Best 240mm Radiator?

[JimmyTheDinosaur]

What's the best 240mm radiator?

Thanks guys

[TheMissxu]

Probably the thick one with high fin density.

[JimmyTheDinosaur]

Probably the thick one with high fin density.

Got you, bit of a novice with water cooling

[JimmyTheDinosaur]

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/16236/ex-rad-410/Alphacool_NexXxoS_Monsta_Dual_120mm_Radiator_-_80mm_Thick.html

I was just looking at that exact rad. Haha:D that's that sorted

[TheMissxu]

To quote Ghost and the stickied FAQ:

Q: What does FPI mean and what difference does it make?

A: FPI stands for Fins Per Inch. This is an industry standard of measuring how dense the fins in a radiator are. You will typically hear more popular radiators referred to as low FPI or high FPI units. Low FPI units are in the range of 7-11 while High FPI units are typically 20+. So, you have a trade off here. High FPI radiators can provide for better cooling, more fins equate to more area for getting rid of heat. But, you need higher RPM fans to push the air through this denser setup. A Low FPI radiator suffers from not having as good of heat dissipation as a high FPI unit, with the trade off being you can use much lower RPM fans to move the same volume of air over the find. In slim radiators this is how manufacturers aim at the performance. A high FPI slim rad is made for high fan RPMs and a low FPI slim rad is made for low RPMs.

Overall, this is a trade off off of temperature versus noise. In the same setup, you may need more radiators if they are all low FPI ones, whereas you would have probably a noisier setup using high FPI one.

Q: Thick or Slim radiators?

A: These terms refer to how wide/deep a radiator is. Typically a "thick" rad is anything over 50mm and "thin" rads are generally in the 35mm range or less. In between that would be considered your "average" thickness rad. Same as with a FPI, the thickness of the rad equates to how much surface area is available to dissipitate heat. Typically you need to move more air through a thin radiator to achieve the same cooling performance as a thick radiator. Same as with FPI, it can be a trade off of temps to RPM/noise of the fans.

Another thing to consider is that thick rads work will with a very wide range of RPMs whereas slim rads are made to be best at certain RPMs.

 

It really depends on your budget really... Just select a few ones around what you wish to spend, and, if there are any benchmarks, take a look at those. If there are no benchmarks, then the actual specs would be the next best thing to see which is better (unless you find other users with quality issues).