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pa 120.3's in stock at DD, get em while they last!

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hmmm...one PA120.3, or two BIXIII's for about the same price...

for people looking for the best performance (and if you're looking to buy Thermochill, you are), and space isn't an issue, two BIXIII's will rock the sox off of any PA ;). In fact, there's only a 3c difference between my current BIXIII and a PA120.3 I had for about a week, I didn't feel the extra $60 was worth it :).
 
natewildes said:
hmmm...one PA120.3, or two BIXIII's for about the same price...

for people looking for the best performance (and if you're looking to buy Thermochill, you are), and space isn't an issue, two BIXIII's will rock the sox off of any PA ;). In fact, there's only a 3c difference between my current BIXIII and a PA120.3 I had for about a week, I didn't feel the extra $60 was worth it :).
Blasphamy! :eek:

You put two BIXIII's in one loop and you had better have an IWAKI.

ThermoChill, when only the best will do! :cool: :cool:
 
how can a thermochill beat two BIX III???

Considering the surfance area is doubled....

I think thermochill is way over rated.... with people saying" it will cool anything you thow at it"

IF the thermochill was that big and powerfull, I would expect it to cool "passive" without any fans....
 
Mycobacteria said:
how can a thermochill beat two BIX III???

Considering the surfance area is doubled....

I think thermochill is way over rated.... with people saying" it will cool anything you thow at it"

IF the thermochill was that big and powerfull, I would expect it to cool "passive" without any fans....

You have missed the point Myco. You could have 2 BIXIIIs and see no performance difference over one PA120.3. Surface area benefits to a point and is one of the important factors, but it is not the only factor. The Thermochills are also far less restrictive. And also, it depends on the heat load of a setup, the airflow over the rad, flow rate, etc.. Even the testing that Marci had done for Thermochill showed that as airflow increases, the performance difference between Thermochill and the rest of the pack narrows. According to the testing that HardwareLuxx did, a PA120.2 performs on par with a Swiftech MCR320. That is very impressive. The PA 120.3 is not designed to be passive, and a passive rad would have to be much larger to work well. It is optimized for low airflow, and it works extremely well and handily beats every other rad on the market. So if you want the best rad, you get a Thermochill.

However, the question that needs to be resolved on a personal level is whether or not the huge price difference justifies the resulting performance increase, and that is where the rubber meets the road. When I bought my PA120.3, I happened across a 25% off coupon that Danger Den had, so I got mine for only $105 shipped, while the MCR320 was about $70 shipped at the time. So for me, a $35 difference was a no brainer. However, when you are talking $55 + shipping vs. $135+ shipping, the cost to me does not justify the performance difference. This is not to mention that for some reason, Thermochill seems unable to keep vendors stocked as they continually seem to be out of stock practically everywhere you look.

This also begs the point that frankly, we all are sometimes a little bit too neurotic about temps. A 2c temps difference for example is not going to mean squat in the scheme of things, and for overclocking, there are other far more limiting factors than that. And if you are someone like me, I don't push to get the highest overclock possible anyway. I will be happy with a 400fsb overclock that is stable on a daily basis. And temps with my setup are a non-issue. I'm still having issues getting things tweaked to maintain that simple overclock on reboot that I have yet to take the time to solve. But that is for another thread.
 
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I don't doubt that the PA series is currently king with quiet fans, but I'm a bit skeptical of those HardwareLuxx tests. I'm not saying Radical_53 is in any way dishonest, but I suspect something skewed his data. Both Cathar and BillA report an advantage to the PA's of about 10% with weak fans, and if those two agree on anything, it's usually pretty solid.

Scroll down to the last graph.
http://thermal-management-testing.com/ThermoChill.htm

Cathar said the closest 12x12cm rad to the PA120.1 was 10% worse. He didn't specify the MCR, but I don't know of any rads that come closer to the PA's in performance than the MCR's.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1133347&postcount=52
 
Is the thermochill 2 deg cooler simply because it is "less restrictive" ?

If there is no real difference once you start adding some fans, I would rather save the coin, and buy some nice fans.
 
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People that buy BIXIII at full retail price should not comment. That rady is pretty much last radiator that you would want to pick. I know it will do better with 100cfm+ fans but the noise wise at this point it might be smilar to vapo
 
Mycobacteria said:
Is the thermochill 2 deg cooler simply because it is "less restrictive" ?
Yes. It was designed to maximize air flow through the 120mm*x form factor with quiet fans. If quiet isn't a goal, there's really no reason to get this rad over any other.
 
Man this is confusing...... when I say "less restricive" I mean less restricive for the water flowing IN the rad....

Otter you think: "less restricitve" is for the AIR going though the rad.....

SO its 2 degrees better because the AIR can go though the rad better???

IF this is the logic we are using here in OCF then.....

IF I had a thermochill and I cut down the fin density by half would I shave off another 2 deg? Remember this would allow even more air and be even "less restricive".

IF the rad had no fins at all and was not restricive at all would this be even better?

I think the fin density is important as it increases the surface area that allows for the disipation of heat in the first place.
 
Mycobacteria said:
Man this is confusing...... when I say "less restricive" I mean less restricive for the water flowing IN the rad....

Otter you think: "less restricitve" is for the AIR going though the rad.....
Yes, I meant less restrictive on the air side, though the PA series is less restrictive than most rads on the liquid side as well, and that will make a difference in some systems.

SO its 2 degrees better because the AIR can go though the rad better???

IF this is the logic we are using here in OCF then.....

IF I had a thermochill and I cut down the fin density by half would I shave off another 2 deg? Remember this would allow even more air and be even "less restricive".

IF the rad had no fins at all and was not restricive at all would this be even better?
What we need is a balance between air flow and surface area. Yes, surface area matters a lot, but remember that our radiators don't actually transfer much heat by radiation to other objects or to still air around the rad. Most of the heat they shed is transfered to the air moving through them. What they really are is forced convectors.

Greater fin density and depth give more surface area, but also restrict air flow. And it doesn't matter how well you transfer heat to the air if there isn't very much air to transfer it to. The trick is to get as much air through the rad as possible and heat it as close to coolant temp as possible. A three inch thick, 30 fpi rad will get just about all the cooling there is to be had from the air moving through it. But with a quiet fan, that's not going to be much air. Your finless rad would allow the full free-flow cfm of the fan, but it would not heat most of that air anywhere close to the coolant temp. Neither is a very good solution.

The PA series is prized because it currently has the best balance of air flow and thermal efficiency with relatively weak fans. With stronger fans, it doesn't have as much of an edge, and with serious screamers or a big blower, other radiators would outperform the PA's.
 
IF the Thermochill PAs are better with less air, why do I see people setting up push pull fans on them? Shouldnt one set of fans be enough?
 
Yes! I don't have a PA rad to play with, but from the forums I gather that push-pull doesn't do much with these radiators. It probably helps with quiet fans down under four volts, but fans like the D12SL-12 are inaudible at 5 volts, so I'm not sure what is the point of adding more fans to go lower. My guess is the main reason people do push-pull with the PA's is because that's what they did with the rad they had before. :bang head
 
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