Thermaltake Bigwater 760i

By now, any longtime HardwareLogic reader should be familiar with Thermaltake.  Because they're one of the shakers in the after market cooling and enclosure arena, we've had a chance to look at more than a few of their products.  Most recently we put their V1 CPU cooler under the microscope, an air cooled solution sporting easy to install pushpins and a funky (yet effective) vertical design. With air coolers upping the performance ante, is there still a market for pre-assembled water cooling kits?

Thermaltake thinks so, and today we're looking at the Bigwater 760i.  Thermaltake touts the 760i as an easy-to-install, high performing, high quality, and high reliability kit.  To achieve those goals, it will first have to step out of the shadow cast by its predecessor, the Bigwater 745, whose performance was marred by it's propensity to spring leaks during installation.  Will the 760i represent an improvement over Thermaltake's previous foray into water cooling?  Can it compete with today's high performance air coolers?  You'll have to read on to find out, but one thing we can say right off the bat is we were NOT sent an iPod Nano for this review.  Sorry folks, but unless someone invents a functioning version of one of those remotes capable of muting wives and girlfriends, we're just not interested in bribes.