Performance Analysis

The best-case scenario with door open and 12V fans saw a delta T result of 56°C, which is almost on par with the best result we’ve seen using the same hardware in a different case (within margin of error). That was with a custom water-cooling setup featuring a D5 pump and a thicker 360mm radiator. That said, all-in-one coolers with maximum speed fans can reach with 3-4°C of this result too.

At 7V, we’re firmly in premium all-in-one cooler territory with a delta T of 61°C, and our CPU is still nowhere near throttling. This is the optimal balance of noise/performance.

At 5V, we get to a delta of 70°C (over 90°C on the actual CPU), but this is still a good result given the noise output - we've seen other setups come very close to throttling with low-speed fans. With a less aggressive overclock or less powerful CPU, 5V would be perfectly fine – the advantage of custom water-cooling is exactly this.

Whatever setup you use, you must make sure you give some thought to airflow, as water-cooling still relies on it. Even at 12V, the door-closed scenario sees the radiator suffocated, and it’s 5°C worse than using 5V fans with the door open. Yes, a door (or a solid front panel) will contain noise better, but this is irrelevant if your fans have to ramp up massively to cope with being choked. With 5V fans and the door closed, the CPU finally begins to throttle before the end of the test after reaching its Tj Max temperature of 105°C - not recommended.

Conclusion

Thermaltake's cooling options have definitely come a long way in recent years. In terms of ease of installation, the C360 kit is straightforward, although you will still need additional resources such as tools for bending rigid tubes, or lots of additional fittings if you choose not to go that route. RGB is, of course, one of the main draws with Thermaltake's products, and this kit fits well into its ecosystem. 

Pricing wise, at £325 this kit offers quite a substantial saving over buying the components individually, for which you'd be looking to shell out in the region of £450, although that's when buying a D5 pump/res instead of the DDC one here, which is harder to find individually at retail. You can maybe get that down to around £400 by swapping to a cheaper pump/res combination, but that's still a substantial saving. Those savings could easily be put into adding an additional radiator or perhaps a GPU block to the loop, depending on what CPU/GPU/overclocks your specific setup has. It would have been nice to see a PWM pump included, however, even for a small rise in price. Pump noise can wear you down over time thanks to the high pitch, so having the ability to control the speed from the motherboard (or set manually like with a D5 Vario) would have been very welcome. That said, newer DDCs are much quieter than the ones of old, and with good mounting you can still have a quiet system.

Overall, then, it's a solid effort from Thermaltake. The C360 kit has everything you need to get started with hardline cooling (again, a soft tube version is also available if you don't fancy that), and it comes in at a fair price. The pump, reservoir, and block here are capable of cooling down pretty much any CPU, and you've certainly got headroom built in to allow for lower, quieter fan speeds.As such, it's a worthy winner of our Recommended badge.