Help choosing radiator!

[danielmednikov]

Hey guys,
I'm in the phase of picking parts for my first loop, I've decided on two 360 radiators, I've been looking at the LP 360 and for the price seem really attractive...
The only thing is that I can't find If this rad is Cooper or aluminium, and what are peoples experience with darkside rads... are they worth it, do they cool properly? Do they have Cooper core? Or should I save up a little more and get a ek or alpha cool.
Loops are expensive but I'd hate not spending the extra 30-40$ per rad to get good temps.

Thanks in advance!!!!!

[Bartacus]

Don't worry, Daz' rads are all copper. For temps, you'll do just fine with Darkside rads. The only thing they lack really is port options, at least compared to EK or Alpha Cool, but they do a great job with cooling. There are lots of pluses to Darkside rads:

1) size. There's no "bloat" on DS rads, so they're nice and slim, with no huge end-tanks (which can cause fitment issues if you don't do your case home work).
2) cooling is excellent, as most of Daz rads have a decently low FPI (fins per inch), so you get good cooling even if you don't use high static pressure fans.
3) price is obviously good. I don't think there's a better "bang for your buck" rad.

It depends on your priorities. I have tried 5 different brands of rads (XSPC, Darkside, Alpha Cool, TFC, EK), and I think EK is my new favorite, due to the port options and aesthetics. But you pay a premium for those. It really depends on your priorities.

[snef]

you will be fine with Darkside rad,

they are my fav for now,

excellent cooling performance
already very clean, no need to flush/clean them a week long
LP are very thin and can be install in all case in all situation
and the price is perfect

EK are very good but more expensive and the thin serie are in same performance as Darkside LP (as per me test)

[danielmednikov]

Thanks a lot for the words of advice Bartacus and snef, ill pick up two of those for my first build then!

[10e]

The only part of the Darkside rads that aren't copper are the side plates, which are steel I believe. End tanks and all water channels are copper as far as I know.

I really like these rads, and as snef said they don't need much cleaning. I just flushed them out once prior to use, and no garbage came out.

They are medium FPI and louvered so good with decent static pressure fans and due to slim 27mm depth, can usually be used in push-pull almost anywhere. I had a 360 and 240mm cooling twin Poseidon GTX 980 with an I7 5960X at 4.2 Ghz and the CPU temps never rose above 68 celsius on any CPU core, and the video cards never exceeded 48 celsius, even though there was no space between them. So the top was 48 celsius but the bottom never exceeded 44, and that was push-only with average SP120 fans at 1100-1200 fans in a small office.

Best deal on the radiator market IMHO.

I have bought them from Daz and Canada Computers in the past.