Closer Examination

If there was any doubt as to the OEM, seeing the CORSAIR Hydro XR5 360 in person removes it. The telltale end-tank design especially screams current-generation Black Ice radiators, and yet there is enough here to where CORSAIR has made it its own, including offering more case compatibility than retail Black Ice radiators with the 120 mm width in particular to match the fan diameter itself. At 396 mm in length, it is also about average in length for triple 120 mm radiators, so it will fit into most cases compatible with such radiators, especially given the 30 mm thickness that is on par with most CLC cooler radiators as well. The radiator as a whole is all black aside from the white CORSAIR logo on the sides, offering excellent compatibility with most PC DIY build color schemes.


The fan holes are slightly inset from the frame and the standard 15 mm apart work with just about any case today. There are screw shields underneath each hole, just in case you use screws longer than apt. The fan holes are offset from the coolant tubes for further redundancy, although not by much.


The two BSP G1/4" ports on the end tanks are threaded perfectly and come with delrin stop plugs that are really only meant to keep dust out during transit. You would replace them with standard BSP G1/4" threaded fittings to use the radiator as part of your loop regardless. The frame is made out of brass, as is the end tank, with a thick powder coat applied for longevity. The core itself adopts the more typical U-flow design for the coolant as opposed to the Hardware Labs unique top-bottom approach, so it would have been nice to see more ports. Multiple ports are rarer on the 30 mm thickness class of radiators, however, since most users are constrained for space anyway, so it is not as big a loss here as for the Hydro XR7 series.

There is a single row of fins/tube stacks with twelve 1.2 mm thick tubes. This total of a 12-way parallel split of the coolant will help decrease coolant flow restriction relative to single-row radiators with fewer tubes, but it will generally suffer compared to multi-row radiators, and the comparatively thinner tubing will again increase it. The fins are the same as those on the Black Ice Nemesis GTX/GTS/LX/LS, with 25 µm thickness making them far thinner than any other radiator fin in this market. They are split, as seen above, and have a fin density of 16 fins per inch (FPI). The lower fin thickness, lack of louvers, ~8 mm height, and thinner tubes mean that these should actually have less airflow restriction than other radiators with a lower FPI but thicker fins and tubes, which just goes to show how FPI as a metric does not tell the whole story when it comes to deciding on radiators for performance/noise.