Raijintek reveals the Juno X

Cooling specialist Raijintek has announced a top-down, low-profile CPU cooler with a design that hearkens back to the earliest radial designs: the Juno X.

Designed for use in systems where a tall tower cooler simply isn't an option, the Raijintek Juno X eschews the traditional fix of taking a thin tower design and bending it 90 degrees to one side to make a top-down cooler and instead takes its design cues from the dim and distant past. A central fan sits within, rather than on top of, a radial fin stack, pushing air out both sideways and down - an approach popularised by companies like Zalman in the early 2000s but these days seen rarely outside cheap-as-chips, no-name coolers and OEM bundled parts.

To allay any concerns that the Juno X might be one of those cheap and nasty designs, Raijintek has worked hard on adding extras: The radial fin stack is connected to the baseplate via two 6mm copper heat pipes, rather than a simple direct connection, while the central 92mm fan includes a four-pin pulse-width modulation (PWM) speed control connector and single-colour illumination in a choice of red, green, blue, or a plain variant for those who prefer less light inside their case.

Sadly, the company has been light on details: Although it promises compatibility with Intel's LGA 775 and 115x socket families and AMD's AM2(+), AM3(+), and AM4 sockets, it hasn't offered a maximum thermal design profile (TDP) beyond the promise it will cool chips running above 70W. It has also yet to confirm pricing and UK availability, the former of which will be key to the success of the cooler when it goes up against rival tower-based designs with higher cooling capabilities.

Raijintek has not yet added the Juno X to its website.