Top Tier CPU Air Coolers Q3 2015: 9-Way Roundup Review
by E. Fylladitakis on July 6, 2015 8:00 AM ESTThe Raijintek Tisis
Raijintek is yet another new European company, founded in 2013. For a company this new, Raijintek is retailing a fair number of products, which are thirteen coolers, four cases and several fans, with the company now expanding to peripherals and PSUs. The Tisis is Raijintek's most recent and advanced CPU cooler, which was originally baptized "Nemesis" but it was renamed due to a naming collision with another company's similar product.
The Tisis is supplied in a reasonably sized cardboard box with strong black/red artwork on it, focused around a picture of the cooler itself. Inside the box everything is well packed and the cooler is protected inside a polyethylene foam shell. Despite the obviously very rough time our sample had during its shipping to us, everything inside the box was unscathed.
Raijintek kept the bundle to the minimum of things required. Aside from the hardware and thermal grease necessary for the mounting of the cooler and a long L-type Philips PH2 screwdriver, nothing else is provided. It is however noteworthy to mention that there are no wire clips for the fans as this is the only cooler in this roundup review that is using rubber mounts instead.
There are two 140 mm fans provided inside the package, both with a red frame and white blades. There is nothing prominent about the fans, with the exception of the partially jagged blades. The OEM is recognizable and is PelHong Technology, a Chinese manufacturer. Both fans are identical, have engines with sleeve bearings and a relatively low maximum speed of just 1.000 RPM.
The Raijintek Tisis is a very large asymmetric dual tower cooler, with the towers completely different from each other. The fins of the front tower are larger and both of their fan-facing sides are jagged, while the fins of the rear tower are smaller and their sides are completely straight. Furthermore, the fins of the front tower have folded sides, effectively forming a wind tunnel that prevents the air from exiting from the sides. Openings for the rubber mounts of the cooling fans can be clearly seen. This method is a little more convenient than wire clips but it also prevents the adjustment of the fan's height, removing the possibility to raise the front fan a little bit to increase the RAM modules clearance.
The copper base and heatpipes of the Tisis are nickel-plated and polished, especially the contact surface that has been machined down to a perfect mirror finish. Five thick 8 mm heatpipes go through the relatively small base of the Tisis and expand to both fin arrays. For the installation of the cooler, the middle fan needs to be removed, as there is no other way for the screwdriver to reach the base of the cooler.
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zodiacfml - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Someone should test for this. It is quite plausible as it will take time to increase the temperature of water/coolant in the system. Yet, for longer and continuous loads, surface area matters to dump heat in the environment which AIO coolers has less to a similarly priced Big Air cooler which shows in benchmarks.Navvie - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Pretty good.It'd be nice if there was a base line (say intel's current stock cooler) and an AIO water cooler to show the difference between a top tier air cooler and what many consider to be the next step.
One point, SPCR always test each cooler with a 'reference' fan, making it easier to compare the heatsink's efficiency. Can't help but feel you didn't complete the task you set out to by levelling the playing field with your simulated CPU heat source.
maximumGPU - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Great roundup! i for one still believe high end air a good alternative to water if you want dead silence.What i still can't understand is how can Nocuta get away with shipping the most expensive air cooler, likely to be used by enthusiasts who care about aesthetics, with the most hideous fan colours?
'nar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Noctua colors are odd, but I think it forces you to consider performance more than aesthetics. They do look nice, but not "cool" - no pun in tended.Dead silence basically depends on how much heat you need to dissipate, temperature of ambient air, surface area of fins/radiator, air flow, and heat transfer capability of the cooler. Or more basically, how easily you can transfer heat from CPU to the air. Water increases the efficiency of heat transfer, so once you reach a certain power level they will overtake HSF's. They will never be as quite as a good HSF, at least not on low-power CPU's that arguably do not need anything but the stock cooler to begin with.
xthetenth - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Noctua gets away with those colors entirely because they're Noctua. Yes they're not pretty colors, but unlike nice bright/garish colors they are an unmistakable sign that they're the best or at least tied for best.piroroadkill - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Your keyboard seems to have a problem, you've typed "hideous" when clearly "fantastic" would be better. Noctua fans are neat.Beaver M. - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Well, serious people are more likely to buy Noctua anyway. And no serious user cares about what the fans look like, and even if they did, they would still take the Noctua, since you can CLEARLY see the extremely high quality they are just by looking at them. Windows in cases and other stupid bling bling is for the PC-ricer gang. They only choose after looks anyway, and dont care if their fans make noises from day one.PrinceGaz - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Excellent review of what seem to be very good HSFs throughout (but then again, you did ask them to send their best).A comparison with the stock Intel cooler as supplied with something like the 4790K would be nice, as that is what any expense on a third-party cooler must be compared against. How would the stock-cooler compare at 340W? I was very impressed with the degC/W figures for all those coolers; it almost makes 340W seem an amount of heat that can be dealt with, though I'm thinking it's crazy.
As well as the stock-cooler from a highish end CPU, one or two commonly used AIO liquid-coolers needs to be added to provided a second comparison point, as these high-end air-coolers are presumably expected to be near, possibly even better than a liquid AIO.
I love the fact you are using a properly designed heating rig, and your comprehensive review, but I came away thinking: they're good! But I've no idea how much better they are than the stock cooler, or how any of them would compare with the liquid AIOs also available, both in terms of cooling or noise.
Sivar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
This is probably the best CPU cooler article I've read (and I read such articles when Anandtech when it was on Geocities).Excellent writing, useful measurements, and a cogent conclusion. Thank you, Emmanouil!
orangesky - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
SilentPcReview just posted a review of the new Scythe Ninja 4: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1462-page1.ht... The review includes some good comparison tables with many of the popular air & water coolers.Sounds like a pretty decent option, and probably the best Ninja since the original.