greenman100 said:
I'm surprised at the low flow performance...Cathar, weren't you expecting a little better?
(not cracking on you or your design, just curious)
Crap - wrote a huge reply and lost it. This is a re-type.
I personally consider a low-flow setup to be a real-world thing, and not some arbitrary flow rate. I test according to pumping power. In a real-world system, an Eheim 1046 with 3/8" ID tubing would be a "low flow" system by most people's standards. Such a setup would still give around 2.5LPM (0.65gpm) with the Storm/G4, and on this score the G4 delivers exactly as stated, with it exceeding all other blocks that Phaestus has tested (equalled only by the Cascade SS, which is a bit of a special-case block).
I don't believe in designing blocks to work around users who want to artificially choke their systems to silly levels with super-small ID tubing. It's not a setup philosophy that I agree with, and so I don't go out of my way to work to cater for it. Flow rates lower than 2LPM actually requires a fairly determined intent to choke the life out of even the very weak Eheim 1046. If people want to do that, that's fine I guess, but I consider that to be an "artificially low-flow testbed", rather than a realistic scenario.
I personally saw better low-flow performance than what Phaestus did though. The difference is not huge. At a guess what I measure would probably correlate to about 1.0C better at 1LPM, 0.4C better on Phaestus's charts at 2LPM, and about 0.2C better than 4LPM. I do use a larger CPU die though and measure my temperatures differently, so I just put it down to the natural variations between different testbeds due to the different setups. Overall the difference is small and at rather unrealistically low flow-rates so I don't have a problem with his results at all.
The G5 design sub-variant is a much stronger low-flow performer due to the 70% higher structure density. Coupled with the use of silver that'll be the one to keep an eye on if you're interested in seeing something that raises the bar right across the gamut. Phaestus should have it in his hands in about one week from now.