Performance Summary

With radiators, thermal performance is the most important metric. Liquid flow restriction is one contributor to a loop's overall flow rate, which is also affected by the pump and other components used, and I would, as such, recommend choosing a pump of a head pressure equal to or greater than the combined liquid flow restriction of your individual components (in series) at the target flow rate. In order to quantify relative performance for a radiator thus, it makes sense to consider the thermal performance metrics only and, thus, a normalized (% based) data set was created and plotted with the subject of this review at 100%.


We can see that the Nemesis GTR 360 is one of the best performers overall despite it lacking thermal dissipation at lower fan speeds, which is as intended, mind you. The relative differences are not huge, however, which is due to the sample set of eight radiators at this time and the radiator industry having developed enough to where most radiators do a decent job at the very minimum. A more telling criterion will be price-to-performance, which we will take a look at next.

Performance per Dollar

The prices were taken from Performance PCs in the USA, with all numbers reported in USD.


Things look a lot different once pricing is considered as well, with the Black Ice Nemesis GTR 360 now being a poor choice from a performance-per-dollar basis. This is because of the new process leading to higher manufacturing prices, and so pricing should eventually go down, as was the case with the Black Ice Nemesis GTS and GTX which fare much better now compared to last year. The Black Ice Nemesis GTS is the clear winner here, but it must be noted again that these numbers do not include liquid flow restriction, which is where the Nemesis GTS fared the worst. Overall, the Nemesis GTR 360 shows itself to be a great performer, but its performance costs a lot.