Conclusion
There are many liquid cooling solutions available today for both CPUs and graphics processors. Most of them are priced at $100 or more, which ultimately makes them unaffordable for the average user. Thermaltake's Tide Water comes in at less than $80, and its performance made a good impression on us, but is this reason enough to justify buying it?
The unit is self-contained and can be installed within 10 to 15 minutes. We believe this is an important selling point, since most users do not want to mess around with tubes and liquid coolant. The temperature levels of our test graphics chip were pretty low even when running overclocked, so the Tide Water definitely performs well from a cooling point of view. At the same time, the low speed fan setting causes little noise, and is quieter than the graphics card's factory installed fan.
On the flip side, there are several issues that we need to point at. First, we would not trust the claim of 10,000 hours of maintenance-free operation, because evaporation of the liquid coolant through the skinny rubber tube walls is an issue. (This is the reason why high-end liquid cooling system consist of large diameter rubber tubes.) We would recommend checking the coolant level every few months. Second, the pump is always a potential point of failure. If it malfunctions, this will cause the whole cooling circuit to fail, so it should be as reliable as possible. However, the Tide Water's street price of approximately $80 does not leave much room for the manufacturer to deploy a high-quality pump.
In the end, we do not recommend the Tide Water for highest-end system setups due to the reasons mentioned above. If cooling fails, you are up the creek without a paddle; therefore, for a top-of-the-line system, you should get the best quality cooling solution available.
For other systems, however, we found this solution to be very suitable for reducing system temperature and noise. The Tide Water will cool almost any graphics processor more quietly, and much more efficiently, than any stock cooling solution. For its cost, this product should be a must have for any tech enthusiast.
