Thermaltake Bigwater

[cadaveca]

Got it in the mail today. Was very impressed to begin with...until i got ready to fill the system. Here's the picture i took of the pump after carefully trying to remove the nipple. Appears it was crazy-glued on, and had been broken by either the shop i got it from, or by thermaltake themselves, as they way it was packed, it could not have happened during shipping. Needless to say, my system will be down for a while. the last pic is of the nipple i removed first (yes they both came off)...it's quite obvious there was no way i could have broken off such a small peice without crushing the nipple...never mind both peices and the second nipple.
I'm pissed to say the least, as the shop does not accept returns, so have to deal with thermaltake themselves. Guess i get to experience thier RMA firsthand.

[danrok]

So, the bung you would remove to fill it up was glued on?

[cadaveca]

No...the actual nipple used to fill the pump was glued on...and not that well. There was water in the pump, so it was tested at some point, but i do not see how. if my camera did good close-ups, you'd be able to tell what a shoddy @#$%#@$%@%@ it is, but....now that you mention it, maybe it WAS glued to the nipple too!

[cadaveca]

added a clearer pic of what is left of the nipple, and a pic of it running, gum over the holes where the nipples used to be, and were the rubber covers should be(Go McGuyver!). The 2 pieces are what was inside the rubber part when I removed it. The plastic was quite obviously already broken, and glued on...too much of repairing massage beds to mistake that one. The plastic looks like it was made broken....like they stuck the broken part in the rubber cover, and then put it on. You would think that were they broke off from the pump, you'd see borken plastic, but only the lower hole looks like it could have been an original part of the pump, while the second looks as though it was epoxied over a hole that wa there for air, or something. Regardless to say, i've never been dissappointed by thermaltake products before, but now i will think twice before buying something from them, unless the whole RMA situation goes better than i expect....it will probably end up costing me more money for sending the pump in, and lots of downtime. For a product that was broken before it got to my door, that is unacceptable. I get better service from microsoft, at least for now. I'll give them a few days to contact me, before making any final judgements, but if the equipment was this shoddy, then i doubt things will go well. I'm pretty sure, in the end, that the clamps were too much for the plastic in the cold...this is Canada, after all. Maybe shipping plastic parts with spring clamps is not such a good idea, 'cause other than that, this kit's quite nice. We'll see if customer satisfaction is important.

Factory heatsink led to 63c full load on the new chip(no thermal tape on heatsink...actual silver paste), and i'm hovering at 50 now. What a hot chip!

[cadaveca]

After reading your thread, I decided to inspect the last two Bigwater kits we had in stock. I removed the pump from the box and touched which looked to be some kind of bleed system and the nipple broke off with the slightest of touch. I have contacted Thermaltake and informed them of this problem, I should get a response in the next day or so. In the mean time I will issue you on RMA number, please ship only the defective pump back to us. I will work with Thermaltake to get your replacement pump ASAP, I would like to apologize for this inconvenience.

my retailer answered first thing in the morning. Seems this is not an isolated issue. But i must say, even with the nipples missing (the real reason i'm dissappointed is becasue the filltank could have been used as a res, or permanantly attached to the kit outside the loop; even came with mounting hardware)the kit itself performs quite well...the chip only gets as hot as the PWM section, intead of 13c higher.

lol I need more airflow in my new case!

[cadaveca]

Lucky enough to have replacement pump to be sent before sending the broken one out. ETA is next friday tho, so finishing the system off for now gets delayed a bit, so that's minor. Thanks to my retailer for sending the pump first, so my down-time is minimal.

The pump has an RPM line...not something i expected.