Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Steve from gamers Nexus Donette and today we're reviewing Silverstone's tundra tt-02 closed-loop liquid cooling solution this is a CPU cooler and it is using liquid of course so this is a bit different from other CFCs we've reviewed because the Corsair H series coolers and NZXT X series coolers are all supplied by ACE tech so they're very similar in their make and design and engineering because it's literally the same parts just rebadged and there's some software on top of it so this doesn't use A's tech and it does have custom design elements from silverstone so it is a bit more interesting to review in that respect most noteworthy is the radiator itself the radiator is super fat it's like 45 millimeters or something it's almost twice as fat as the standard ace tech supplied radiators we see in these coolers it is a 240 millimeter CLC so that means we have two 120 millimeter fans and the radiator itself is actually about 280 millimeters long so pretty standard in terms of 240 millimeter designs for CLC s we have a normal pair of hoses going down to the CPU block the CPU block is actually pretty fat as well it is a bit fatter than normally as the radiator is and that is because silverstone has ditched the plastic that's found in a lot of these cpu blocks so they're using a unibody aluminum design and and it's got the mounting mechanism with screws at the bottom if we flip it over we'll see that the cold plate also lacks screws this is a common theme in this cooler as you'll see it lacks screws in the bottom which theoretically this improves the thermal conductivity a little bit or I should say the thermal dissipation because we have more surface area to spread the heat across because it's not being interrupted by screws in actuality the CPU is never going to touch those screws anyway on any of these other coolers so I think the practical difference is pretty minimal the radiator is also screwless if you were wondering and it's all held together by a an aluminum shell on the outside so pretty nice-looking on the whole if you're wondering why the radiator is so fat and if you're not familiar with radiators they work basically just by running liquid pipe from one side of the radio to the other where the the hoses will basically import and export the fluid and the pump on top of the CPU pumps it so that's how they work at a top level the fins the aluminum fins are normally found between the liquid pipes the the actual pipes in the radiator and those are used to conduct heat from the pipe from the metal pipe which then obviously is blown away by the fan so that's what cools down our liquid that is our cooling process and in this radiator the liquid pipes are actually surrounded by aluminum fins so instead of just left and right side it's actually top and bottom as well once again theoretically improving the thermal dissipation potential speaking to the installation process I was very happy with Silverstone's installation for the tundra td0 - it's super straightforward you put your backplate on you mount the radiator you mount the fans and you basically drop the CPU block on top of the CPU with some thermal paste and you screw it down no stupid mechanisms her brackets that slide around everywhere involved so a very nice move away from some of the less functional mounting processes for these ACE tech coolers however the radiator is so big that a lot of cases that are built with special compartments for 240 millimeter radiators in them will not support the silverstone t do - as is the case with the phantom cases and the top compartment because it's just too big it doesn't fit in there so you're gonna have to hand it down into the case and a lot of these situations and that does mean you're gonna be removing probably your rear exhaust fan in order to accommodate the radiator hanging down depending on your case if you have a huge case it should be fine so not a big deal but is something that is worthy of note as far as the benchmark performances first of all nothing beats the an Tek 1250 it is still the king of our benchmark next is the coarser h 110 then the the 1250 again in a custom setting and then the coarser h 90 is tied with the tundra td0 to that we're testing today so the h 90 is a 140 millimeter cooler and the TD 0-2 is a 240 millimeter cooler if you're wondering why the H 90 was tied it's because I wanted to do a real test so the h9t can fit in our test bench in just the rear position or just the top position and that means we have room for other cooling fans in the case the tt-02 is big so I had to remove the rear exhaust fan I obviously had to remove the top fans in order to actually fit the cooler and so that meant we had one less fan running during the test now you might say hey that's not fair it's not an equalized test but I do draw some lines and one of my lines that I draw is ensuring a real-world scenario in the real world the you as a user will not be getting rid of one of your fans in the case randomly just because you want to you're gonna leave it in there and you're gonna install your age 90 in a different open slot so that's what I tested for these are tied in that scenario if you're just running the cooler on a bench with no other fans the tt-02 should slightly outperform the H 90 it should be better than the custom setting for the 1250 and a about tied with the H 110 so it'll be kind of in between those two if you test it flat out with no other fans in the case so and all be all it's a good cooler it does what it's supposed to do it installs extremely well I was very happy with the installation build quality is solid the aluminum is very nice the lack of screws is kind of a it's a cool thing it's more of an aesthetic thing so it all it all looks very good and it performs fairly well the cooler is $120 so it is the same price as an Tex 1250 which makes it difficult for me to recommend because the 1250 has significantly better software control and you have a bit more control of it as the user however the Silverstone one does have a different aesthetic and honestly that's what a lot of this comes down to once you're past build quality is aesthetic so kind of pick between them based on what you think looks better and if you care about those extra two ish degrees Celsius and that's all for this cooler so leave a comment below if you have questions check out the link in the description below for the full article please subscribe if you liked the video and support us by checking out our patreon page also linked below and we will see you all next time peace