Raijintek Pallas Low-Profile CPU Cooler Review

Test System and Benchmark Results of the Raijintek Pallas

Ambient temperature monitored at case intake and temperature Delta was used. All case and heat sink fans were benchmarked with fan control settings disabled and running at 100% unless otherwise specified. Intel integrated video is utilized to eliminate additional ambient heat source from discrete graphics cards. Temperatures are averaged (last minute) from individual core temperature results monitored by AIDA64 after 15 minutes. FPU load average is used to simulate worst case scenario load levels similar to Intel Burn Test or OCCT, results marked “0″ means thermal limit was reached and the CPU was throttled and thus the results were discarded. Stock settings have all power saving features enabled in the motherboard with Vcore set static to 1.1V and set to “Balanced” in the OS. Overclocked settings have Vcore voltage manually set to 1.2V at 4.2GHz and 4.4GHz with EIST disabled. All tests were taken at least three times to get the final result.

Full disclosure: the only low profile heatsink I have currently on-hand is a Noctua NH-L9i heatsink and comparing that against the Pallas showed a disparity that is further than comparing the Pallas against tower-style coolers, hence the comparison heatsinks you see above. Check out how well the low-profile Raijintek Pallas fared in the benchmarks below. Most of the other coolers are 120mm fan heatsinks but I have included the Deepcool Gamerstorm Lucifer as its retail price is only $45. I am in the process of acquiring several C-type coolers and will update this article once testing is completed to show a direct type comparison.

Benchmarks:

Results marked “0″ means thermal limit was reached and the CPU was throttled

Fan Sound Profile:

The bundled fan pushes an impressive amount of air for such a low profile height so I doubt silence was a priority for Raijintek when designing this fan. However, the fan included is surprisingly quiet, although not to the level of Be Quiet’s fans which currently are the most quiet heatsink fans bundled for our comparison.  Running at full-tilt, it would not surpass my standard for quiet HTPC use although it is quieter than the Noctua NF-F12 fan. For those who insist on even quieter performance, the bundled fan can actually be lowered down to all the way to ~600 RPM and it is extremely silent at that level, perfectly suitable for HTPC use.

Performance Summary:

Extremely impressive performance for a low-profile cooler and the Raijintek did not buckle even on the overclock loads in comparison to the Silverstone AR01 which has the highest RPM fan and the more expensive Noctua NH-U12S. Surprisingly it even performed better than the many heatpiped GELID GX-7 Rev.2 slim and the larger Shadow Rock 2 which is designed for silent use and thus has a low speed fan.