Extra Ports and Bleeders

Some radiators mounted extra inlet and outlet ports on the radiator. We really like this because it gives a lot more mounting options for fittings:
Phobya GC V2 - Lr Edited with B_W-7-2

They can also be used to fill the radiator. Bleeder ports at the other end of the radiator are also most welcome.

Phobya GC V2 - Lr Edited with B_W-1-2

Tube Protection

Some radiators could be damaged by using the wrong screw.  Some had protection plates so that screws could not hit the tubes underneath.  Some didn’t have tubes directly underneath the srcrew holes.  We like to be safe, so we would like protection plates to be fitted any time the tubes are liable to be damaged by a rogue screw.

Finish

We love a matte black finish, but in addition to some of the more unique finishes like Hardware Lab’s “Dark Matter” we also appreciated that some radiators come in other colors such as white or even red. Mostly the radiators had very good finishes with the worst by far being the Koolance:

Kool9

Alternative colors available on radiators:

Alphacool UT60 – Also comes in white
Alphacool Monsta – Also comes in white
HardwareLabs Nemesis GTS/GTX – Also comes in matte black, red and white
XSPC AX – not reviewed here but similar to EK PE, also comes in white

Packaging

We love double boxing of the radiators, and we love bubble wrap sleeves for the radiators. We also loved companies that had a separate box at the end for screws and stop fittings. We did not love when they were thrown on top of the radiator itself.

Nemesis 360GTS (27)

Restriction

Generally most radiators were of low restriction. This is great. The Nemesis GTS stood out in particular for it’s high restriction.  Thankfully it put in a stunning performance for it’s size making up for it.

FPI and Shrouds

As we did not find any conclusion of performance vs FPI or performance vs increased shroud size we are therefore going to say that we like lower FPI and smaller shrouds in order to reduce dust and maintain a smaller overall radiator size respectively.

Now let’s finish up with the award ceremony!

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76 COMMENTS

  1. Great Work … a new standard for radiator testing.
    The Koolance was a surprisingly good result. Push pull makes a bigger difference than many think.
    I’m happy my EK PE rads did OK, mostly keeping up with the XT45 rads they replaced.

    • The extra 5mm the PE rads allowed made the difference between push only and push pull for an overall better result

    • Yeah the huge shrouds on the PE mean that it’s really a slim radiator core tucked into the body of a medium radiator wrapper. I do wonder if reducing the shrouds would have made no real change in performance but would have meant it could have won a slim award!

  6. Weighing in a bit late, but I just found this article (and the site). This was a great read! Thank you for doing this type of thing. There are many of us out there who want to upgrade, add to, or change our rigs completely. In depth articles like this are the life-bread for us regular folk to gather REAL information.
    I do have a question and of course am hoping you find this comment: How about testing the XSPC AX series radiators? I don’t know how you get your samples, but it would be interesting to see how they perform against the rads in this test.
    More fan tests would be a wonderful thing as well. Enermax has had the UCTP12P High Static Pressure PWM 120mm Fan out for some time with no virtually no information anywhere as to their validity for use a radiator fan. I noticed you folks have a pre-production sample Vardar from EK. I look forward to seeing how that plays out in production.

  13. Hey fast nate

    i was wondering how close you are to finishing the radiator roundup with just the push fan setup? thanks man

  16. Well, I think that the reviewers always get a mint rad. I already had to send back a Phobya G-ghanger 360 V2, a Phobya G-canger 420 V2, a Alphacool UT 60 420 , a Coolgate CG360CG2 and a Coolgate CG480CG2 , this because of heavy paint faults, scuff marks on the side panels , matt grey spots where paint is of, and the phobya 420 had a piece loose inside the rad. Al bad rads and these al got delivered and send back the last 2 months. The brands are asking good money, but deliver bad quality.

  21. I just posted this same comment on the other review for the Coolgate CG-360G2. I want to thank you for this extensive and extremely detailed review; an updated version to SkinneeLabs.com’s review and Martinliquidlab’s review on radiators (found here: https://martinsliquidlab.wordpress.com/category/radiators/). I was debating (as I’m a reseller for Koolance), weather or not to purchase the Koolance HX-360XC product or the Coolgate CG-360G2. As a result of your thorough testing I’m going to go with the Coolgate CG-360G2. I know you mentioned that it’s hard enough to put just one of these bad boys in your CaseLabs PC Case, but I’m going to put TWO of them in. My config will be set up like this:

    25mm Fan/65mm Rad/25mm Fan/65mm Rad/25mm Fan = 205 (sandwiched together side by side)

    Which will just cover the bottom of the width of my Origin Genesis PC Case. I’ll post the results later in a couple of months once I’m finished with my (hopeful) new Hackintosh build. We’ll see what happens. Again, thank you for your help. Greatly appreciated !!!

  30. Looks like the review is complete! Kudos!

    Yeah, I can guess how much it took to go through this painstaking review of 27 (!) radiators, and 486 (OMG!!!!) tests – and that so accurately and reliably. My greatest respect to you fast_fate, and all those who helped you on it.

    Needless to say, we are all missing the XS-PC AX360. Could you reach out to XS-PC and ask for a sample maybe? Or get a retail one? Anyway, we are all looking forward to that.

    • The Round Up will never be complete….
      Thanks for following along through the journey.
      It is a massive task to update, too much work to keep updating the individual reviews……
      which is why we had to make the decision to not keep updating all the screen-shots included in each indivdual radiator review.
      As each radiator test results is linked to every other radiator’s results for the relative scoring system, when a new set of results are added – all the old published data became redundant.
      So from now on, each new rad will still be included in the Round-Up, but will have a slightly different format in the individual reviews, so all currently published results do not appear incorrect.

      The AX360 has always been a noticeable ommission from the list.
      XSPC were kind enough to sponsor the RX360 V3 for inclusion, but the AX was never sent.
      If one becomes available it will be an inclusion for sure – but expect performance results to be very very similar to the EK PE360.

  32. […] mal ein umfangreicher Radiatortest, auch mit push/pull: Radiator Review Round Up 2015 – ExtremeRigs.net Verkaufe Plextor M6e 512GB, i3 & Pentium CPUs, Alphacool NexXxos ST30 360 Radiator. […]

  33. I’d really love to see similar testing on 140mm class radiators too. 140×2 (60.8 sq in) would be awesome since they’re so close to 360 rads (66.9 sq in)

  39. The links for the EK SE/PE reviews have become combined and lead to the SE review.

  44. About the awards, if the XTX360 were available along with the XE360, where would it place? Would it replace the SR2 360 as runner up or share a “co-spot” with it or another radiator?

    • Most likely it would be a runnner up alongside the SR2 MP. It has similar thermal performance, less optional ports than the SR2 MP, but it gains a drain port. Still a great radiator. I have to say though if you’re buying EK, the only reason to get the XTX over the XE is price, aesthetic or because you really want that drain port.

  45. […] to take good data requires a lot of attention to detail and data logging time.  Just look at our radiator round up for how hard it is to accurately measure air temperature into a radiator.  The reality is that the mainstream review sites simply don’t have time to […]

  47. Im kinda of noob on this, dont understand to much the graphs.

    According to this review, what rads should i use for using Scythe GT ran @ idle =400rpms / load = 800rpms ? HL SR2 or EK XE or another?

  49. Was wondering why you didn’t have any Swfitech rads. Was it you could not get any?
    I used Swiftech, EK, XSPC and Alphacool
    I end up most times going with Swiftech for most of my builds.

    • Swiftech would not sponsor, it would be helpful to let Swiftech know that their buyers like our reviews and would like them to participate 🙂

  50. Great job guys! Keep it up.
    After Martin has abandoned testing, you are the first who uses such high quality engineering standards.
    I think that you should think about more SEO for you site, found it accidently 🙂

  51. Your perspective is all wrong because your all young men and look to buy a single radiator that has the best specs but the price to performance ratio is really what matters because you could take the side of the case off and turn it into a wall of radiators so really being compact and having the highest spec radiator is simply a waste of money unless of course you used all the available nearby space(really this is impossible) and thus cooling power per dollar is king(as most people are not rich) and buying multiple magicools is truly the best solution(rad stacking doesnt work each one needs its own fresh supply of cool air you will have to think about your design. Really for the average person running your pc with the radio exhausting push pull and feeding a tube of air conditioned air off your air conditioner into the case sealing it and having all the rads exhausting is the cheapest easiest setup for cooling during gaming sessions. Then when your done gaming turn your ac off(you also have to set the temp very low so it runs continuous which also leads to the evaporator coils icing over after many hours(or days if temps above 70f into the 80s of course every ac is different) or outdoor temps below 70f). But this is hardly very efficient also if you have many magicool rads you dont really even have to run fans you can cool the pc passively while its idle and only turn the fans and ac on when you game that way you would spend the absolute least amount on electricity. Of course to be completely efficient with power would require allot more money and design skills in the future we should have much better condenser units outside with far more efficient assymetrical blade fans to limit noise and daisy chain from a very large outdoor compressor providing the first stage to smaller ones inside the house possibly even coupled with very large water cooling loops to second and third stages tied directly to the main processors. That way you get phase cooling to all your crucial chips and all heat is exhausted outside direct connections to the cooling loops would be the most efficient. We also need systems to switch from active phase for gaming and another maybe water cooling loop passive or with light fans for idle or home office web browsing usage.

  52. Great job and good review.

    In the last my worklogs alwats I installed 1×360(60mm) and 1×240(60mm).

    And now I would like if is this necessary for 5930k and 980 Ti Classified with a modered OC or is valid with a 2×240 and 30mm thick.

    Thanks for your job

    Regards!!!

  53. Hi, maybe that is a noob question, but are you only testing push configurations because push is better than pull? Heard some people say they have better results with pull.

    • Originally we did only test / publish Push Only results after our comparison tests showed Push Only performed better than Pull Only.
      Then we added Push/Pull to go along with the Push Only data.
      To do Pull only would add a significant amount of time to the testing process, so we chose the best of the two (+ Push/Pull)
      Some fan manufactures say Pull Only is what the fans are designed for and will possibly even last longer when run in that configuration.
      Without some data to back those statements up we are kind of skeptical. We’ve had fans fail prematurely in both scenarios and likewise have fans which have run seemingly forever.

      • Thanks for the detailed answer! Did your comparison tests show that push only also works better at low fan speeds (below 1000rpm)? I read that people having slightly better results with pull only at low speeds.

  54. Has anyone actually tried fitting HWL nemesis GTX 420 radiator ontop of a define r5 or define S ?
    I cant make up my mind if I should go for a rad that certainly fits like EK-CE 420 or Alphacool UT60 but hwl nemesis GTX is the best radiator but im not sure if it fits or not, it clears the memory wich is the highest part out of my mobo.

  55. Awesome review! I’m wondering if any of the brands you tested had radiators that had fill ports that were on both sides? I’m wondering if anyone knows of a radiator that, like many Thermaltake Pacific radiators, has ports on both sides of the radiators. I’m planning a setup in which several radiators are stacked to do an experimental convection driven counter current loop (the coolest air cools the coolest radiators, the warmest radiators cooled by the warmest air, and all the hot air pulled out the top). That means that it would be most efficient to have the “in” ports on one surface of radiator, and the out on the other surface. Unfortunately the Thermaltakes are made of aluminum, which I don’t really trust…

    • Just off the top of my head – Alphacool have a bunch such as the UT60, XT45. HardwareLabs SR2 MP version does. Yes I wouldn’t trust those TT rads. BTW HardwareLabs does have a front to back type flow on the Nemesis GTX if thats what you’re looking for. It helps at lower flow rates although they advise the coldest air to get the hottest coolant, but once flow rate is high enough then the coolant is already ‘fully’ cooled before it leaves the rad anyway.

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