XSPC AX240 Dual Fan Radiator Review

Installation
Conveniently for us, we still have the Raystorm 750 kit installed in our test case. This will allow us to nearly directly compare the results of the AX240 with the RS240 with very little possibility for variance when testing.

To install the radiator we simply had to attach the 1650rpm XSPC fans from the kit to the radiator using the supplied screws.

XSPC AX240 Dual Fan Radiator XSPC AX240 Dual Fan Radiator

They were again installed in the pull position in the front of the case to get the best possible cooling. When threading in the screws it was noticeably smooth. This is a sign of very accurate machining of both the screws and the radiator.

With the fans attached we screwed in the barbs from the Raystorm kit. Both the screws and the ports are black chrome and look great together.

XSPC AX240 Dual Fan Radiator

With the radiator prepped, all that is left is attaching the radiator with the smaller screws to the front of the case and hooking up the tubing already in place to the barbs.

XSPC AX240 Dual Fan Radiator XSPC AX240 Dual Fan Radiator

The clean lines of the AX240 look great installed in our test case. Of course with the ability to easily repaint the radiator it can look great in any case.

Testing
The test rig consists of the following parts:

Processor: Intel Core i5 2500K
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 EVO
Video Card: SPARKLE Calibre Series X480 GeForce GTX 480
Memory: Corsair Vengence 8 GB @ 1600mhz
Power Supply: High Power Astro PT 700w
Storage: OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB Running Windows 8 64bit
Cooling: XSPC RayStorm 750 RS240
Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 1

Testing was done using Intel Burn Test (IBT) with the AVX instruction set. The reason I use this instead of Prime95 with this setup is that it pushes our i5 2500K a whole lot harder, giving us a better sense of load temps. Most of the testing was done at the high memory setting for a single pass. While admittedly this in no way would qualify the chip as stable when overclocking, it gives us a realistic idea of what temps it will be hitting.

Stock Intel cooler results:

Ambient temps: 22.22C/71.99F
Idle temps: 31.25C/88.25F core average
IBT temps: 78.5C/173.3F core average

With the AX240 installed and using the Raystorm 750 kit here are the results with stock settings:

Ambient temps: 20C/68F
Idle temps: 30.5C/86.9F core average
IBT temps: 43.75C/110.75F core average

XSPC AX240 Dual Fan Radiator XSPC AX240 Dual Fan Radiator

RS240 results:

Ambient temps: 20C/68F
Idle temps: 31.75C/89.15F core average
IBT temps: 43C/109.4F core average

These results are very interesting. While they definitely blow the stock cooler results away, even at idle, they are higher for stock load than the RS240 but slightly lower for idle.

With this in mind let’s continue testing and see how the AX240 does with an highly overclocked 2500K to cool.

Ambient temps: 20C/68F
Max overclock: 5.0 ghz/1.504V vCore
IBT temps: 74.5C/166.1F core average

XSPC AX240 Dual Fan Radiator

So once again we see that it is less that 1 degree C warmer than the RS240 radiator. My best suggestion for this lower performance would be to look at the fans. While having nearly the same fin density of the RS radiators the AX’s fins are more dense. Changing the fans for some that reach closer to 2000rpm might increase the performance of this radiator. However, certainly you will be stuck dealing with more noise than even the stock 1650rpm XSPC fans from the Raystorm kit.