XSPC RX360 v2 360 Radiator Review

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

Introduction

XSPC RX360 v2 360 Radiator Review

The intention of this write up is to provide information and performance data about the XSPC EX360 v2 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.

Note: The sample rad under scrutiny is used and possibly even abused, having been installed in a few systems previously. In addition to being used it has also been modified, having additional ports fitted on the inlet/outlet tank. These extra ports will in no way affect performance but I thought that it should be mentioned.

You may notice a slight change in the data presentation in this radiator review as I’m now also including some test results for push only fan installation. The push only fan testing is conducted at 1.0 GPM and the 3 fan speeds I test at (750, 1300 & 1850 RPM), so you now have direct comparison data for the two fan installation types. Keep an eye out for a Push only version of ER’s Radiator Round Up once we have collected more radiator results.

 

 

What’s in the Box?

The used RX360 v2 sample for the review was stored in it’s original packaging, but no accessories were along with it, hence the limited photos I was able to take.

A sturdy box with a sticker on one end let’s us know what to expect inside – kind of. XSPC have confirmed that this is the v2 version of the RX360 as the packaging left me wondering if I had the v1 or v2. I was informed the at the v2 has a matt black finish and 6-32 screw threads while the v1 had a glossy finish and M4 threads.

Extent of delivery:

As the test radiator is used and was not stored with the accessories I will make an educated guess that the v2 supplied with was 12 of each of 6mm and 30mm 6-32 UNC screws. XSPC have supplied this type of screw with their rads for a while now (possibly since the RX v2 was released), so I am assuming that the v2 was supplied with them.

Onwards to technical specifications!

Technical Specifications

As the RX v2 series is now EOL having been replaced with XCPC’s v3 range of radiators. I had a hard time finding any technical details on the v2 to be able to document here other than what is on the box…

“- Black Matt Paint Finish

– Dimensions: 124x63x400mm (WxDxH)

– Copper Tubes and Fins

– 3 rows of 13mm by 2mm Tubes

– Sub 8fpi (fins per inch)

– G1/4″ Ports

– 6-32 Case and Fan Screws”

 

Dimensions Measured on the radiator tested (retail unit):

Radiator Core Dimensions:

The core is 3 tubes deep x 12 tubes wide and has single louvered fins. The louver structure is very open on the fins, presumably allowing for more turbulent air movement through the core and aiding in heat dissipation.

The single louvered fins were spaced very evenly down the tube rows with measurements taken of 8 FPI – (Fins Per Inch) in numerous places. The core structure looks excellent and could put out some decent heat dissipation numbers.

Finish and Features

As RX v2 being tested is used and modified, so I won’t go into too much detail as it just can’t be fairly appraised compared to the new rads fresh from the box. I’ll endeavour to be fair in awarding scores in the summary.

The RX360 v2 has a matte black finish with XSPC logos stamped into the side panels.

The v2 comes fitted with just the 2 ports, inlet and outlet, so no opportunities for drain/fill ports. (this is why I modified the one being reviewed and therefore credit to XSPC for including more ports on the RX v3 which is this model’s replacement).

There is no bleeder/fill port on the return tank end either.

There are no screw protector plates fitted under the 6-32 UNC threads for case installation and fan attachment. The mounting holes are located directly over the top of the outside tubes. So make sure that the appropriate screw length is used when mounting fans or the radiator to your case, as the potential for disaster is present.

So we have a rather standard looking, old school style radiator with no special features, but it does has an interesting open louvered fin structure, 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:

The above photo is for referencing the restriction test bench. The XSPC RX360 v2 is not loaded so please disregard the data in the picture as it does not relate to the RX v2.

Here is the raw data at the tested flow rates, displaying the measured Differential Pressure across the RX v2 as flow rate was increased.

The table numbers indicate that the RX v2 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 see how the RX v2 scales with flow we can take a few of those data points and compare vs the competition:

This confirms that the RX v2 has a very low restriction level.

Onwards to Thermal Performance!

Thermal Performance

The Thermal Data

Moving on from the restriction test bench the XSPC RX360 v2 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 RX v2 cares little about flow rate for thermal performance, particularly above 1.0GPM. Here are some plots to show the variance:

 

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 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.  Let’s exclude the push data for now and come back to it:

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.  Both coolant flow and air flow can limit thermal performance, however in typical systems flow is a much weaker effect than airflow due to typical choices of fans and pumps.

If we now come back to the push data it’s good to compare only the push to push/pull data in an “apples to apples” fashion by only looking at the 1GPM data:

Push gives close to 85% of the performance of Push/Pull across the range tested on this radiator.  If you do combine all the plots you’ll also see that at high enough air flow that 1.0GPM Push may overtake 0.5GPM Push/Pull as the flow rate starts to limit performance.

Having said all of this about flow effects they are in reality small.  So in this next plot all three flow rate results were averaged together to produce one curve.  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.

Here one of the top performing and worst performing rads have been plotted also to see how the RX v2 compares against them. As you can see the RX v2 performs very well in the midrange and only falls off at very high RPMs.

Now let’s analyze that data.

Data Analysis

Using the data compiled from the RX360 v2 thermal testing I have compiled the following tables in an attempt to show other ways of how the RX v2 performance varies against itself at the flow rates and fan speeds tested. First let’s take a look at the raw W/10DT numbers we will be using for this:

Effectively these 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:

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.  How about we combine both flow rate and fan speed as reference points and have a look at 0.5 GPM & 750 RPM as the reference:

Lastly, we change the reference and choose our centre 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 RX360 v2 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 RX v2 performed against the other radiators tested, 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.

First let’s take a look at the push only data:

At 750RPM the RX v2 is already in 5th place – an excellent result for an older design.  While the V3 beats it, the difference is small.

At 1300 RPM the V2 is in 5th place, while the V3 has fallen to 7th place.

At 1850RPM though the V2 is starting to fall behind the competition and slips firmly to the middle of the field.  Now let’s look at push/pull.  Given what we’ve seen the results may be worse.

This time the V2 starts off in 7th, and is already ahead of the V3.  Clearly both radiators are tuned for low speed fans, while the V3 is tuned for even lower speeds than the V2.

At 1300 RPM the V2 does better relatively in push/pull than it did in push.

At 1850RPM the interesting results continue whereby the V2 starts moving back up the charts.

If we purely focus on 1GPM results then we can also compare the push data directly to the push/pull data:

At 750RPM the V2 in Push is beating the worst of the push/pull setups, while the Push/Pull v2 has a sizeable lead over any push only setups.

At 1300 RPM, the XE360 in push is starting to approach the V2 in push/pull.

However at 1850RPM the V2 in push/pull has pulled away again from the push only setups maintaining a clear lead.  The push only V2 has also overtaken several push/pull setups.

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:

All those high numbers again confirm the RX v2 as a fantastic all-rounder that is tweaked more towards lower speed fans. While never finishing first place in any of the test combos, it was never too far behind any results either.

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 the push only performance metric:

The score of 92.7 puts the V2 in fifth place overall – a staggering score for an older design!  Interestingly it’s also slightly above the V3.

 

In Push/Pull the V2 drops to 9th place, but this is still a great effort.  Here it extends it’s lead over the newer V3 design.

Next up – Summary!

Summary

Push Performance – 4/5

Push/Pull Performance – 4/5

Overall Performance – 4/5

 

Overall the RX v2 got an averaged score 92.8.  This puts it in 4th place overall and is a testament to how much of an all rounder this older design really is.

Like the EK XTX tested previously, the RX v2 comparison data would indicate that it performs better (relative to the completion) with low speed fans, so it might be fair to say it performs most efficiently with low rpm fans, but saying that would take away from it’s excellent results with medium and high speed fans.

To be honest, I was blown away at the results on this low fin count radiator put out. In fact it has the lowest fin count of the 19 rads tested so far and it kept up with rads which have much denser fin structures. This is quite an achievement and a credit to the core design and how efficiently it performs. One has to wonder why the design was changed so much for the v3, which has a totally different core and does not perform as well as the v2.

Features & Quality – 2.5/5

The RX v2 reviewed and tested has been used (many times) and does show some battle scars, so I’ll try and be fair in my assessment of quality. It may be a null point anyway as the RX v2 is discontinued and is now very hard to find – good luck.

The matte black finish on the used RX360 v2 remains pretty good after years of service. I like the simple design of the radiator but it is lacking in additional features that many of the current generation of radiators offer.

For example the RX v2 has no addition inlet/outlet ports, nor a bleed/fill/drain port. There are no protector plates for the mounting screws and the mounting holes have tubes directly beneath them.

The generous internal shrouds of 7mm and 8mm do help at maximizing fan efficiency.

The low fin count might mean less cleaning due to dust build up, but the low FPI could be negated by the open louvered fin design, which could collect more dust, meaning cleaning more often.

Summary – Silver Award

The XSPC RX360 v2 is an EOL rad, having been replaced by the RX v3 early in 2014. Testing showed this older v2 outperformed the newer v3 radiator in every push/pull thermal test. The older radiator clearly has the wood, but at the time of writing was nearly impossible to find new. Not only did the v2 outperform its successor, it outperformed all the other rads except one in the overall performance scores.

While the RX360 v2 does have excellent performance it does lack in the feature set.

If you can fit the 113mm thickness of the RX360 v2 partnered with push/pull fans in your case, and can find one, I suggest you grab it and enjoy some great performance from a classic radiator.  Who knows, maybe we’ll see a return of this great performing radiator with a re-release from XSPC – don’t forget the multi ports options though!