1. Introduction2. Technical Specifications3. Flow Performance4. Thermal Performance5. Data Analysis6. Summary7. View All

Introduction

EK PE 360 Radiator Review

The intention of this write up is to provide information and performance data about the EK PE 360mm Radiator for inclusion in the Extreme Rigs Rad Round Up 2015. I’ll be keeping the review section short and factual, focusing on presenting the performance data compiled through the numerous tests carried out. First of all a big thanks to EK for providing this sample of the PE 360.

What’s in the box?

The PE360 sample sent by EK came in full retail packaging.

Inside the retail sleeve was a sturdy shipping box. Opening it up I was happy to find the radiator inside a bubble wrap bag and a paper sleeve.

While my sample arrived in perfect condition, I really dislike the way in which the screws were packaged – simply being placed on top of the core. EK is not the only company to do this. I have received radiators in the past with damaged fins caused by this “quick & easy” way of packing the supplied accessories. There are better ways.

Extent of Delivery:

– EK-CoolStream PE series radiator /w pre-installed G1/4 extenders
– flat-head UNC 6-32 screws (l=30mm)
– flat-head UNC 6-32 screws (l=5mm)

Not mentioned but also included in the accessory bag was an allen key for fitting of the supplied screws.

Onwards to technical specifications!

Technical Specifications

Technical specifications as listed by EK:
Material:
– Copper fins
– 90% copper tubing (H90)
– Brass chambers
– Aluminium housing

Dimensions: 400 x 130 x 38mm (L x W x H)
Weight: 1.02kg
Liquid Capacity: ~200mL
FPI: 38 (19 split fin)
Port threads: 2x G1/4
Fan compatibility: any standard size 120x120x25mm fan;
UNC 6-32 thread tapping
Pressure Tested: 1bar (g)

Dimensions Measured on the radiator tested (retail unit):

Radiator Core Dimensions:

Finish and Features

The PE360 has one of the densest fin counts of the test group with 18 FPI (fins per inch) measured in numerous places. This split fin combination could lead to some pretty good performance relative to the radiator thickness and the core thickness in particular.

EK have opted to include generous internal shroud depths – 9mm on the port side & 8mm on the other. This extra space between the fans gives the fans the best chance of achieving their maximum cooling potential by trying to eliminating as much of the hub’s “dead spot as possible.

I really believe this extra internal shroud would be beneficial to many of the current radiators performance so I was glad to see that EK have chosen to go down this more traditional design of function & performance. As mentioned both sides have generous depth so I assume that EK designed the radiator for optimal performance, that is using push/pull fans. The fin installation was a bit sloppy on the sample EK sent, but the spacing was quite even up and down the rows.

The EK PE360 is finished in a matte black paint which has a slightly rough feel to it.  For the modders out there, in particular the painters, the PE360 design allows for much easier custom painting by allow the core to be removed from the radiators encasing. The ports unscrew from the tank end and with the right size torx key the aluminum pieces can be taken off, allowing the core to be removed completely if the casing is to be painted.

The two long sides of the casing have a bit of flex in them, which doesn’t give the feel of being solid and sturdy. Of course once a few fans are attached everything stiffens up. Still my initial impression was that the PE felt just a bit on the flimsy side of solid.  Next to one of the ports is an EK badge and at the other end EK decided to put some lettering, reminding us of which series radiator we purchased.

Let’s see how it performs…

Flow Performance

The Data

As all the testing in this round up was performed with the exact same equipment, using the exact same methods I have decided to keep each radiators page uncluttered by posting our testing methodology, test set-ups and equipment used in a single location. To see exactly how the tests were carried out, details of the test set ups and equipment used, please head back to the RRU’15 Test Equipment Page.

Restriction Test

It’s generally agreed that radiators are one of, if not the least restrictive components in the water cooling loop. There are some exceptions however, so this must still be verified through testing:

Here is the raw data at the tested flow rates, displaying the measured Differential Pressure across the PE 360 as flow rate was increased.

The table numbers indicate that the PE360 is a very low restriction radiator. However numbers in isolation can only tell half the story. By plotting against other components it more easily shows the whole story. I have decided to use a HeatKiller 3.0 CPU block as the reference in these plots for two reasons. Firstly there is no chance of the plot being cluttered by curves overlapping and secondly it gives a reference point against a fairly common loop component of average restriction. For radiator to radiator restriction comparisons please see the RRU’15 data pages. As with all the radiator restriction plots I have limited the maximum flow rate displayed to 2.0 GPM as I suspect there are very few systems that operate above 2.0 GPM. For more information on how to read a restriction plot check out our guide.

Now that we know how the PE did vs flow, we can take some of those data points and compare vs the competition:

The PE therefore is on the lower end of restriction and is perfectly acceptable.

Onwards to Thermal Performance!

Thermal Performance

The Thermal Data
Moving on from the restriction test bench the EK PE360 radiator was loaded into the thermal test chamber for a series of 9 tests – consisting of 3 flow rates, each having 3 different fan rpm rates tested. I felt the thermal test data was most important and which you as the reader would be most interested in.

Below is the final data results gathered from at least 2 data logging runs at each flow rate and fan rpm combination.  The most stable 15 minute period from each logging run was used and then averaged with the other runs to obtain the data for the table below. A total of 16 temperature sensors were used in the thermal test chamber (8 air in, 2 air out, 3 water in, 3 water out) each take a reading every second and logged via a CrystalFontz unit. The data in the table below is the result of the logging runs which has then been used to create all the plots and tables there-after.

The performance metric of critical importance is the delta between the warm coolant temperature in and the cold ambient air temperature in to the radiator. Given that the system is well insulated and in equilibrium and we know the heat input to the system then we can also calculate a very important number – that is the amount of power required to raise the coolant temperature 1C (or 10C which is more useful reference point).

Like the vast majority of the other radiators tested, the PE360 cares little about flow rate, particularly above 1.0GPM. Here are some plots to show the variance:

For those who love the curves, I have plotted a chart and added a poly-line to extrapolate the data. Note that the extrapolation of the curve is much more sensitive to error than in between the tested range.

So the performance is not greatly affected by varying flow rate. However Delta T is not always helpful when thinking about how many radiators you would need to cool your system. Instead it’s more useful to know the delta/W, or more usefully, the inverse metric of W/delta C.

The metric plotted below tells us how many watts are dissipated by the radiator when the coolant rises 10C above ambient temperatures. (10 Delta T):

As expected increasing fan speed and therefore airflow through the radiator is the primary determinant in changing the radiators performance. This data can now be plotted as a pretty curve so that an end user can interpolate their own fan speed. Note again that the extrapolation of the curve is much more sensitive to error than in between the tested range.

This makes it easier to see that at higher fan speeds that a low flow starts to impact the cooling performance. This makes sense if you take it to the extreme and think about a very low flow rate where the coolant is already cooled 99% of the way to ambient with 10% of its journey through the radiator. In this example the radiator is not being efficiently used. 90% of the radiator surface area would then be wasted and you could have used a smaller radiator.

Having said all of this in this next plot all three flow rate results were averaged together to produce one curve. This works well because the radiator was so flow rate insensitive. Averaging reduces test error of course so this helps further to be sure of our data and is more useful therefore for comparing to other radiators.

Now let’s compare Push vs Push/Pull:

As can be seen, the slim core design of the PE shows very little gain when using extra fans to increase static pressure.

Now let’s analyze that data.

Data Analysis

Using the data compiled from the PE360 thermal testing I have compiled the following tables in an attempt to show another way how the PE performance varies against itself at the flow rates and fan speeds tested.   First let’s take a look at the raw numbers:

We can use these to show percentage gains relative to a reference point. It’s an interesting way to show gains/losses while changing a variable. This first table shows performance gain or loss relative to 1.0GPM flow rate:

This shows that increasing flow to 1.5GPM had a little gain while lowering flow to 0.5GPM only affects the higher airflow case.

We can also focus on 1300RPM as our reference and see how much gain or loss in performance we get by changing fan speed:

As expected the change is dramatic.  Lastly we can combine both and choose 1300 RPM and 1.0 GPM as our reference point to show both effects concurrently:

So from the data above we can get a very good idea of how the PE360 radiator performs relative to itself. But there is a large selection of 360mm radiator models to choose from, released from numerous manufacturers. So, we need to start comparing performance between them. To see how the radiator performed against the other radiators in this group I have included the averaged flow rate comparison charts from the Round Up. We know that the flow rate has little impact on thermal performance so averaging of the 3 flow rate results gives us a good look at head to head performance at the rpm speeds tested at with even less error.

 

Let’s start off with the Push only data:

At 750RPM the PE does very respectably for a slimmish radiator.  The slimmer GTS however steals it’s thunder by doing better still.

At 1300RPM the higher FPI of the PE now leads the slimmer radiators and overtakes the GTS.

At 1850RPM the PE still does well for it’s thickness, however the thicker alternatives are now performing better.

Now let’s take a look at Push/Pull – we already know to expect this to be worse:

At 750RPM however the PE is still doing well.

At 1300RPM the thin core is suffering compared to the thicker competition.

This continues at 1850RPM, however if we were to exclude thicker radiators, then the PE would actually be doing very well.

By using only the 1GPM data we can compare Push to Push/Pull in an apples to apples sense.  The downside is that the plots are large and confusing:

At 750RPM the slim PE radiator with push fans was already beating a push/pull radiator setup.  Impressive for a small package.

 

At 1300 RPM the PE in push starts get overtaken by it’s stablemate the XE in push.  The PE in push though it still fighting strong and outperforming many other radiators including even more push/pull setups now.

At 1850RPM the PE now looks comparatively much worse.  It’s slim core just can’t keep up with the thicker competition.

From all of these results we can create a “master performance factor”. The radiator with the best cooling ability (W/10ΔT) at each gpm/rpm combo was awarded a score of 100, and each other radiators W/10ΔT result was scored as percentage of the top performer:

Here we see that the Performance of the PE360 drops off (comparatively) as the fan speed is increased.

Then all these percentage scores were averaged giving us the Averaged Performance Factor of each radiator. This way of looking at the comparison takes away any advantages that a radiator may have at higher or lower fan speeds and looks at an overall average. While this appears fair it does tend to favor those radiators that are all rounders and those radiators which do very well at high RPM. Most users should be more focused on their specific use case. Check in the Round Up for performance comparisons at every gpm/rpm combo for even more details and cross comparison results.

Again let’s start with Push only first:

The PE hits a score of 90.6.  This is very impressive for a radiator with such a small package.  Sadly for EK the HWLabs GTS is slimmer and outperforms it still.

In Push/Pull the PE drops 5% to 85.7.  This is still respectable.  Even in this configuration the PE is performing solidly in the middle of the pack.

The PE360 didn’t place highly in the “Average Performance Factor” calculations, but it was never expected to. It’s a medium thickness radiator with a thin core and it’s performance cannot be expected to be on par with the thicker core radiators with potential for much higher heat dissipation.  Where space is concerned therefore, while deep internal shrouds may help increase fan and radiator efficiency, performance is better with a thicker core.

Next up – Summary!

Summary

Push Performance – 3.5/5

The PE clearly favors a Push only fan setup.  Given that it’s a slimmer designed radiator this seems like the correct choice.  The PE does very well given it’s thickness.

Push/Pull Performance – 2.5/5

Amazingly the PE still turns in a respectable performance despite having such a slim core and being tuned for Push only.

Overall Thermal Performance – 3/5

The performance rating of 3 is arrived at from the Average performance Factor results for all the radiators in the test group. As a medium thick radiator with a thin core competing in an open class, the PE360’s overall performance rating was quite low.  However the score really has to be compared to it’s competition which comprises of similarly sized radiators.  Sadly for EK the slimmer HWLabs Nemesis GTS just beats it out while also beating it on size too.

 

Features & Quality – 3.5/5

The PE360 has just the basics and nothing more.  There are no alternative in/out port options and no bleeder/drain port.  The matte black finish is attractive and there is nothing to complain about the paint job.

The deep internal shrouds on both side are a winning inclusion, though I suspect required to get it up to acceptable performance levels. In any case, it’s a design feature that is a throwback to radiators of yesteryear and something more designs should considering to re-introduce.

The removable ends will be a feature that few buyers will appreciate, but it is an “almost” unique feature and will be appreciated by the painting modders.

Summary – 3/5

The EK Coolstream PE360 is an average performing medium thickness radiator which is well made and finished stylishly. The strong point is its thermal performance when used with in a push only setup.

Where to buy: $75 – PPCS