Reeven Rhaescar RVC-01 GPU Cooler
by
Dark MantisI have just recently been in contact with a new company on the computer component scene called "Reeven". They are based in New Taipei City in Taiwan and so far have only a reasonably limited product line although they are expanding all the time. Most of their wares are aimed at the PC cooling side and I understand that they design and produce all their own models. This is a great start as it gives them totally free rein to get things just as they want to also it enables them to make alterations to any piece very quickly which many companies cannot do. They have the right outlook and philosophy in that they aim all their components to be of professional quality even though they are directed at the enthusiast/home market and the prices are in line with this and provide value for money. At the moment they have power supplies, case fans, CPU coolers, a liquid nitrogen (LN2) pot and a nice fan controller alongside a newly designed and produced graphics card cooler in their product line up.
As I have just mentioned the item I am reviewing today is the latest in Reeven's line up, an aftermarket GPU cooler. In fact this is hot off the drawing board and so far hasn't even been given a retail box or instructions so I am testing as well as reviewing it. To be honest it was a little daunting at the start as I just received the main cooler well encased in bubble wrap along with a huge bag of screws, bolts, nuts, clamps and heatsinks of differing sizes and shapes. After unwrapping the twin fanned cooler I was immediately impressed. It certainly looked the business. I laid out all the accessories alongside and tried to fathom out their various uses.
As it stands the heatsink looks ample without being oversized and on holding it up against my chosen recipient, a Gigabyte 4850, it seemed fine. Good start. The original cooler on this card never really seemed quite man enough and even when just idling the temperatures got fairly high. I couldn't even touch the heatsink comfortably on low speed and when gaming well.... That made this card the perfect companion for this new cooler. The front is mainly brushed aluminium with a pair of 92mm fans. This was a huge improvement on the standard single 60mm one I had been running with. To be fair it hadn't been unduly noisy but just struggled with the heat. The Reeven offering also used four 6mm heatpipes to move the heat from the GPU to the heatsink as fast as possible. They exit the hot area in both directions so they are as efficient as possible. Each heatpipe is soldered to the fins of the heatsink it touches to help transmit the heat effectively. This is much more efficient than just relying on an interference fit which is how some manufacturers choose to tackle it.
The heatsink is made up from a total of 65 aluminium slats just short of 25mm high. The dimensions of 219 x 112mm don't waste any space that is not required for the fans. It weighs in at 500gms which is just over a pound in real terms compared to the 207gms of the stock item, so it has more than twice the mass as a passive H/S. According to the information I have got, which is fairly sparse so far,this third party cooler will fit an enormous range of recent gaphics cards from both Nvidia and AMD. This was the reason why I received so many extra parts in the accessories bag! It doesn't actually list the very latest cards in the line up but I suspect that was just an oversight. I am hoping that Reeven will do the same sort of thing but for watercooling shortly.
As I said before there were no instructions with this and so I had to carefully feel my way though the installation process. I took photos as I went in the hope that it might help someone else in a similar situation although I am sure the manufacturer will soon have some proper instructions drawn up for insertion with the retail product. Basically the cooler just acts on the GPU itself and cools the rest of the onboard components as a secondary effect. There are plenty of aluminium heatsinks of varying sizes and shapes with sticky thermal tape on the mounting surfaces. It is a case of using the ones best fitted to your card's chips. These will then be cooled by the air driven downwards from the fans, so should work quite effectively. Instalation wasn't a hard task once the correct parts were put to one side. The main steps are to remove the original heatsink, clean off all signs of TIM from the GPU and surrounding chips with some isopropyl alcohol, fit the individual heatsinks and then the main heatsink not forgetting the fan connections.
The fans are not PWM and so cannot be controlled according to the heat being produced except by voltage manipulation. They are extremely quiet and I would even go as far as saying silent when idling. On full speed though they are still very quiet although audible and shift a fair amount of air so what more could you ask of them. They will reach 2300rpm when pushed and are rated at a quiet 30dBA although personally I wouldn't even say they are that loud.
I definitely find them a massive improvement over the stock cooler and once the retail package is fixed with instructions etc I reckon they will be a fairly easy task to fit. You can't even overtighten the cooler to the board as the screws are only threaded for a few milimetres at the end so limiting the amount of travel.The package is very expansive and even includes some decent quality paste (seems like AC5 or similar). One thing I always look for and was pleased to see here was that the fan cable was nicely braided already. Quality shows as attention to detail.
Performance wise Reeven's Rhaescar RVC-01 is streets ahead of the stock cooler and it is like using a different card. The fans spin so much slower and quieter and the heat is much less noticable.
Temperature of GPU cooler heatsink 33.8 degrees C.
FurMark burn in 100% GPU usage maximum temperature 47 degrees C.
Included in the package at the moment are two extension cables, both braided, that allow connection to either a three pin fan header on the motherboard or fan controller or a direct connection to the power supply via a 4 pin molex. I connected my unit to the card's own header and so it was controlled by that.
The Rhaescar works very well as I have tested it and the quality is very good. It is quiet and does exactly what it is meant to. Without the retail packaging and instructions etc I would still be happy to give it a 9/10.(Pricing etc to be confirmed.)
