Reeven Kelveros RC-1202 CPU cooler
by
Dark Mantis
Reeven are a relatively new company having only started manufacture of their products in 2007. They are located in New Taipei City in Taiwan and are a young, forward looking business. At present they have a fairly limited product line but they have big ideas to expand on this.I have already reviewed several of their items and so far have been impressed by the quality of both the design and manufacture.
After my recent review of Reeven's new processor cooler the Reeven Arcziel 12, a top down model, which I was quite taken by I thought I would see how their entrance into the tower heatsink market would go so I managed to pick up one of their tower heatsinks the Reeven Kelveros RC-1202 to compare.The Arcziel 12 is a horizontally aligned heatsink which has it's benefits in that it helps cool the surrounding components and will also fit into smaller cases where size might be at a premium. This is an issue that most tower versus flat coolers face.
The box seems to follow the general colour scheme and design that Reeven has settled on for their products. It is a dark background with gold or deep yellow writing on the whole with pictures of the product inside and various detailed schematics with notations. All the important points are printed in six different languages so most European countries should be covered. Inside there is an installation manual that is very clear and again in many languages. Reeven include many diagrams to go alongside the information making sure everything is crystal clear.
This Kelveros follows the more common tower shape which also has it's own plusses. Whilst being taller, by quite a lot, it doesn't require as much room around the processor which can be tight on some motherboards. In sheer mass it is roughly 1.5 times what the Arcziel is, so as a purely passive cooler it would work quite a lot better. The Kelveros comes in at 755g against the only 557g of the Arcziel .
Again it is compatible with most of the newer motherboard sockets, both AMD and Intel. The AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+ and FM1 are all catered for along with Intel's 775, 1155, 1156, 1366 and even 2011 now. It comes complete with all the necessary mounting kits including some decent thermal compound that seems to be AC5 or similar. One of Reeven's 120mm fans is also included but more details on this later.
Looking at the rear of the motherboard for the installation there is a backplate supplied which comes in the form of a adjustable cross. It has several holes drilled and marked alphabetically A, B, C and D. The matching hole is used on each arm and so fitting is straightforward. The motherboard is then flipped over so it is the correct way up and construction of the applicable pieces continues depending on which platform you are using. Both makes of processor have bags of accessories for use at this stage.
The shape of the tower is rather unique in that it reminds me of the "Batman" logo. It is very angular with many pointy parts so be careful when handling this item. It is made up of 60 seperate aluminium fins with four heatpipes running through them. These heatpipes are two different sizes. The reason for doing this eludes me as surely it would be better to have had four of the larger sized ones for efficiency. Two are 6mm and two are 8mm high grade copper ones. They go all the way to the top on each side of the CPU block. Another difference between the two coolers is that this one has the more efficient Direct Touch Heatpipe that Reeven name H.D.C.S. for Heatpipe Direct Contact Solution. Well, whatever, it is all the same thing. They seem to have been well milled down with the baseplate so a good contact will be made with the CPU heatspreader. As a passing note for those who might not be familiar with this type of base slightly more TIM will be necessary on these as the grooves each side of the pipes will need to be filled alongside the flat area that is normally covered.
The fan as mentioned earlier is one of their own with a top speed of 1900rpm. It is a four pin PWM version that can also be limited to one of two speed ranges by the use of the remote switch that is made to fit into one of the spare expansion slots on the rear of the computer. This gives two settings marked high and low. The slower of the two limits the top speed to 1300rpm. Just over 100cfm of air will be moved by the fan at it's fastest speed. This is pushed over the vanes of the heatsink by the fan.These vanes are much flatter on this cooler than Reeven's other one, the Arcziel, that I referred to earlier that had much more of a sculptured surface to make the most of the air as it was passing. It is a shame but there is no option for adding a second fan in push/pull arrangement and wouldn't even be easy to customise it to do so.
The total dimensions of this cooler are 160 high by 130 wide and 100 deep in mm including the fan. The fan is attached to the main body of the cooler in a more normal way on this unit. It uses two spring wire clips, one on each side to provide enough tension to hold the fan in place. On Reeven's other cooler, the fan is located by means of proprietory plastic clips, one on each corner. This design is better. Noise levels are not obtrusive even at top speed although audible, but when limited by the switch it is practically silent in operation. Another bonus on this tower is that it doesn't seem to cover the memory slots on any of the boards I have access to so that means it would be usable even on some motherboards that some of the other makes of coolers won't fit without an issue.
This Kelveros tower cooler seems to beat their other Arcziel top down cooler in efficiency but only by a couple of degrees. I definitely felt that the Arcziel worked well so that is a plus point. It isn't quite up to the efficiency of the huge heatsinks like the Noctua NH-D14 but there again there is a big difference in size and cost. It also only uses a single fan so I think it equates itself very well considering although four of the larger heatpipes rather than two of each size would make an improvement I am sure. It also doesn't have any problem with overhanging the memory slots which many of the huge coolers do too. I would give this a 8/10.
