5-Way Radiator Round-Up

In part one of our 5-way radiator round-up we had our hands on the Hardware Labs Black Ice Xtreme I and II, Danger Den Dual Heater Core, CoolingWorks CoolRad 12T, and Thermaltake 12cm Big Radiator. In this first article, we featured the various contenders as well as a thorough examination of each of these single and dual 120mm radiators. If you had missed out on the 5-Way Radiator Round-Up (Part 1), it can be viewed here. For the second part to this frigid round-up we have all of our results ready displaying the various cooling abilities for each of these radiators. In addition, for reference purposes we have also tested the LS Cable SHS-X500 Smart CPU Cooler (provided by 3DCOOL). In addition to the heatpipe components to assist in the dissipation process, LS Cable uses unique SHS (Smart Heat Spreader) technology. The LS Cable Smart Heat Spreader is a pure copper heatsink with a nickel-plated base and three heatpipes extruding from the base. The heatsink reminded us a lot of a squashed SI-97 from ThermalRight. We did, however, run into one installation problem. Installing the heatsink in one particular fashion on a DFI Ultra-D will render the first PCI-Express slot unusable while flipping it around would render two memory slots useless. This of course will be an inconvenience, but it may not be a problem on other motherboards. Contained inside of the retail packaging SHS-X500 HSF, thermal paste, product manual, and installation guide. As you can see from the results below, overall we were most impressed by its cooling abilities. In addition to the SHS-X500 for use with Pentium 4’s (Socket 478) and Athlon 64’s 3DCOOL also sells the SHS-L500 and SHS-T700 for use with Socket 478 and Socket T LGA-775 respectively. Below are a few pictures of the marvelous SHS-X500.

In addition to the various radiators used in the water cooling setup, a Danger Den TDX (copper-based) water block was used to cool the CPU, the pump used in the setup was a AquaXtreme 50Z, and the reservoir used was a Danger Den Dual 5-1/4” Reservoir. Connecting all of the components was 1/2” ID 3/4” OD while the liquid used was distilled water along with Zerex anti-freeze/coolant additive. The AquaXtreme 50Z is a 12V DC inline with a maximum head of 3.2M and a maximum discharge of 700 L/HR. Below are the specifications when it comes to the computer setup used for the duration of the entire testing process.

For our radiator testing, we measured the meaningful CPU temperature rather than measuring the temperature of the fluid as it entered the radiator as well as the temperature when it was expelled from the radiator in order to provide real-world figures. The load temperature was taken after 30 minutes of running CPU Burn-In v1.00. For the idle process, we allowed the system to run for 30 minutes with no external process active. During the testing process, the ambient room temperature was monitored to ensure accuracy. The temperature we recorded was the CPU core temperature using LM_Sensors v2.9.2. On the next page are our CPU temperatures when the various radiators, and heatsink, were installed not only from idle and load but also the change in temperature between these two values.