The PA120 series was concieved
after the design-success of the PA160. During
development of the PA160 it was discovered
that radiators could be more finely tuned
for the needs of today's watercooling community,
where silence has started to become a major
priority. Testing and comparison of the PA160
led to a starting point for PA120 series development.
A large portion of the initial discussion
and theoretical work leading to the first
prototype was done publicly and can
be viewed here at Overclockers.com.au
(post #171 onwards - Membership Req'd). After
the first prototype was produced, development
went private for obvious reasons, but a number
of further revised prototypes were then created
and tested.
After many months of number
crunching and testing the final spec for the
PA120 series was decided upon. This final
design showed a vast improvement over the
HE Series... by a significant margin when
it came to silent fans. Additional testing
confirmed that this margin applied not only
to silent fans but to regular and higher airflow
fans, up to a 130cfm (approximately) point.
The final spec was slightly
"outside-the-box" when it came to
regular Radiator construction, thus weeks
of tooling changes ensued before the new series
could be commerically released to retail.
Which brings us to the present day...
The PA120 radiator series
features a dual-row dual-pass 120mm form factor,
available in single, double and triple sizes,
optimised for the fans of today and putting
into practice everything learned about watercooling
efficiency and performance over the past 3
years. The PA Series boasts from 10-40% better
performance over the HE Series. 10% for the
high / noisy airflow end of the fan market,
and up to 40% for the low airflow / silence
end of the market.
What does this mean to you
as an end-user? You can retain the same performance
for even less noise, or better performance
for the same noise over your current radiator.
If at the end of the day performance is all
that matters to you and noise is of no concern,
the new PA Series still offers significant
improvements over the HE series. Alternately
if silence is the goal, you can now have that
too, but with more cooling performance than
ever before!
