Performance Testing

The Phanteks Glacier R160 is a reservoir with an integrated top for the Laing DDC pump, so in this section, we will see how good that is. As with the D5 pumps tested before, this was set up in a simple loop consisting of this reservoir/pump combo, a calibrated King Instruments rotameter measuring average flow rate in US GPM (Q, in gallons per minute), and 1/2" x 3/4" fittings and soft tubing. A Dwyer 490-1 wet-wet manometer was plumbed parallel to the Glacier R160 to measure pump head in PSI (P, also noting that the reservoir by itself is assumed to offer negligible flow restriction), and a Laing DDC 3.2 PWM pump was used with an Aqua Computer Aquaero 6 XT to control the speed. This helps with generating a P-Q curve, which is extremely useful information as it dictates the average flow rate in a loop when any flow restriction is added from such components as blocks and radiators, under others. The Glacier R160 was then switched over to a reservoir-only mode with the pump removed, and standalone DDC pumps with their own tops from various other companies were added to the loop to allow for a direct comparison of the Phanteks DDC top to that of others.


As always, click on the thumbnail to be taken to a larger image that reveals more details. First off, can we agree that the Laing stock top is pretty terrible when it comes to relative performance here? Laing (Xylem now) has been coasting for years, but at the same time, it can be argued that they are not very concerned with PC DIY watercooling when the bulk of their customers operate in other industries where reliability and longevity are critical, not pure performance. It was then left to the specific OEMs for this field—the likes of EKWB and Swiftech featured in the graph above—to come up with a volute that would help the pump perform better in the region where it would operate for most end users. The Phanteks Glacier R160 starts off in a mediocre manner here, but keeps up better than the Barrow top that ultimately falls behind. There are better-performing options, however, and here is where the experience gained from years of tweaking the pump top helps the competition.

The effectiveness of the heatsink is heavily dependent on the pump body used, and given most resellers use their own custom design, it would be impossible to generate a global answer here. My thoughts from the previous page will carry over, however, given Phanteks could have tweaked the design further to aid with heat dissipation, be it with a body out of plastic or metal.