Martinm210

Here is another one done, this radiator testing is quite a chore and it's getting too hot to do a whole bunch more of this. I think I'm going to switch back over to CPU block testing after one more of these...

This was just one of my old MCR320's I pulled from my system I bought over a year ago from Sidewinders. A little beaten and chipped, but still performing well.

Anyhow, here is what I found.

Full review is on my site
<--Link in my profile...

Pressure drop was better than expected, I guess the old NPT barb versions are quite a bit more free flowing. I also had 5/8" barbs on mine:






Thermal testing it did better than I expected:


Some conversions to a few assumed heat loads for more of a real world numbers look:


Cheers
Martin

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ira-k

Thanks for the work Martin...Looks great as always......It really did a little better then I thought it would, it would make a decent 400W rad with the fat 120x38mm higher cfm fans on it...

But guys wanting to run the quiet medium cfm fans its at best a 300W, with our 5C max rad out criteria...I like a 1 or 2C rad out, but 5C is fair don't you think?

Man its marginal with only 235W and medium cfm YL's...Thats really Swifty's claim to fame, working OK with low cfm fans, and its just not doing to well with them and any kind of load...

But its a good inexpensive rad, and will sure get you started WC'ing, the BIP is about the same, looks like the BIP will do a lot better with the higher cfm fans, at least from that French review..

There have been millions of guys that have gotten started with the Swifty and BIP rads, including me...

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Martinm210

Yeah, I've always been on the extreme side and gone after the 2-3C deltas, but I think a 5C delta is a good target for high performance water cooling. I think with the advancements of air cooling, a 10C delta is just so so anymore.

I really expected to see more of a difference between thick and thin, but it appears the front surface area is much more important than thickness on low speed fans. The double thickness really doesn't show it's strength much until you get into the stronger fans.

Still learning though...more to come..

Fan performance is also much more critical with the thicker and more dense radiators. The 480GTX saw nearly a 5.6X performance gain from the ultra low to ultra high, where this only had about a 2.6X gain.

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dr4gon

hey those are pretty surprising results! I'm glad to see it can hold its own against the thermochill.

At what point (if you remember) did the rad start to feel hot with the lower speed fans?

My little swifty 220, was always hot (granted on a 2900xt and quad core, LOL). But my GTX always seems to be more than warm on the top (where the barbs are), but cool on one side.

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Martinm210

I didn't pay that much attention to heat location, but it seems like anything over a 10C delta feels noticeably warm/hot. The 5C deltas are pretty cool.

The MCR should theoretically be cooler on one half vs the other, but considering the water temps were at most about 1 degree difference between in and out, that's too small to feel I think.

Here is the tabular with the air out and water in/out info:

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lilmanmgf

So with medium speed yl fans there is no more than 3% difference between a PA120.3 and a MCR320? Why wouldn't you just buy two 320s for less than one TC? Wouldn't the pair outperform a TC?

RonindeBeatrice

Great stuff Martin. This really makes the case for it not honestly being worth it to spend > 50% more on a radiator when it results in >1 degree difference in deltas most of the time.

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Martinm210

Yeah, I likely have some error in my results too, the difference between them is probably closer to 6-14% or something like that.

I guess one other important factor here is mass production vs. hand made. The TC rads are for the most part all hand made, so you get that hand made quality you just don't get in the mass produced parts. That's definately worth something you can't measure.

I suppose there's also a bit of elite appeal in water cooling. If alot of the overclocks could be accomplished with air, then we also just like having the best and don't mind spending quite a bit more knowing it's the best.

We have lots of great options...and if you just want low cost performance, stringing several MCR320's together in a single loop will definately perform extremely well at a low cost, but that's assuming you have enough heat load to make use of them too. Not much value in running two on a dual core processor only, you need some heat to make it worth while...

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OC_RoB

Wow.... Thanks Martinm210. You are so very valuable to the water cooling community.

I appreciate your hard work and effort to do these laborous tests.

+Rep ofcourse and thanks again. I have 2 of these swifty rads with the UltraKazes 3000, and now I have a good baseline.

Thanks

ira-k

Yeah at a 10C rad out anymore there are probably HSF's that can cool about that well....A 5C is a good point for a average loop to shoot for, either with high performance rads, or more surface area if fan noise is a problem, I think thats a realistic goal for an average loop...Thats why I always try to nudge these guys to a double row rad with at least 86cfm Pana on them and shrouds, or dual loops if they can afford them...

They just used to few fins with the PA and Swifty trying to make them more silent. Either ones performance could be enhanced with a few more fins...I would think thats why the static pressure just doesn't have as much effect...


Good stuff Martin......I love this thermal testing!!!

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