Installation
Installing the TD02-Lite was fairly easy. As stated earlier, the radiator is only 27mm thick. Therefore, this cooler should fit in most gaming towers. The cooler even fit in my fairly small mid-tower, the Challenger from Cougar. I had to do a little modification installing the liquid cooler into the Challenger. The cooler became a tight fit once I added the dual 120mm fans to the radiator, yet I was still able to squeeze her in. The problem I had was that the left fan was catching on the I/O ports of the motherboard. Like with most other liquid coolers, the fans are optional and are just there to help with the overall cooling capabilities.
The TD02’s manual had instruction for installing both Intel and AMD sockets. Intel’s brackets are already attached to the water block, therefore AMD users will need to swap them out. Each bracket only has two screws holding the brackets on to the water block, making for a very easy swap. Once you have the correct attachments on the back of the motherboard and heat sink, all that is left is to screw down the heat sink to the CPU. Don’t forget to put a little dab of Thermal Paste.
Performance
Test setup and Testing Methodology
The table below shows the system used for testing. Ambient temperatures were kept at 25 degrees Celsius +/- 1 degree. Thermal paste used was SilverStone’s thermal grease. For the overclocked results, I increased the voltage to 1.30v, which allowed me to increase the clock speed to 4.2GHz. I also disabled the cool and quiet mode to prevent the CPU idling at a lower voltage. The fans speed was set to auto. Idle temperatures were recorded after 10 minutes, while I used Prime for the torture test and recorded the temperatures after 5 minutes. HWMonitor from CPUID was the software used to record fan speeds and temperatures.
Test Setup
|
Processor |
AMD FX-8320 3.5Hz Socket AM3+ (OC 4.2GHz 1.30v) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 |
| Ram | G Skill Rip Jaws 08GB (4X2GB) |
| SSD/HHD | Seagate 600/ Seagate 2TB |
| PSU | Ultra LSP 750w |
| Graphics Card | Gigabyte Radeon R9 285 |
| Cooling | No other fans |
| Chassis | Cougar’s Challenger |
The test results of the TD02-Lite compared to the air cooler, Lucifer Version 2 (LV2) from deep cool, was exceptional. In the graph below, we see the idle tempertures for both stock and overclock. The second graph shows the same test, yet this time we are using Prime95 for the torture test. In both settings, the TD02 proved to be the better bet! However, with the dual fans the liquid cooler has almost the double RPM’s at 1457 compared to 839 of the LV2. The LV2 increased to 1256 in the torture test, while the TD02 only increased to 1638. As you might have guessed, the TD02 is quite a bit nosier. Especially at idle speeds, yet the overall decibel levels were not that much higher once both coolers were running at full speed. In the third graph shows the maximum decibel levels for both coolers. The noise levels were recorded using a meter that records sound pressure levels, not actual acoustic levels.
There we have it! the TD02-Lite brought to us by SilverStone. Lets go over a few final thoughts.
