Performance Analysis
It's always interesting to pitch a custom water-cooling kit against the best that the AIO world has to offer, and the Raijintek components were going head-to-head with the £150 Corsair H150i Pro RGB, which is likewise based on a 360mm radiator, albeit a slimline one. Unsurprisingly, the Raijintek system beat the Corsair cooler in every test, although sometimes not by much. Seeing as we're dealing with individual components here and not a kit and that the system was very quiet out of the box, we also saw no reason to tweak any fan or pump speeds.
The best result was in our LGA 2066 system dealing with our monstrous Core i9-7980XE, where it managed to shave a further 3°C off the delta T of the Corsair cooler at 55°C compared to 58°C with the Corsair cooler on its maximum fan and pump setting. Clearly, if we delidded the CPU we might see even more of a difference here, but shaving 3°C off at lower noise levels is still impressive given it's dealing with what is at the time of writing the most powerful consumer desktop CPU.
Our Core i5-7600K was cooler too, but only by a paltry 1°C. We remounted the cooler just to be sure here, but it seemed to be mounted correctly. It's a win, but a rather expensive one, although again we may have seen a bigger difference delidding the CPU; there will come a time when the out-of-the-box thermal paste becomes the limiting factor, and that could be happening here. Equally, this is the first custom water-cooling kit we've tested on these systems, so there may well be more room for improvement.
There was a slightly larger difference in our AMD Ryzen system, with the temperature falling a further 2°C to a delta T of 44°C compared to 46°C for the Corsair H150i Pro RGB on its maximum fan and pump speed settings.
Conclusion
Starting with the CWB-RGB CPU water block, the performance seemed to be roughly on the money for a custom water--cooling kit, although we haven't tested any others with our new test gear yet. We'd have liked to have seen more of a difference between it and the best-performing AIO coolers out there in our AM4 and LGA 1151 systems, but this could be down to a number of factors. In any event, the system managed better cooling than the Corsair H150i Pro RGB in every test and at lower noise levels too. The LGA 2066 result was certainly the most impressive, which goes to show just how much cooling you should be factoring in with an 18-core CPU. Price-wise, the water block is reasonable at £54, but due to a fiddly installation on all sockets, it wouldn't be our first choice.
The Calore C360D radiator offered solid construction and some useful additional ports and retails for similar prices to the competition, although Overclockers UK currently has it discounted to £70, which is a very good deal indeed. The core is sizeable and does add to the overall dimensions, making us wonder if more powerful fans or a second row in pull mode might have yielded better results, although our case and plenty others out there simply wouldn't be able to cater for something that thick.
The Antila D5 pump sports all the features you'd expect from a premium pump and reservoir combo with PWM control and puts at least some effort toward trapping the air inside it and stopping it from re-entering the loop. In terms of value it scores highly too, retailing for £20-£30 less than similar models, although XSPC's offerings are a little more elegant, while EK Water Blocks' combo solutions usually include mounts to secure them to fan mounts, which is often extremely handy.
Finally, the Iris 12 RGB 256-3 fans are one of the stars of the show. They offer punchy RGB lighting and a range of lighting effects, but best of all is that they're reasonably quiet despite hitting 1,800 RPM at full speed and cost just £40 for a triple pack - that's half what Corsair charges for its triple pack LL, HD, and ML Series fans.
Overall, then, we can highly recommend Raijintek's Iris 12 RGB 256-3 fans, Antila D5 pump, and Calore C360D radiator, but the CWB-RGB CPU water block is not as lust-worthy.
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October 14 2021 | 15:04
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