I got tired of not finding jack all for information on the cooling blocks in game, so I built a test rig and did Excel things

Information from Weapons DLC update

Test Rig Setup

Test rig set used a 20 1x1Cylinder modular engine, 6 cooling manifolds in parallel, and the following cooling loop in series: Warm-side electric pump, isolation valve, test cooling piece in question, isolation valve, cold-side electric pump, back to cooling manifold.

The various cooling blocks are in parallel, sectioned off by isolation valves to make this easier.

Test Results

Short version:

Using a 1×2 Air-Liquid Heat Exchanger (AL HX) as a basic unit, the various blocks were worth the following relative heat exchanginess:

• Air Liquid HXs
• 1x2AL = 1 (duh)
• 5x2AL = 3
• 5x3AL = 4
• Liquid-Liquid HXs
• 2x2LL = 1(surprisingly)
• 5x5LL = 2.9-3
• Electric Radiators
• 3×3 ER = 4.7
• 5×5 ER = 6.8

Longer Version:

where:

“Cool Block” refers to the temperature displayed on the block in question

“Coolant” refers to the “Coolant Temperature” displayed on the Cooling Manifolds on the engine

“Flow Rate” refers to the freshwater coolant side flow rate of the coolant block in question given the aforementioned coolant setup

“Air Temp”/”SW side” refers to the secondary coolant side of the Air-Liquid HXs and Liquid-Liquid HXs respectively

“Amb” refers to the ambient air temperature

“Delta T” is Coolant minus Cool Block

“Cross Fluid dT” is Cool Block minus Amb

“Heat xfr” is Delta T multiplied by Flow Rate (effectively ‘cooling power’ for the given temperatures (high temps should have higher Heat xfr)

“Units of 1×2 AL” is that block’s Heat xfr divided by the Heat xfr of the 1×2 AL HX

Conclusion

Go with electric radiators if you have the space. Otherwise, go with Air-Liquid HXs.

Liquid-Liquid HXs are crap (even though IRL they’re the most powerful ones).

Disclaimers and Notes: I did not test Air-Liquid HXs of the 9×3 and 9×5 size, because I was completely unable to get air flow through these blocks.

I also did not test the regular non-electric radiator because it’s the same size as a 3×3 Electric Radiator and you might as well use the electric one.

The Fluid Heat Sink does not give temperature information for me to do math with, unfortunately, and I don’t plan to wait 20 minutes for my test engine temperature to stabilize to get an idea of the cooling power of each block.

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