12 replies to this topic

[WARDOZERX]

I will be honest, since my personal disappointments with the TT Big Typhoon and the TT Soprano simultaneously, years ago. Has TT gotten better as a company? Are their heatsinks, cases and fans any good now, are they still borderline garbage, or are they getting better but extremely product specific?

 

I've had so many consecutive bad experiences with TT and their products that in 2006 I blackballed them and have not even glanced at them except long enough to turn my head away almost so fast as to give me whiplash. Is it time for me to give them another chance or is the general consensus that they still don't listen to consumers and release whatever product they think is good, user be damned?

[freddie]

It depends, their low end, low cost range are obviously still rubbish to an extent but as you go up the price ladder then they have some pretty decent products. Their cases still look like shit imo (bar the level 10) and their "contac" series air coolers are a pain in the arse to install and I wouldn't touch them again. Not a fan of their low to mid range PSU's either (litepower etc..)

I have a tough power 875w PSU and a universal laptop charger from them, both still fine so can't comment on their RMA process.

As with most companies, I'd say its product specific and it wouldn't hurt to give them another chance as long you do your homework before you buy the product obviously.

 

[d6bmg]

Their chassis are descent, but their coolers are still low end IMO.

But all the answer depends on how you use it and in what kind of system.

[wevsspot]

What problem did you have with the TT Big Typhoon?  

[ComputerEd]

Wev I was gonna ask the same thing, in it's day the Big Typhoon was one of the best coolers on the market! As for the cases, they have some solid designs but their effort to stand out style wise turns a lot of people off. I also like their Water 2.0 coolers, very solid products and their PSUs.

[wevsspot]

I installed more TT BT's back in the day than I can remember.  Probably more so than any other air cooler I've ever used.  And I don't recollect a single problem I ever had with the BT except it wasn't my favorite mounting mechanism on socket 754/socket 939.

 

Other than that the performance was admirable, mount was solid once you got it right, and it wasn't an obnoxiously noisy cooler.  In fact I've still got one in my son-in-law's AM3 rig that I "jerry" rigged a mount for.  That cooler is probably six years or older and works just as good as the day I bought it.  Still even has the OEM fan on it  

[Bosco]

I have good luck with alot of TT's products so I am curious what you felt was wrong.

[WARDOZERX]

Well, the door on the soprano had the bottom hinge crack and break on me within the first 6 months and the Typhoon, on top of being freaking huge for the cooling it offered did not cool as well as the Thermalright XP-120 I got second hand from a friend. Not to mention it was quieter than the typhoon. I think the typhoon got it's name from the typhoon of noise it produced to assault your ears imho.

 

Other than the door issue on the soprano and the fact that the side panel felt flimsy, it was a decent enough case.

 

Not to mention that I also tried their "Silent" fans, those Silent Cat fans were anything but. And despite the TT Volcano being a most excellent heatsink, after you lapped the crap out of it, you had to lap the crap out of it before it was good enough.

 

It just seems that almost every TT product I tried in 2005/2006 required work to make it a finished product, it never held up to it's promises or it just plain started to fall the hell apart after a few months of normal use. Then I knew people that tried the TT Big Water when it came out and they had constant pump failures and the things were noisy as hell when they did work.

 

I haven't touched a TT product since the 3rd quarter of 2006 and haven't even thought about it since because I lost all trust in them.

Edited by WARDOZERX, 05 March 2013 - 02:55 PM.

[Waco]

on top of being freaking huge for the cooling it offered did not cool as well as the Thermalright XP-120 I got second hand from a friend.

So you compared a cheap cooler to a quite expensive one and were surprised that the expensive one was better?

[WARDOZERX]

 

on top of being freaking huge for the cooling it offered did not cool as well as the Thermalright XP-120 I got second hand from a friend.

So you compared a cheap cooler to a quite expensive one and were surprised that the expensive one was better?

 

Well, I got it for free so I had no clue how expensive it was at the time lol. I thought the TT was expensive back then as I think I paid like $60 for it at a CompUSA, this was before I knew about newegg and such.

[ccokeman]

 

on top of being freaking huge for the cooling it offered did not cool as well as the Thermalright XP-120 I got second hand from a friend.

So you compared a cheap cooler to a quite expensive one and were surprised that the expensive one was better?

 

My thoughts exactly! 

 

I used the Big Typhoon on my Core 2 Duo after using it on a succession of Athlon and Opteron socket 939 chips and was happy with the cooling it delivered Especially when I lapped the base and picked up 10C in cooling performance. It still sits in a drawer in my storage area.

[Hyper]

I had a big Typhoon on my QX9650 and my Q6600 and thought it performed well and was quiet (with the fan that came with it). it was pretty tall so you had to have a case with enough room for it. The only problem I had with it was the mounting bracket was a pain to get set up right (if you didn’t get it level it would hurt the cooling).

 

As far as they are now, can’t really say. I haven't purchased any of their products in a while. I view cases as personal preference, though I’m not big on plastic mechanisms. And I pretty much stay with corsair or pc power and cooling for power supplies. And cooling, I tend to do custom water loops..