Raijintek Pallas Review

Raijintek Pallas Review

Manufacturer: Raijintek
UK price (as reviewed): £31.99 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): $40 (ex Tax) (approx)

It might look like either an Asian or Nordic name but Raijintek (say it quickly and you'll get the idea) is actually a German company whose coolers are manufactured in Taiwan. By the by, those coolers have one clear thing going for them, in the UK at least: they are ridiculously cheap. Starting at just £15 for the company's dinky 92mm model they rise to just £27 for the top-end 140mm model, the EreBoss.


We're not complaining, of course, so long as they perform well, although the price has taken a little hike with it's latest cooler, the Pallas. This is most likely due to its very compact nature - as you can see, it's a low-profile CPU cooler. It's price of around £32 is quite a bit more than it's tower counterparts, but is actually still very competitive with its rivals. Thermalright's AXP-100 for example costs closer to £40.


The Pallas has a couple of other tricks up its sleeve too. Its low-profile fan is actually 140mm across, not 120mm and the large, densely-packed heatsink stretches right across it meaning it should be able to dish out plenty of airflow to deal with the heat. Of course this might also mean issues with heatsink-laiden motherboards, but our Asus Maximus V Formula was fine.


Speaking of size, the Pallas is barely any larger than a 140mm fan - it's just 140mm across and 150mm deep. It's the height that mod people will be interested in, though, and at just 68mm including the fan, it's less than 20mm taller than Arctic's Freezer 11 LP although the Thermalright's AXP-100 still holds the height crown for a large low-profile cooler at just 58mm.


Like the latter, the Pallas has six 6mm heatpipes in a fairly standard arrangement for this kind of cooler, bending 180 degrees from the non-direct contact copper cooling plate to the dense heatsink array. The fan is clipped on to the cooler using standard fan clips, which if we're honest, were the usual fiddly affair. Coupled with the need to apply a little more force than usual and no option to fit them before you've mounted the cooler, it made for an experience you only want to do once, although you should be able to do it without removing your motherboard at least.


The mounting mechanism was also pretty involved with pins securing to the motherboard, overlaid by two mounting plates, with a further plate straddling the centre of the cooler and bolting to the two plates on the motherboard. There are a couple of notches cut out of the heatsinks that allow standard cross-head screwdrivers to get through to the screws. In short it's not difficult or even that fiddly, but we're fairly sure the same effect could have been achieved with fewer bits.

Specifications

• Compatibility Intel: Intel: LGA775, LGA115x, LGA1366, LGA2011; AMD: AM3+, AM3, AM2+, AM2, FM2, FM1, FM2, FM2+
  
• Weight 420g
  
• Heatsink size (mm) 140 x 150 x 68 (W x D x H)
  
• Fan(s) 1 x 140mm (PWM), 650 - 1,400RPM
  
• Stated Noise 28dBA max