The Three Amigos Radiator Review

There are many reviews of water cooling products which look at the relative merits of products. Some of these reviews are clearly swayed to present that particular product in a good light. This review stems from the interest of some of the membership of OCAU who have indicated quite clearly that they prefer to see comparisons of things that they wish to buy in the future and not just marketing hype.

This review sets out to examine the performance of three compact 120 mm radiators the BIX ( Black Ice Extreme) The BIP (Back Ice Pro) and The Radiical Pro. The Three Amigos.

The Three Amigos

From the left Radiical Pro, BIX and BIP

Test Machine
Abit AI7 Motherboard
Intel Prescott 2.8Ghz CPU overclocked to 3.1Ghz at default voltage.

Papst Multifan 4314 set to 12 volts were used as low speed fans to provide air flow of approximately 40 cfm.

Evercool Aluminum EC12025H12BA fans used for the high flow fans testing. These were rated as 84.75 cfm

Water Cooling was provided using our WHX water block and a Swiftech MCP 600 pump. The radiator was swapped out on each occasion and was the only change to the system.

Temperature sampling was undertaken by PT100 temperature probes placed in line of the water flow. Temperatures were taken every thirty minutes. The picture below illustrates the placement of the inline temperature monitoring.

Figure One

Environment

Air conditioning was used to maintain a steady ambient of 27 degrees Celsius.

Procedure

Data was sampled from the inlet and outlet flow of the radiators every 30 minutes. The data was collected for a period of one hour after stability had been established . Stability was defined by no further gains in temperature during the period of one hour. The samples were averaged to produce the result for that test series.

Okay on with the data

To avoid a long winded approach the review I will take a rather direct "Show me the data" approach. To start off with here is a baseline graphic of the performance of a BA Radiator. Most readers will be familiar with the BA radiator. BA data is provided for readers to cross compare the performance of the three radiators under review.

The results indicate that at the ambient of 27 degrees the BA temp read by MBM5 was 43 degrees, This is a low speed fan test result. No inferences should be drawn as to performance with higher speed fans.

Test Series One; Radiators in low fan speed configuration Papst fans

Graph One

The radiator performance data shown here indicates that temperature is closely following overall radiator size with the BIX Pro performing worse and the Radiical Pro performing best.

Test Series Two; Radiators in push pull configuration with high speed single fans

Graph Two

Graph Two indicates the same data distribution of temperatures shown in Graph One with the BIX losing its previous lead over the BIX Pro. Clearly the BIX Pro can perform at the same level as the BIX with a higher flow rate. Noise is a factor here.

One word on fitting the Evercool fans to the BIX radiators. The barb to top of fan distance is very small on the BIX making the fitting of a norma clamp a difficult operation. In fact we had to partially remove the fan before the Clearflex and hose clamp could be fitted to the BIX radiator.

Test Series Three; Radiators in Push Pull configuration Low speed fans

Graph Three

The previous results are repeated here when the fan speed drops and the airflow is decreased the BIX Pro and BIX temps increase. Clearly the BIX and BIX Pro favor the higher flow rates fans. The BIX Pro had several freezes of the operating system using low speed fans and had to be rebooted and re stabilized before the test series could continue.

Test Series Four; Radiators in Push Pull configuration high speed fans

Graph Four

Graph Four represents the temperature meeting point of all of the radiators. The BIX and BIX Pro with their preference for higher air flow rates have finally equaled the Radiical Pro radiator. Fan noise is a factor here, the noise being far to excessive for my personal taste. I think that the noise itself would be a hazard as it is very reminiscent of the HSF noise irritation that water cooling is supposed to eliminate.

Conclusion

The Radiical Pro Radiator leads both of the BIX entries in performance only being matched when two relatively high cfm fans are used. Dependent upon the noise level you prefer any of the radiators here will provide similar levels of cooling when high speed fans are used.

The performance differential of the Three Amigos against the BA radiator is a margin of 1 to 1.5 degrees of difference. Push-pull fan configuration is required to reach this temperature margin. Clearly the review has demonstrated that smaller radiators can give credible performance without taking up the space of there larger counterparts. This can be very relevant for people trying to "shoe horn" water cooling into their case.