Introduction

It's been nearly four years since we last took a look at the Bykski brand, and enough time has passed to where there is a new logo at the very least. The Chinese brand has gone from being in "Who's Bykski?" conversations to "Bykski should have a block for it" ones, and Bykski has enough of a brand presence now with regional distributors in place. I have a Bykski care package in my hands with a few different products to go through in the coming months, but we begin with one of its new radiators. Thanks again to the company for sending TechPowerUp a review sample!


Bykski CR-RD360RC-TN-V2 is the actual designation, but good luck getting that across. In fact, branding is still an issue for the brand, but this time in the form of technical SKU codes rather than a catchy product name. The "RD" refers to this being a radiator, and the "360" tells us this is a 360 mm radiator (triple 120 mm). "TN" refers to the thickness class, with this being a 30-mm-thick radiator in contrast to the TK (40 mm) or TK60 (60 mm). It is the "RC" that interested me the most, with the letters standing for "red copper." Bykski says the entire core is made out of copper (probably as an oxide) rather than an alloy, with a rated thermal conductivity of up to 401 W/m.K compared to the usual brass that clocks in around 150–160 W/m.K. Will this make a difference in a world where Alphacool's "True Copper" did not do much? We will find out soon enough as we begin the review with a look at the specifications in the table below.

Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

There's going to be a lot of black and white in this review, so don't adjust your screens! The product packaging is monochrome to start things off with the Bykski logo and website on the front left, salient marketing features in the middle, a huge dragon logo on the left, and the radiator-specific mentions on the right. Contact information in English and Mandarin greets us on the back, along with a sticker that finally tells us about the actual product inside. On the longer sides are illustrations of all the different product categories under the Bykski brand, and two side flaps and a seal in the middle keep things intact on the way to you.


Opening the box, we see the radiator inside a bubble wrap for further protection, with the accessories inside a cardboard box on the side to prevent any damage to the radiator core. The box contains the installation screws which come inside a plastic zip-lock bag. We get a set of twelve 30-mm-long M3-threaded screws for this 360 mm radiator (four per 120 mm fan) to be used with standard 25-mm-thick fans and a case/radiator mount. Ideally, these would be alongside another 12 screws that are also M3-threaded and shorter at ~6 mm long. This second set of screws allows for flush mounting against the case or radiator mount, such that you have the option of push or pull for fans in intake or exhaust. Unfortunately for Bykski, there were only 11 screws present. While it matters not for my testing, the radiator will get dinged for this obvious QC issue. I did point it out to the company who said the factory will be informed right away.


Bykski also sent along a set of its new-ish all-on-one soft tube accessory, which is basically soft tubing with pre-attached rotary compression fittings at either end. These are made out of EPDM rubber in a 13/16 mm diameter sizing and meant to make life easy for DIY cooling. They are available in different lengths of 200/300/400/500 mm, and I have two of the 200 mm tubes here, both of which we'll take a closer look at on the next page.