best brand for rads

[TheHappyJarhead]

so i currently have an nzxt kraken x61, but i think its time to upgrade to the big league, what are the best brand of rads, and pumps etc.

[Straudz]

what are rads and what are pumps?

[TheHappyJarhead]

1 minute ago, Straudz said:

what are rads and what are pumps?

for water cooling loops? pumps push the water around.

[AbsoluteZero951]

I have my watercooling stuff for my first custom loop being delivered in the mail today. Did a lot of research and asked on the forum for info. For the pump, rads, and other parts the only thing you need to make sure is that you get from a reputable brand like EK, Bitspower, etc. and you should be fine. Other than that a lot of the decision making is just how much you want to spend, what you can fit in your case, and how you want it to look. 

[TheHappyJarhead]

im wanting a 360 and a 280 rad for one gpu and my cpu, i want a long reservoir as they look nice, but i dont know what pump to get.

[AbsoluteZero951]

2 minutes ago, TheHappyJarhead said:

im wanting a 360 and a 280 rad for one gpu and my cpu, i want a long reservoir as they look nice, but i dont know what pump to get.

For the Pump you are gonna want to get a D5 pump as they are quieter than the DDC pumps. As for the brand the only thing you really need chose from is what brands top you like the best, I just went with a EK D5 with the Acetyl top as I didn't like many of the other brands tops for the pumps. As for the reservoir a 250mm reservoir is about 9.8 inches so it should fit snugly in the Define S.

[atomicus]

As for rads, can't go wrong with Hardware Labs Black Ice Nemesis series. Consistently come top in many group tests.

[DazMode]

All rads are similar, but go with top brands for warranty and quality. Avoid crappy brands like XSPC.

DDC and D5 are top for pumps.

[Carl2608]

I would recommend EKWB for rads and pumps. High quality and reasonable pricing.

[DrJones]

On July 14, 2016 at 0:47 PM, TheHappyJarhead said:

so i currently have an nzxt kraken x61, but i think its time to upgrade to the big league, what are the best brand of rads, and pumps etc.

Alphacool makes really nice rads, just clean them out really well before use. Everybody likes EK, I'm using EK everything except for my rads and fittings. Most pumps are all the same just with a different name stamped on. Get a D5 though, DDC is ok for a small loop, but for yours I'd go with a D5

[atomicus]

Depends on thickness of rad and what speed you will be running fans at. No rad is the best across all fan speeds, some are optimised for lower, some higher. So it will depend what thickness of rad and what fans you will be using. There is no way to say what is 'best' otherwise.

[DrJones]

2 hours ago, atomicus said:

Depends on thickness of rad and what speed you will be running fans at. No rad is the best across all fan speeds, some are optimised for lower, some higher. So it will depend what thickness of rad and what fans you will be using. There is no way to say what is 'best' otherwise.

^This, keep an eye on fin density (FPI) and overall thickness (usually choices are around 30mm, 45mm, and 60mm) the denser the fins, and thicker the rad, the more cooling capacity, but it comes at a cost of higher RPM fans, increasing noise. Or the space to do a push/pull configuration, adding fans to run at lower RPM, reducing noise.

[Revan654]

For Rads You can never go wrong with Hardware Labs. XSPC & Alphacool are not bad. Just make sure you clean out Alphacool very well, they are dirty.

For pump I have always used Swiftech MCP655 with speed control.

[DrJones]

11 hours ago, Revan654 said:

For Rads You can never go wrong with Hardware Labs. XSPC & Alphacool are not bad. Just make sure you clean out Alphacool very well, they are dirty.

For pump I have always used Swiftech MCP655 with speed control.

I agree, Hardware Labs is amazing but at the cost of flow restriction. They have great airflow and cooling though. They just aren't a great match for my loop because I have 3 rads and 3 blocks on one loop (CPU & GPUx2). I'm just curious, what do you have in your loop? I went with Alphacool because they seem to be the best all-around option. Hardware Labs seems to be perfect for two separate loops.

[Revan654]

11 hours ago, DrJones said:

I agree, Hardware Labs is amazing but at the cost of flow restriction. They have great airflow and cooling though. They just aren't a great match for my loop because I have 3 rads and 3 blocks on one loop (CPU & GPUx2). I'm just curious, what do you have in your loop? I went with Alphacool because they seem to be the best all-around option. Hardware Labs seems to be perfect for two separate loops.

CPU, GPU, and Waterblock on my Fan controller. I was going to cool my Ram, In the end I decided against it.

 

I believe the flow issue is only for GTS(not 100% sure on that). I don't think it's an issue for SR2.

 

I have four Rads in my PC. It's a bit overkill, Since I got carried away.

 

Current PC I'm building I haven't decided what Rad I'm going to go with yet. It's between XSPC & HardwareLabs.

 

Be sure to take a look at this: http://www.xtremerigs.net/2015/02/11/radiator-round-2015/

[atomicus]

1 hour ago, Revan654 said:

I believe the flow issue is only for GTS(not 100% sure on that).

 

You are correct, as seen at the review here.

 

I had previously been considering x2 GTS for a loop with a CPU+GPU, but am wondering if the Magicool Slim G2 might be the better choice (I need slimmer rads for my case, so can't go much thicker than 30-35mm).

[Revan654]

15 minutes ago, atomicus said:

 

You are correct, as seen at the review here.

 

I had previously been considering x2 GTS for a loop with a CPU+GPU, but am wondering if the Magicool Slim G2 might be the better choice (I need slimmer rads for my case, so can't go much thicker than 30-35mm).

GTS are still perfectly fine to work with. I have two 360 in one of my other PC. The temps are very good. Specially with all the heat a 5960x can dish out.

[atomicus]

7 hours ago, Revan654 said:

GTS are still perfectly fine to work with. I have two 360 in one of my other PC. The temps are very good. Specially with all the heat a 5960x can dish out.

 

Thanks. I'm interested to know though how the flow rate actually impacts things. It says in the review of the 360 GTS that it is "a very restrictive radiator at about 7 times the level of least restrictive radiators" and that "care will have to be taken with loop design." So what does that mean exactly? Care in what way? The GTS XFlow clearly has far less flow restriction, but the overall performance of the rad (in their review) isn't as good. So how you quantify this in a loop design to the point where the XFlow might be the better choice?

[Revan654]

I have not used any X-Flow radiators. Since X-Flows do take a hit in performance. For my setup it works great, If your worried you could always use XS-PC EX series. If you have a good pump, I don't think you will face any kind of problem.

 

Hardware Labs GTS are still the best Thin radiators. It what I'm going to be using in my current 4K PC Build.

[iiNNeX]

HWLabs Black Ice radiators are up there for me, EK being close second.

 

As for pumps, EK's new G2 PWM pump is awesome. But any D5 PWM pump will do as they are mostly rebrands.

[atomicus]

Yeah I see so much praise heaped on the Black Ice GTS series rads for performance, yet the flow rate does seem really poor compared to other models... yet they always seem to come out on top in group tests, so what impact does that actually have? Under what circumstances would the flow rate be an issue? If you had a rubbish pump? Or if you had an incredibly complex loop?

[OddsCrazyStuff]

1 hour ago, atomicus said:

Yeah I see so much praise heaped on the Black Ice GTS series rads for performance, yet the flow rate does seem really poor compared to other models... yet they always seem to come out on top in group tests, so what impact does that actually have? Under what circumstances would the flow rate be an issue? If you had a rubbish pump? Or if you had an incredibly complex loop?

My guess is that GTS has more tubing or something like that, that gives it more cooling but makes it a bit more restrictive.

As for when the pump coses problems, that will I leave to someone else.

[DrJones]

On July 19, 2016 at 4:48 AM, atomicus said:

Yeah I see so much praise heaped on the Black Ice GTS series rads for performance, yet the flow rate does seem really poor compared to other models... yet they always seem to come out on top in group tests, so what impact does that actually have? Under what circumstances would the flow rate be an issue? If you had a rubbish pump? Or if you had an incredibly complex loop?

Yeah I want to know also just how much of a toll it takes on the pump. I'm cooling my CPU and two GPU's with 10/12mm PETG and a slim 360 and 240 rad, and 45mm 240 rad. I would love to switch to HardwareLabs if I can get away with running the pump at a low speed still. I don't want to have to crank it up.