Raijintek Pallas CPU Cooler Review
Raijintek's Pallas is a new and inexpensive slim CPU Cooler aimed at the Mini-ITX segment; intended to compete with Thermalright’s top-of-the-line AXP-200.
Design
The Pallas' sink is very different from the Ereboss that we recently tested.
Back to the Raijintek Pallas’ body. A direct comparison to Thermalright's AXP-200 shows Raijintek’s offering with a lot more fins. It has 69, whereas Thermalright employs 49. Naturally, then, the fins aren’t spaced as far apart. Surprisingly enough, the Pallas weighs less without its fan than the AXP-200.
The fins have a somewhat wave-like pattern and are interlaced in the center.
The cooler’s sides have notches to hold the fan’s retention clips.
The aluminum fins are bent in some places to prevent damage during installation. This is the only place where the otherwise-sturdy sink needs to be handled with care.
The Pallas is 6mm shorter than Thermalright's AXP-200. This is mostly achieved through the heat pipe design. Both coolers use 6mm heat pipes of identical length, but Raijintek’s stick out of the base a bit further, which shortens the part of them that bends up. There’s less space between the base plate and the cooling fins, which is to say that there’s less space under the cooler. We’ll take a look at how this affects practical considerations later.
In the height comparison above, Raijintek's Pallas is on the left, while Thermalright's AXP-200 is on the right.
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The Pallas’ heat pipes are integrated cleanly with the cooler’s base plate. The contact surface with the processor is polished and plated with nickel.
The ends of the heat pipes are covered where they leave the cooler at the top. There’s another interesting detail here: the aluminum fins right above each of the pipes have little holes in them, which means that there’s a small air tunnel above each pipe. There are small knobs on the heat pipes themselves as well, increasing their surface area a bit.
We already know the bundled Aeolus fan from the Raijintek Ereboss. It’s slim at 1.3cm wide, and has a frame that measures 14x15cm. The red-and-white fan is fastened to the cooler with the help of retention clips.
Both the color scheme and the functional design are different from Thermalright’s competing offering. The fan as a whole is a bit more robust, but also a bit heavier. A cable length of 30cm is plenty for mini-ITX applications and should be ample in ATX-based systems as well. The Raijintek Aeolus has an RPM range between 650 and 1400, and it’s controlled via a PWM signal.