Quote Originally Posted by 1Day View Post
While I felt they made some good points with respect to the relationships between materials used and thermal efficiency of those materials,
Actually, if you read carefully, even this is BS.

They started with a supposition, and then incorrectly tried to tie the results of a meaningless test back to the supposition.

Their claim was that an aluminium radiator was more efficient. That's just a claim. They established some thermal conductivity values for the worst elements in a copper radiator, conveniently ignored the rest of the conductivity elements that are superior, and then proceeded to overplay the impact of the worst portions. A copper radiator does not use brass fins. A copper radiator uses copper fins, and copper has an 80% greater thermal conductivity than aluminium. Does Koolance tell us this? No. They have actually lied to us through omission, by not informing about the thermal transfer aspects in a copper radiator that are in fact superior to an aluminium radiator. In fact, the vast majority of the heat flow that needs to move around travels along a superior copper path. There is a very short path where the heat has to pass through brass, and the impact of this short path is truly minor in comparison to the "long path" of the fins.

So Koolance, in their introduction, have tried to overplay this aspect.

When it comes to radiator design, it is possible to balance fin density, core thickness, tubing widths and so on, to move around the best efficiency points of a radiator for given fan powers. We can make a radiator completely suck for powerful fans, or we can make a radiator completely suck for weak fans. This is an extremely complex interrelated set of variables that need to be balanced. In short, we can optimise a radiator for whatever. Just tell us the fan power we need to optimise for.

Now the Thermochill PA series was deliberately optimised for <80CFM fans (per 120x120mm area), and that came at the expense of performance for >100CFM fans. This was done because it was realised that powerful fans were simply too noisy for people to tolerate.

The reason why the PA radiators stormed onto the market was because so many radiator manufacturers were still designing radiators using automobile manufacturer test utilities which optimise for fan powers that are completely unrealistic and irrelevant to the PC water-cooling scene.

It is the no wonder that a radiator that was designed for automobiles using automobile test utilities works so well on an automobile testbed. "No s**t Sherlock!". It is also of no surprise that a radiator that purposely went against those norms, and focused on the specific needs for PC watercoolers doesn't do well on an automotive testbed. Once again: "No s**t Sherlock!".

It is completely specious reasoning to then take the results of such a test and attempt to attribute technical superiority down to the aluminium construction. There are just WAY too many variables between the premise and the results to EVER draw that conclusion. It much like me living in America, pulling out my pet rock and saying that it keeps Kangaroos away, and claiming that it works because I can't see any kangaroos about. It's specious reasoning at its worst.

This is not a scientific test. This is pure and absolute marketing drivel that insults the intelligence of all consumers who are capable of understanding what is really being presented.