Raijintek DELOS RBW

[testman78]

Introduction

Picking the right CPU cooler for your system can be a tricky task as you have to balance your budget, the ergonomics of your chassis, the TDP of your chip, aesthetics, what kind of system performance you want to achieve and acoustics too. That's a lot to consider and there's certainly a huge amount of choice out there to find something that suits your needs, but it's still a bit of a minefield. The latest cooler from manufacturer Raijintek has been designed for the increasingly popular Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX system build market. People are making a lot of compact gaming PCs for their living room, bedroom, LAN gaming events and more, so it's only right that we should have more coolers that are suited to building a gaming system in smaller chassis. Raijintek are now an established brand in the case and cooling sectors, something which is quite impressive considering they have only been in business since 2013. Today we are looking at the DELOS RBW dual tower cooler, its highlight feature being its size. Something like the DELOS RBW will no-doubt appeal to those looking to build HTPC or tiny SFF PCs. This tiny little cooler is secretly massive! It houses not one, not two, but three 92mm fans between its dual-tower design. Following the boom in RGB lighting it supports addressable RGB LEDs on cooler shroud itself. It has an impressive max TDP of 200W! That's a lot of cooling potential from a small form factor cooling. Of course, a lot of people are jumping on the AIO market for cooling these days, but there are a lot of benefits to air cooling too and even more so, there are some people who just don't want to move to water. Either way, it's going to be interesting to see what this little powerhouse can do on our test bench.



The cooler supports all modern sockets including LGA2011, LGA115x and AM4.




Packaging & Contents

The cooler comes in a packing made of the cardboard box. The front of the box gives an angled view of the DELOS RBW CPU cooler with the name shown in large and easy-to-read letters.



The backside has the picture of the cooler on the main section. Top plate is shown in multiple colors to signify that it is an RBW version.



The right side is showing the fans of the cooler.



The left side of the box details the cooler's specifications and the top gives a quick introduction to the DELOS RBW cooler.



Let's open the box. Within the box sits some hard foam which is protecting the cooler from any damage.



Cooler is nicely placed inside the box with the accessory box placed in front of the cooler. The user manual is placed on the right side. The fans ares pre-installed on the heatsink.



Opening up the packaging you're offered with an accessory kit with various mounting screws, a PWM Splitter Cable, a universal backplate, a packet of thermal paste and of course the cooler itself. It's comforting to know Raijintek providing universal support for both Intel and AMD as not only does it increase their market share, as an end user we don't need to scratch our heads wondering if it'll support a particular platform or not.



There is also an installation manual for the DELOS RBW. The manual begins by showing all the parts you need to complete the installation, and section offs AMD from Intel installations. With the use of quality renderings, they guide you through the installation process.




A Closer Look

The cooler is very nice to look at and it's impressive to see those heat pipes packed in so neatly while maintaining such a short form factor. There is no denying the all-black coating on the DELOS RBW looks amazing. For those who want to keep a darker theme in their build but still want to go with Air CPU Cooling, this is definitely the option for you.



The entire body of the heatsink (with the exception of the copper contact surface) is painted black so that the LED fans shine through. The integrated shrouds direct airflow through the center of the heatsink with very little room for air to escape on its journey of cooling.



Although the Raijintek DELOS RBW is capable of some fantastic light shows, it's important to note that the fans aren't actually LED, never mind RGB. Now, don't go letting this put you off, as the way Raijintek have organized things they look just fantastic when the cooler itself does its RGB "thang". What we are seeing here is the LEDs shining through the fan.



A look at the cooler from the top. This is what will most likely be on show if you mount this in a standard case. We can also see the Raijintek "R" logo.



The cooler is topped off with a silicon RGB LED diffuser and a bushed metal top-plate. The holes in the center and around the heatpipes diffuse a little bit of light at the top, for a pretty cool effect. Depending on your settings, you can have quite the psychedelic light show at the top.



The cooler has six 6mm-thick nickel-plated copper heatpipes. These heatpipes are covered with a thick black electrostatic powder coating, which helps to protect thoroughly from normal oxidation effects. At the base, these heat pipes make direct contact with the CPU. Below picture shows the pipes alignment inside the heatsink.



There's sturdy and quite thick block on the base, giving plenty of room to hold all five heat pipes together and this gives a good even coverage of heat pipe over the entire CPU block too, which should help cooling performance a lot.



The base of the DELOS RBW is a direct connect base, meaning there isn't a cover plate providing a flat surface for your thermal paste and CPU mating surfaces. Direct contact CPU coolers are our preference, though only because they cut out the middleman, so to speak. The surface is finished to a very high standard and we found zero flaws or imperfections. The shiny bit isn't so shiny due to the lack of a contact plate, but that's ok for this type of cooler.



The cooler is equipped with three 92 mm Sleeve Bearing PWM fans that run at 650 to 2200 RPM.



The fan life reaches 40 000 hours.




Installation Process

Installing the Raijintek DELOS RBW CPU Cooler is simple. Attention is paid to the installation, because a very thin protective film is placed on the cooling surface of the radiator base and must be removed. First, align the backplate screws with the holes on the backside of the motherboard and insert the back plate. There is a foam padding between the backplate and the motherboard. This helps to protect your motherboard and has the added bonus of keeping the screws in place while you complete the next stage.



To keep the backplate in position, use the thumb screws. Set the retention bracket on top of the screws on either side of the CPU socket.



After you put thermal paste on the CPU, line the cooler over it ready for the securing bar. This goes through the hole in the cooler, and lines up with two small bumps on the top of the heatsink area. The last stage for the heatsink is to screw the two small mounting screws through the securing bar and into the brass standoffs. Apply the fan, passing the rubber pins through the mounting holes, and connect the 4-pin fan header to the CPU fan header on the motherboard.



Where the DELOS RBW really comes into its element is when the power button is pressed, and the light show begins. Now, remember, the fan itself is not LED, the whole effect is coming from individually addressable RGB LEDs laid in a string around the exterior of the fin stack, but interior to the black plastic shroud.



The effects that can be achieved are simply magical, with still images really unable to do them justice.




Installed - Memory Clearance

Whether it is for DIMM slot clearance or for PCIe clearance, the DELOS RGB is not going to interfere.




Test System & Methology

Test System:

Processor: Intel Core i7 4770k @ 3.7 GHz & 4.3 GHz OC
Motherboard:MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming
Memory: 16GB Mushkin
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD 6970
Power Supply: Antec HCG 750W
Chassis: DimasTech Bench/Test Table EasyXL
Boot Drive: Ocz Vector
Storage Drive: 3TB Seagate Barracuda



Software:

CPUID HW Monitor 1.23
CPUID CPU-Z 1.65
Prime95 v27.1

I am testing the performance as follows:

Ambient temperatures are kept at 23C throughout my tests.
The CPU Fan is set to 100% to eliminate inconsistencies as a result of PWM control.
Idle temperatures are obtained after booting the PC and idling on the desktop for 30 minutes.
Load temperatures are obtained after running Prime95′s Small FTTs test for 15 minutes.
To measure noise levels i disable the two front in-take fans, rear exhaust and GPU fan.
On the following pages you'll have the opportunity to read what DELOS RBW is capable of.


Results-Temperature

Given the size of this cooler, I wasn't expecting exceptional cooling performance, but as you can see, results actually look pretty promising!



With our 4770K locked in at 4.3GHZ, the DELOS RBW puts up one heck of a fight beating out Noctua's NH-U12S.




Results-Noise Level

Τhe fans will hardly be noticeable during standard operation. In full load mode, with 12V going through fans, it hit 48 decibels. It is sure loud but you can limit the fans RPM to 650.




Conclusion

The Delos RBW is an interesting unit. While it attempts to be small by using 92mm fans, it attempts to be a giant with a two tower design. The immediate benefit is stronger cooling performance in cases that have less vertical clearance than average. In particular, I bet Raijintek had many of their mATX cases in mind with this cooler. The three fans will help keep a pretty hefty processor cool, and might even offer some decent overclocking headroom. The Delos RBW may be tiny, but it still packs an impressive 6 x 6mm heat pipes into a twin-tower and triple-fan configuration, which gives it an impressive max TDP of 200W! When it comes to noise, it's ok, but it's not exactly silent, and neither will it make your ears bleed. I was actually surprised just how much I liked the design. The design of the towers allow you to avoid conflicts with memory modules, meaning you're not going to be limited to low-profile solutions. As I said before, Raijintek is a company full of surprises. The new mounting mechanism included with the DELOS RBW was a pleasure to use, as it is simple, well-built and doesn't have any issues to note. I was blown away by the RGB lighting on this unit. As much as I love rainbow brilliance blinding me in the face, I understand the concept of being too much. By coating the tower on the Delos black, and using a black fans, the cooler keeps a professional look to it. The edge lighting on the cap accents the coolers beautifully. In the images, the design compliments the other components in the build perfectly.



Raijintek has proven time and time again that they can make great products, and the Delos RBW is certainly no exception. This tiny little cooler manages to make a mockery of more expensive and much bigger coolers with relative ease and that's something you simply cannot ignore when you're building your next system. The DELOS RBW can be found at an MSRP of $60. This, in comparative terms, makes is a highly attractive proposition.