Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate Review

[section_title title=”Installation”]Installation

For this review I installed the Water 3.0 on Intel’s 1150 socket as per our normal testing procedures.

First up for 1150 you will want to find the backplate and the 2x foam pads that have sticky adhesive to both sides.

Once you have sorted the back plate it is now time to move onto the brackets that will affix to the CPU block and allow us to tighten the block to the backplate when all is said and done.

For this there are 2 parts, a metal circular piece, one for AMD and one for Intel as well as a plastic piece that will hold it to the block when the time comes. First off you will want to find the corresponding metal piece and install the clips on it to lineup with your preferred socket type. Note, the bottom piece of the plastic clip is actually labelled with socket types to help make installation a bit easier, my camera just would not allow that much of a close up.

Also, depending on the socket type, at least with Intel the top piece of the plastic bracket actually has a hole that can face two different directions, easily changeable by turning the piece to the desired position.

Once all is said and done you should hopefully have something that look similar to this, well if you are on the 1150 socket anyways. The 1366/2011 sockets would have the holes in the plastic pieces right on the edges of the metal bracket.

Either way, once you have the little plastic clips in place you can then insert the screws that will allow you to tighten the bracket down to the backplate in just a few short moments.

Once you have inserted the screws you can now place the metal bracket around the CPU block as so. If you noticed around the inside edge of the main circle are some clips that will actually clip into place on the CPU block itself to help keep the bracket in place.

Next up you can take the plastic part of the bracket and put it on, it should just clip right into place with a bit of force.

Now here is where the fun part comes in. According to the installation manual it is now time to install the block onto the CPU. However, I decided to install the radiator and fans into the case first, either way should work fine this is just my preferred method.

Depending on your exact case there are a couple of ways you can install the radiator. If installing in the top you would put the radiator in first and use the smaller screws included in the packaging to connect the radiator to the case and the attach the fans to the bottom with the longer screws. Or, if you opt to install it as I did you can skip the small screws and just user the long screws to go through the case and fans and screw into the radiator. Either way will be fine it will just come down to how much space you have available and what side of the case the radiator will need to go on.

Now that the radiator is in you can removed the cover protecting the adhesive on the foam pads on the backplate and get it situated onto the back of the motherboard.

At this point if everything has gone well you should now be able to apply some thermal paste onto your CPU and install the block atop it and screw it into the backplate.