3-Way Low Profile CPU Cooling Shoot-Out: Reeven, Phanteks, & Noctua
by E. Fylladitakis on January 18, 2017 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Noctua
- Phanteks
- Cooler
- Reeven
The Reeven Steropes RC-1206b
Reeven supplies the Steropes inside a dark cardboard box, with the aesthetic design following the black/gold theme of the brand. The box is small, but it is a lightweight cooler that is very well packed inside the box, so shipping protection is more than sufficient. The bundle accompanying the Steropes is Spartan, comprised only by a black and white leaflet with installation instructions, the necessary mounting hardware and a single dose of thermal compound.
The Steropes is a horizontal cooler that has been designed to offer the best possible performance within a height of only 60 mm, offering maximum compatibility where size is a major consideration. With Reeven strongly advertising its socket AM1 compatibility, the Steropes appears to have been designed so that it could be a performance choice for very compact ITX/mATX systems, not to compete with its more sizable counterparts. Due to its shape and design, the Steropes is wider than the CPU socket area of small motherboards, but the fins are (just barely) high enough to allow for the installation of standard height RAM modules beneath it.
The fin array is relatively dense but the fins are narrow, a fitting choice since the goal of a heatsink is to maximize the surface area for heat dissipation. The fins are thin and flimsy but, for aesthetic purposes more than mechanical cohesion, the designer added a much thicker fin at the beginning of the array with the company logo punched on it. In order to further reduce the size of the cooler, Reeven is using a low profile 120 mm fan as well.
For a little extra performance, the base of the heatsink resembles a small heatsink all by itself. Considering how narrow the cooler is, airflow from the fan will certainly find its way down to the heatsink on the base of the cooler and should assist with thermal dissipation, even if only barely. Five heatpipes exit the small base of the cooler, with the three of them expanding towards both sides of the base, concurrently reaching into the fin array from the side and from the bottom.
A close inspection of the base reveals that only the heatpipes and the plate that makes contact with the processor are made out of nickel-plated copper. The rest of the Steropes, including the small heatsink on its base, is aluminum. The base of the cooler is very well made, finished down to a well-polished surface.
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nafs_asp - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
Big Shuriken is probably the best you can cram into a Node 202. I have a 6600k at 4.5GHz in mine, and the Big Shuriken keeps it under 70C during x264 and Aida64.Brainonska511 - Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - link
I have a Cryorig C7 in my mITX system on a regular i5-6600. I could have gone with something taller, as there is room my Corsair 250D, but what was really appealing to me is the fact that the C7 fits completely within the socket area. Some mITX boards are pretty packed and some users reported that other, larger horizontal coolers could block the PCI-E slot or hit other components on the board.creed3020 - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
Look no further than a Cryorig C1, it needs 74mm of clearance so see what you can do with your case options. I have one and it works wonders on an overlocked Intel Core i5-4690K @ 4GHz inside a Silverstone RVZ-01B.YukaKun - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
How does the "The Reeven Steropes RC-1206b" stack to the "CM GeminII M4"?They look very similar and the M4 does quite a good job with my old A8-3500 inside a Thermaltake SD200.
Cheers!
creed3020 - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
Be very wary of the Cooler Master GeminII M4 as its base has poor CPU contact. The base is not flat and just has the heat pipes squished and exposed to the CPU leaving air gaps between the CPU heatspreader and heatsink base. I know this because I recently bought one for an HTPC with an AMD APU and haven't been very impressed with that aspect. The thermal performance is better than the stock heatsink and acoustics are excellent but the product is not as well engineered as it could be for $45.YukaKun - Friday, January 20, 2017 - link
That is kind of why I am asking. Although I have no complaints on how it's performing, I'd like to know if I should keep it or consider a newer/different HSF for my upgrade.Thanks for the input as well :D
Cheers!
LiviuTM - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
It's Celsius.80-wattHamster - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Not the subject of this article, but what stands out to me is the performance of AMD's Wraith. It's so close to the 212 EVO in every metric (except fan speed) that one can't help but conclude that AMD used the EVO as its benchmark during development. And very nearly hit it. On a bundled cooler.wolfemane - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
You really should have included the Scythe BIG Shuriken 2 Rev. B cooler to your group as it's also a horizontal cooler. The company claims a max TDP of 130w on 115x CPUs. Noctua only claims 95w max TDP on 115x CPUs for the Noctua NH-C14S. Would have been nice to see how this compares.Spunjji - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Based on my experience (quietly cooling an i5-2300 in an extremely small HTPC case barely bigger than the ITX board dimensions) it would clobber all of these except for the Noctua, and it will fit where the Noctua will not.