Thermaltake Water 3.0 Riing RED 280 AIO Cooler Review

All-In-One (AIO) watercoolers have become extremely popular with system builders due to their superior cooling performance and lower noise profile.  Unfortunately AIO coolers have a few limitations and the largest being your case.  For an AIO to be installed your case must have radiator support else you’ll be breaking out the dremel to “make” it fit.  With a standard aircooler you don’t have to worry about fan and radiator placements however with an AIO your cooler choice is almost always dictated by the system you are building to make sure you have proper cooling and a restriction in what radiators your case supports.

The 280mm radiator or dual 140mm fan radiator has become very popular lately and has almost replaced the 120mm “standard” in high-end cooling.  We used that size radiator in our Core V51 build, not because it needed it but rather because it fit the case.  For most builds a 240mm (the dual 120mm fan version) radiator will offer better if not equal cooling performance over a 280 due to how fast liquid can be pushed through the radiator.  It seems strange but velocity/pressure plays a key role in how a radiator works and performance tends to drop off when more cooling channels are added.

In this review I looked at the Water 3.0 Riing RED 280 AIO cooling solution from Thermaltake.  As I had mentioned before the Water 3.0 is a branded Asetek cooler design that has been fitted with the super cool 140mm Thermaltake Riing fans with Red LED and PWM fan tails.  The fans will spin at a maximum of 1400rpm and feature a static pressure fan blade design which tends to work better with radiators including those found on AIO cooling solutions.

Overall performance was excellent as you would expect and while our reference cooler suing a 38mm thick 240mm radiators offered better performance The Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Riing fans was only a few degrees behind and looked excellent.  If you are into the RGB LED build craze you can purchase a variety of different Thermaltake Riing fans that include static colors like the RED featured in this review  to a full RGB spectrum and even versions that have central controllers so you can customize your light show.

Quiet Operation
Quick Installation
RED Riing LED Fans
280mm Radiator
Great Overclocking Performance
Speed Adjustable PWM Fans

Hose and pump limit overall performance given the larger radiator
Red is popular but can be limited with certain builds