[bobkoure]

Originally Posted by AngryAlpaca

Ugh. BS!.

I suspect we have a "failure to communicate". My fault, probably. Would be nice if you didn't immediately call it "BS", but that's just your "style", I guess.

The BIP is thinner than the BIX.

Yes, the BIP is thinner (am I saying otherwise? apologies if I am, was unintended). IMHO it's just this "thinness", not any special design that makes it present less air resistance. There's also a thick and a thin BI II - I may have the model names mixed up. I'm just saying that the larger radiator of the same thickness is going to cool a bit better. In theory you could drop your fan speed even more to get this cooling for the same noise level. In practice, I've been unable to get an axial fan to start reliably when undervolted to this level, so you're looking at about a 3dB increase - unless you want to leave the second fan on a switch or something.

Nothing is "built" for a single fan.

Well... OK - although I think of the BIP as "one fan" and BI II as "two fan". Make it "two fan" and "four fan" if that's what you're thinking of - not that push/pull makes any sense for silent cooling.

It's a cheap, shoddy design.

They don't seem that badly made - just way too expensive for what they are. My opinion, of course. They certainly don't have the economies of scale that heatercores do. They also don't have the thickness and sub-fin corrugations of heater cores, which, for silent cooling is good design, not bad.

You'll get better performance out of a BIX II with a pair of silent fans than out of a BIP II with loud fans.

Hmmm silent - I think we differ on what is "silent". I've tried undervolted-to-silence (~15dB or lower for me) fans on both BIP and BIX rads - and get approximately the same cooling (different systems, but same case model, radiator placement, fan model, motherboard, CPU model, but using CPU diode for hints about CPU temp so only approximately the same - oh and only paying attention to room air / CPU diode delta).

Actually their BIM is about right.

I've never used one of these - never even seen one "in the flesh".
And rereading my post - was it the word "preferable"? I should have been clearer - would "preferable in that it's the same cooling at silent fan levels for lower cost" have worked better? It's what I meant - I jump between here and the silent PC review and sometimes forget that the two audiences are on really different wavelengths as regards "quiet" and "silent". (on the other hand, I've somewhat given up on the watercooling forum over there). Oh, and in considering 15dB to be "silent", I'm at the "loud" end of the spectrum over there (sort of like being a US liberal and moving to Australia, I guess ).

In the future I would appreciate a PM or EM if you think something I've posted is "BS". I really try to not do that and would like a chance to re-write something that I haven't done properly - particularly if the issue is not something technical (so other readers might get benefit of the discussion) but simply my writing skills.