break from all the typically black coolers on the market and will look great in virtually any chassis, especially those who have an aluminium enclosure. Add to that the fact the TD03 has some of the slimmest pipes on a water cooler, which means the pump is very manoeuvrable once installed, that flexibility will benefit those who need to mount at tighter angles, something common in HTPC / Mini-ITX system builds. Having this level of performance from a 120mm radiator is incredible and I see no reason to invest in a 240mm or larger radiator that offers the same performance, especially when you can get a much more manageable 120mm radiator that does the same job. The only downside of course is that the TD03 was a little noisy, or at least the fans were. This is something you could control by changing the fan profile, but slow the fans and you'll see an increase in temperatures, so it's really about finding a balance that works for you. You could add aftermarket fans to improve acoustics, but I wouldn't do so in a hurry given the cooling performance is really great with the included fans. This cooler should prove very popular with those building a small form factor gaming system; there are many mini-ITX gaming chassis on the market and finding a suitable water cooler can be tricky, leaving you to make compromises on other components to ensure compatibility on 240mm radiators. Aside from being a little deeper, the TD03 is very easy to work with and compatibility shouldn't be an issue for most builds given that only need a single 120mm fan mount space. So long as you can cope with the investment, this is easily one of the best all-in-one water coolers on the market today. Pros Unique design Aluminium construction Virtually silent pump Durable build quality Incredibly cooling performance Easy to install Cons Fans are a little noisy High price may put some people off eTeknix says: "There is a lot to love about the Silverstone Tundra TD03, it's refreshing to see a unique looking product in a market full of Asetek hardware and it's even better that it out performs almost everything else in its class. It looks great, performs even better and it comes from a brand name that has a sock solid reputation for quality. Simply one of the best 120mm water coolers you could ever hope for." Thank you Silverstone for providing us with this sample.