In the past year, Xianma's water cooling radiators have been updating the XW series products, if you are just entering the pit PC DIY players may not know much about Xianma and KW series, the cold heads of the old Xianma KW series water cooling radiators are round, and the screen adopts a mirror design, at that time, with an excellent degree of customization and good heat dissipation performance, it has accumulated a good reputation (check KW360DW evaluation). Recently, Xianma brought the product of Xianma KW360-R, if you are a fan friend, you should know that products with the suffix R are not simple.
According to the official information before contacting the product, Xianma KW360-R has ushered in upgrades in performance and screen compared with the old model, focusing on the screen, so how does this liquid cooling radiator perform?
The version we have on hand is the white version, from the packaging can be seen that Xianma has spent a lot of thought on the appearance design of the product this time, the white version of the packaging is mainly gray and green, navy blue as an embellishment, the overall tone is coordinated, because the gray is closer to the color of titanium, so it also presents a certain sense of luxury. On the front of the package, there is a green digital display font printed with "kw360r", and there is a parallel green slash at the bottom right of the font that simulates the power or loads the reading bar, with the navy blue multi-water chestnut border, it is easy to think of sci-fi elements such as mecha and **.
Xianma has added sponge protection products in the package, and the modules filled inside are also designed with sufficient space to facilitate users to take and place the products. Take out the product and you can see that the fan has been installed on the radiator, and it can be installed after unpacking.
The accessory box includes the fasteners of the current Intel and AMD mainstream platforms, both of which are plastic bases, and a small tube of silicone grease (weight 0.).5g) and a plastic spatula with silicone grease.
This time, the cold head size of the KW360-R is 24 inches, using a square design, using a trapezoidal structure design on both sides of the screen for beautification, and adding RGB light strips and silver color blocks in this part of the area to enrich the visual language, the overall appearance is more three-dimensional.
Compared with the old product, the first horse KW360-R focuses on upgrading the screen, the product is equipped with a 320 240 resolution IPS screen, with 500nits brightness and 24-bit color depth, refresh rate 60Hz, the content of the screen can be adjusted to 0°, 90°, 180° and 270° through software, and supports **H264, MP4 and GIF format.
In terms of performance, the copper bottom thickness of this product is 1The 5mm version, the same as the XW series, has a pump speed of 2500 10% rpm, and there are three cables, which are 3pin pump, ARGB and USB 20 interface. The thickness of the radiator is 27mm, and the length of the water cooling pipe is 380mm.
In terms of fans, the KW360-R is equipped with three custom-made ARGB 12cm fans, which use dynamic hydraulic bearings to provide a service life of up to 7,000 hours and a noise level of 35Within 4db. The official nominal maximum wind pressure can reach 197mmH2O, the maximum air volume can reach 68cfm, and the maximum speed is 1800 10% rpm. Although there is a big gap with the XT128 equipped with XW360-PLUS in terms of parameters, compared with the old products, there are improvements in wind pressure and air volume.
It is worth praising that the three fans of Xianma KW360-R are connected in series through hidden custom cables, which can not only visually achieve the same neat effect as a building block fan, but also the cable management can also be as convenient as a building block fan, and the three fans only need to be connected to a 4pin fan cable and a 3pin ARGB cable.
We have carried out the installation experience of the LGA1700 platform for the KW360-R, the base of the product is used as a fixed four screw holes that can be slid to adapt to the LGA1700 and LGA1200 platforms, the sliding damping feeling is moderate, it can be pushed with a little force and is not easy to shift during the installation process, and the switch between the two gears also has a crisp suction feeling, which is convenient for users to adjust. The hand-screwed screws have a non-slip design with vertical stripes, which is more labor-saving and less likely to slip off the fingertips during installation. The fixing bracket of the water block is installed with the Intel fixing bracket by default, and there is a certain gap between the opening and the hand-screwed screw, which is convenient for the user to adjust. The installation experience of the AMD platform is not much different from that of Intel.
In terms of cable management, because the cold head of this radiator has an extra 3pin ARGB cable, and the cold head cable is not easy to hide, so the visual effect is slightly complicated after getting on the machine, and it is recommended that users who pursue appearance should carry out ** on the exposed cables within the visual range, otherwise these three wires are easy to appear loose even if they are hidden in the gaps of the motherboard decorative baffle.
In addition, due to the need to install and disassemble several times during the evaluation process, it was found that the metal material of the nut used to fix the cold head was soft, and the screwdriver edge of the individual nut was deformed after being twisted several times with a screwdriver.
This time, the control software of the KW360-R uses the SAMAMONITOR precision control system.
The home page of the software is the "screen display" setting interface, which provides users with three basic functions: theme selection, screen display content rotation and brightness adjustment. This time, Xianma provides 20 themes for this product, two of which are cute pet images of pandas and kittens, users can choose their favorite theme on the right side of this interface, and click the "Run" button to display the effect after selection, and modify it again to click "Stop running" to continue the operation.
If the user wants to choose an unofficial theme, you can click "Set Background", upload**or**After the software can automatically generate a custom theme, if you want to add text or other UI on your own selection**, you can make a more in-depth custom design in the "Theme Editing" column.
The system information interface allows you to see the running status of each hardware in detail, including the real-time temperature, frequency, and power consumption information of hardware such as CPU, graphics card, and memory.
In the settings interface, we can customize the hardware naming, and provide options for the software to boot up, update, temperature display units, and clean cache.
In the theme editing interface, users can highly customize the display content of the cold head screen, including background**, custom text or use status bar, arc bar, clock, ** form to display real-time data of hardware running, users need to click "save theme" after designing a custom theme, and after restarting the software, they can select and run a custom theme on the "screen display" page.
The test platform uses the Intel Core i9-12900K and MSI B760 platform for thermal testing, in which the CPU power is set to 260W, the room temperature is about 27, and the temperature rise of the CPU is recorded by the test data obtained by copying the CPU for 15 minutes (CPU temperature - room temperature).
In order to make a better unified comparison, we also convert the heat dissipation performance index of the heat sink into the super energy index (EXP), which is actually a simple conversion of the heat sink thermal resistance, the larger the EXP, the better the heat dissipation performance of the heat sink. Under each power consumption, the thermal resistance value of the radiator under the same conditions is basically the same, so this super energy index is also a fixed value, and it can be approximated that every 1 point higher in the super energy index will have a good cooling effect on the 300W CPU1.
This time we will compare the Xianma KW360-R with the Xianma XW360-PLUS and the old Xianma KW360DW, and the surprise is that the temperature rise performance of the Xianma KW360-R is consistent with the performance of the Xianma XW360-PLUS, which is still slightly improved compared with the old product Xianma KW360DW.
On the whole, the KW360-R is in the upper middle level among the 360 liquid cooling radiators.
In addition, during the test, we confirmed with the official that the water pump and radiator performance of the KW360-R are the same as those of the XW360-Plus, and the difference between the two products in terms of performance is reflected in the fan part, so in order to bring readers as detailed evaluation as possible, we will replace the three fans of the KW360-R with XT128 and then test the baking machine.
During the test, we found that the temperature control of the CPU was more stable after using the XT128 fan and the KW360-R, and the CPU packaging temperature of the test platform was stable at 87° after 10 minutes of baking, which rarely increased the temperature, and quickly returned to 87° after the temperature was raised. When tested with the original fan oven, the CPU package temperature will change frequently between 87°-89°, and the ambient temperature near the cold exhaust air outlet is higher. However, in the case of the two fans, the temperature rise performance of the KW360-R is similar under the power consumption of the CPU 260W, and there is no obvious advantage or disadvantage.
In this test, the data is based on the air volume and air pressure test device made by the super energy network, which is prepared according to the relevant national standards and ISO standards, and measures the air volume and air pressure of the fan through the multi-nozzle orifice plate of the pipeline test air chamber, and the air volume under different system impedances (ordinary radiator, ordinary tower radiator), and monitors the real-time speed of the fan through the speed tester.
The measured maximum speed of the standard fan of the KW360-R is 1924rpm and the maximum static pressure is 191 mmH2O with a maximum airflow of 662 cfm。In the actual measurement, the wind pressure and air volume values are not much different from the official nominal and belong to the normal fluctuation range. If you are still vague about the air volume, air pressure, and system impedance, you can refer to our popular science article "Really Understanding the Air Volume and Air Pressure of Cooling Fans".
Here is the test of the pressure of the heatsink on the CPU surface, too low pressure will affect the contact between the heatsink and the CPU surface, long-term excessive pressure may cause the motherboard to deform, generally speaking, the thermal resistance of the silicone grease between the heatsink and the CPU surface will slowly decrease with the increase of pressure, when the pressure reaches a certain level, the thermal resistance of the silicone grease will tend to stabilize. According to our long-term observation and testing, the pressure of the general air cooling radiator is recommended to be more than 15kg, and the pressure of the water cooling radiator is recommended to be more than 20kg.
The KW360-R is installed with the LGA 1700 socket, and the results of the pressure sensor test show that the installation pressure is 703 kgf, compared to 38 of the old product8 kgf is a significant improvement and meets the official Intel standard.
The important role of the mounting pressure is that when the heatsink is in contact with the processor, the greater the mounting pressure, the smaller the thermal resistance between the two. In the process of increasing the installation pressure, the greater the installation pressure, the faster the thermal resistance decreases, but after reaching a certain level, the decline rate will slow down until it is in a flat state.
The noise test scene is our specially built anechoic room, the lowest ambient noise is about 15dB(a), the fan is located in the center of the room, and the distance between the noise meter and the center of the fan suction surface is 30cm.
The single fan of the KW360-R has a noise level of 41 at full speed4dba, the overall noise level of three fans is 46 after installing the radiator8dba, the performance of both groups of data is excellent. The noise test can only be used as a reference, and the user's use environment is related to the chassis style.
I think that the KW360-R has made significant progress compared to the old products, mainly in terms of having a cooler design, a more functional and ornamental screen, and a slightly improved heat dissipation performance.
Although the software experience and detail workmanship of the first horseKW360-RTHERE is still room for improvement,But considering that it has close heat dissipation performance with XW360-Plus,Fully functional cold head screen,With a price of 549 yuan,In summary, I think it is a flawed and cost-effective product,The current initial price Jingdong can be reduced to 519 yuan,Support three-year warranty,If you are interested in heat dissipation performance、 There are certain requirements for playability and cost performance, so the first horse kw360-r is worth your serious consideration.