Conclusion

Performance

The SilverStone Tundra Series TD02 liquid cooler is an impressive unit with performance that contends with the other top-rated coolers we've tested. The unit scales well under heat loads, but seems to be optimized for its stock two fan operating mode. We really only saw the expected heat-related performance scaling with the additional two fans (in quad fan operating mode) with the oveclocked Haswell processor.

Pricing

As of February 17, the SilverStone Tundra Series TD02 All-in-one liquid CPU cooler was available at Newegg.com for $118.99, as well as Amazon.com for $127.47 with Prime shipping and Performance-PCs.com for $119.95.

01-td02-full.jpg

Conclusion

Before continuing with our parting sentiments on the Tundra Series TD02 liquid cooler, we would like to take this opportunity to give our friends at SilverStone a hearty "Thank You" for giving us the pleasure and opportunity to review such a high quality and well designed liquid cooling unit. When looking for a CPU liquid cooler, there are specific areas of concern to be aware of in the coolers design and implementation – the radiator size, thickness, and fin density, the water block construction and base plate quality, and the barb and tubing sizes used to transport the medium within the system. SilverStone seems to have taken most of these areas into consideration with the TD02. The build quality of the unit is impressive with the unit built for ruggedness and aesthetics. The radiator is almost double the thickness of that included with most all-in-one units, measuring 45mm instead of the normal 25mm. Further, the radiator fin design was an innovation in its own right with each fin layer individually soldered to the water lines. This did hurt the fin density of the unit with its radiator fin density matching more closely to an air-based unit.

As far as setting up the unit, I cannot say enough about the mounting mechanism. It is one of the easiest to use mounts that I have encountered in all my years of water cooling, coming in at a close second to my personal favorite, the Koolance mount. Even the water block design was expertly done starting with the fact that it is all metal. The uni-body aluminum top not only gives the water block a unique appearance, but adds strength and rigidity to the entire block.  Even better than that top construction was the design of the base plate. Most manufacturers opt for bottom up screws to secure the base plate to the block body. Silverstone devised a method to internally secure the base plate so that the copper plate was a seamless construction. The performance of the unit under all conditions more than speaks for itself.

Their were several design challenges that may have held back the TD02's performance. The most obvious was the size of the barbs and tubing used for liquid medium transport. Using only 1/4" diameter tubing probably held back the performance of the unit by creating flow bottlenecks at all interfaces, restricting the flow of the medium and inhibiting the performance with the slower flow through the CPU block channels and the radiator. The radiator construction was well done, but the material used for the radiator was questionable. In an air cooler, aluminum radiators are desirable because of the metal's ability to absorb and shed heat from the embedded copper heat pipes.

However, that changes in a liquid cooling loop with copper being much better at stealing the heat back from the coolant to be dispersed via the radiator fins. The other issue with using an all-aluminum radiator comes from the use of the copper base plate. Mixed-metal liquid loops can suffer galvanic corrosion over time where the liquid actually acts as an electron transfer mechanism between the metals, causing pitting in one of the metals and corrosion deposits in the other.  According to our sources at Silverstone, they do a few things to reduce the occurence of galvanic corrosion.  The aluminum walls of the block are nickel plated and the coolant is directed to the copper plate via a plastic shroud mechanism internal to the block.  Also, they offer a full five year warranty on the TD02 cooler.

Strengths

  • Manual quality
  • Performance under stock and overclocking conditions
  • Build and machining quality of the cooler
  • Mounting mechanism ease of use
  • All metal water block construction
  • Seamless construction of copper base plate on CPU block
  • Radiator thickness
  • Five year warranty

Weaknesses

  • Price
  • Use of 1/4 tubing hurt performance
  • Possiblity of galvanic corrosion because of mixed metals between copper block and aluminum radiator
  • Use of aluminum radiator

pcpersilverpng-300.png

« PreviousNext »