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!
As
seen HERE, the ThermoChill PA120.3's
nearest competition was Swiftech's MCR320...
Radical_53 decided to take our PA120.2 and
pit it head to head against the MCR320 to see
how our dual-radiator compared to the competition's
triple-radiator...
This test was performed using
2x YateLoon D12SL fans and our performance
shroud on the PA120.2, and 3x YateLoon D12SL
fans on the MCR320. As can be seen, the PA120.2
holds out admirably, matching the competitions'
triple-fan radiator, whilst exhibiting less
noise due to fewer fans in play. |
