Top Tier CPU Air Coolers Q3 2015: 9-Way Roundup Review
by E. Fylladitakis on July 6, 2015 8:00 AM ESTThe Reeven Okeanos RC-1402
Reeven is a Taiwanese newcomer in the industry. Naturally, most people reading this probably never even heard the company name before today. The company was founded just over a year ago and currently only offers CPU coolers, fans and fan controllers. Reeven sent us their most powerful CPU cooler as well, the Okeanos (RC-1402).
The box that the Reeven comes supplied in is relatively small. Nevertheless, the protection appears adequate, with polyethylene foam protecting the cooler and the bundled items packed inside a cardboard box.
The bundle is a little crudely packed and virtually kept to a minimum. Reeven supplies only the hardware necessary for the mounting of the cooler, a single dose of thermal grease, wire clips for up to three cooling fans, speed reducers for the two provided fans and a leaflet with basic installation instructions.
Reeven supplies two cooling fans alongside with the Okeanos, one 120 mm and one 140 mm fan. Both fans have black frames and genista yellow blades. These are relatively simple models, with sleeve bearings, lacking fancy blades or vibration absorbers. There is one thing of note about these two fans though: they are ridiculously powerful, with the 140 mm and the 120 mm fan rated for a maximum speed of 1700 RPM and 1800 RPM respectively.
The Okeanos is a symmetric dual tower CPU cooler, with strangely narrow towers for its class. Although the difference is very small, the fins of each tower are not precisely geometrically symmetric, with the front side having three small and the rear side one long indentations. The top fin is a 1 mm thick aluminum cover with the company logo punched on it.
The wire fan installation clips do allow moving the front fan upwards in order to gain some RAM clearance - as long as the case is wide enough, of course. Installation-wise, they are a bit of a pain, as Reeven's approach is far too crude, with the wire clips just going straight into the fan holes and clipping onto the side of the fan.
Furthermore, the frame of the 120 mm fan just barely touches the extruded sides of the fins. It is very easy for the 120 mm fan to be installed with only one side on the extruded fins, increasing noise and reducing performance.
Even though the Okeanos initially looks very simple, the bottom of the cooler makes it very interesting. The base is split between a nickel-plated copper lower part and a steel top part, providing mechanical cohesion and retention. In between these two parts, there are six heatpipes, secured with a very generous amount of solder. The two central heatpipes are 8 mm thick, while the other four heatpipes are 6 mm thick, making this the only cooler with an asymmetric heatpipe configuration in our review. The contact surface is well polished and free of imperfections, yet not machined down to a perfect mirror finish.
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'nar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
I know right? I was so looking forward to a W/C vs A/C comparison after an intro like that.Margalus - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
why didn't you test these all with the same fan? Then we could see how the cooler performed independent of the included fans? Like the Thermalright, it comes with no fan, apparently you got a super quiet slow fan and put on there, but that isn't fair to Thermalright saying they are hotter, when it could be because it doesn't have the amount of air moving over the fins as others.Beany2013 - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Thermalright provided the fan, so they can't grumble at the results.trandoanhung1991 - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
When you talk about ultimate cooling, you should've at least tested the True Spirit 140 Power Edition with a TY-143 fan, or the Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme. Those are the most interesting products from Thermalright, not the Macho Zero.Maybe as an addendum at some point? I'm very interested to see how the Silver Arrow and the 140 PE fare against the D15.
Impulses - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Apparently the Macho is what TR themselves chose to send AT, if the intro is accurate... Big /facepalm on their part. They probably have some of the best value coolers in the TRUE Spirits (I have the original Cogage version myself), and the Silver Arrow might've ranked up there with the Noctua and Phantek. The article did make me pretty curious about the latter tho, call me vain but the color choices are cool.Calculatron - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Thanks for doing a heatsink round-up. They are refreshing to see these days.It is a shame that Thermalright did not send in its top-tier performer. Then again, the Macho Zero is nothing to sneeze at. ~40C over ambient for a 340 watt load is still a good result. (Perhaps, instead, they could have thrown the TY143 performance fan instead? Har!)
siberus - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
I actually wish they would have sent 2 of the current fans so we could see if push/pull could push it up a performance bracket.rrohbeck - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
I'd like to see the measurements all with the same fan(s) - whatever is considered "the best" fan. That would give an indication of how much you could get out of the cooler with aftermarket fans.'nar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
I wish there was more review cross-over with water coolers, these two camps seem to be at odds with each other. They never seem to be compared effectively to each other, so it is difficult for consumers to determine the "best" cooler for themselves. With Noctua getting up to $93, there are water coolers out there for less. I bought my Noctua NH-D14 for $75 and thought that was high for a HSF.I strictly used air coolers until I got an AMD APU, among them are several Noctua models. It was apparent to me that this CPU, after a bit of easy O/C, got hot much too fast for an air cooler to absorb. It would crash after just 4 seconds of starting Tomb Raider and the cooling fins were still ambient temperature. I tried three coolers including the Noctua NH-D14. Fan speed did not matter as the rapid increase in temperature exceeded the heatsinks' ability to draw the heat off the CPU itself. I would guess that it take anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute for the heat to actually get to the fins, so if your heat sink cannot "sink" the heat all by itself, no fan, for a full minute, then it has inadequate heat transfer and no fan will fix that.
I installed a Corsair H100i and that works very well. I had previously thought that any cooler with less surface area would have less cooling performance, but I have found that if you cannot transfer the heat to the fins, they make no difference. I think a Corsair H60 would have been fine now. I heard that water coolers were "better" and more efficient, but nobody ever explains WHY.
From this experience at least, it appears that water coolers have better heat transfer performance. Fan speeds and fins are secondary to that, as they do not matter until the heat gets to them. If they get hot, then low speed fans can easily remove that heat as higher temperature differentials generally allow for greater heat transfer. If you run high-power and high-heat for a long time, then higher fan speeds help.
How quickly can your test bench ramp up in power? Was that tested? Was that considered? CPU's can hit maximum power in nanoseconds, and crash in milliseconds. Only the base of the HSF would see anything from that event. I think this test is more academic, and not very relevant in the real-world with actual CPU's. It only tests for maximum heat generation over time, like when running benchmarks, not the dynamic nature in which CPU's operate for most useful loads. But then, that's just my perspective.
Pissedoffyouth - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
I agree with you. I think the heat transfer through heatpipes takes quite some time to get to the fins