Introduction

A good quality air cooler that can be installed within a Mini ITX chassis and yet is capable of cooling powerful processors are a rare breed and being able to perform this function and yet still leave room for a half way decent graphics card, then we have an even more scarce of an item.  Most people either make do with the standard air cooler, attempt a small water cooling system or lastly make do with a low-form factor solution that will indeed perform well but even for mild overclocking this is a impossibility. One company that has chosen to look into providing a solution to this issue is Raijintek

Company Background

• With the aim of designing high-end products for Lifestyle , Computer and Day-to-Day usage, RAIJINTEK was established in 2013 to accomplish the future of IT and Lifestyle products.
• This task and aim lead us grow and toward a global brand. Not only highly recommended IT products but we also provide Gaming Gear such as Chassis, PSU’s and Lifestyle products for Smartphones and all your tablet PC’s.
• Fully dedicated to develope best Products for global users, RAIJINTEK’s R&D team never forget the aim to provide a friendly and performing product . Decades experience in industry, RAIJINTEK management would never give up service and product quality to value customers.

(http://www.raijintek.com/en/raijintek_about-us.php last accessed 22/01/2016)

Specifications

It is of our opinion that for a MITX cooler to work efficiently then a cooler will have to dissipate heat quickly and more importantly the heat from the CPU core will have to travel to the IHS and through to the sink and then to the fins themselves.  So for this to work then only a direct contact solution would work, Id-Est. the heatpipes themselves are making direct contact with the CPU IHS in order for the heat to be quickly transferred from one stage to another.

As luck would have it, Raijintek have had the foresight to go for a direct heatpipe contact solution of which can only aid in heat transfer.

Lastly for those whom do not have the benefit of a classical education, Aidos is the name of the Greek goddess of modesty, humility and………….shame.    Granted that Riajintek name their products after a typical Greek legend line, however it is confusing and rather worrying that this label was chosen for this product. Does the manufacturer feel shame in this item? We have no idea, so names non-withstanding let us investigate if the AIDOS deserves lives down to its name or is a gem amongst the rough.

Packaging

The Raijintek’s Aidos CPU heatsink is rather small and at a budget too, whilst the box packaging mirrors the size of the cooler. The outer carton measures in at roughly 11 x 9 x 17.5 cm. The front of the box has an angled shot of the heatsink and fan, is styled in typical Raijintek corporate colours. The left side lists the specifications of the Aidos cooler, whilst the the rear is only covered in a few more shots of the cooler from varying angles.

The right panel sports features of the Aidos CPU cooler itself. These include the Non-Copper base design (C.D.C – CPU Direct Contact), Patented Solder-less louvre fin assembly, and a myriad more features. The top has a small paragraph that mentions that it was “Designed in Germany”.

Overall the packaging is of excellent quality and is designed to grab attention.

First Looks

List of parts that have been included in order to mount the Aidos CPU cooler.

• 5x Rubber fan mounts
• 4x Threaded screws, knurled
• 4x Screws for LGA2011
• 4x Black plastic nuts
• 4x Metal nuts
• 2x M3 screws
• 2x AMD mounting brackets
• 2x Intel mounting brackets
• 1x Backplate
• 1x Crossbar
• 1x 92 x 92 x 25 mm fan
• 1x Heatsink
• 1x User’s manual
• 1x Packet of thermal compound

So far the instructions look very  user friendly and as such it should be relatively straight forward to assemble.

In addition the 92mm fan is included, albeit nothing special as in its design ,however its RPM is rated quite high for a 92mm fan and such should perform quite well.

The Aidos CPU cooler is a tiny single-tower CPU cooler made for the budget-conscious consumer. It has fourty two aluminium fins, that are easily bendable. However, they are evenly spaced and tightly secured to the four 6 mm heatpipes, thanks to its solder-less louver-fin assembly.

Making use of CPU Direct Contact (C.D.C), the heatpipes on the Aidos are arranged in the traditional U-shape. This allows the heatpipes to directly touch the IHS on the processor IHS. The top of the cooler clearly shows the four heatpipes to be evenly spaced apart, with Raijintek’s logo also being clearly visible in the middle.

Assembly

The assembly of the Raijintek Aidos was a breeze, it was so simple that even a UK PC WORLD employee could manage it without too much sweating. The latter does indeed truly describe the ease of installation of the product, so without further aplomb let us go ahead with the assembly.

We first installed the product into a socket 1150 mini itx motherboard and placed the latter within the Raijintek MITX chassis. We used this for the reason that it is the smallest MITX case we know of that can still accommodate standard components and an off-the-shelf graphics card.

The usual motherboard backing plate has to be fitted to the rear of system and the mounting posts placed through the holes.  On the top side of the board the polymer-based retaining nuts are placed and screwed down. A good tip is to assemble one post at a time and to leave the retaining nuts loose for the meantime.   Once all posts are through the holes then it is a simple matter of tightening all the plastic nuts in order to secure the backing plate.

All though Raijintek do provide clips for an AMD solution, in this instance we have elected to use the INTEL mounts and as such the process was straight forward.  Place the metal clips marked ‘Intel’ onto the posts (note the direction these are placed will determine the orientation of the whole cooler) and tighten down with the metal retaining nuts. Whilst composing this review the CEO of Raijintek mentioned to us that they are offering an extra service with all their coolers that, if the purchaser of these products provides a proof of purchase and contacts Raijitnek with their details then they will receive an extra free set of slips that allows the end-user to re-orientate the cooler without disassembling the product.

The next part is place the metal crossbar over the cooler itself, from one retaining clip to another and then simply lock it down with the included two screws.

Lastly Raijintek have provided rubber anti vibration mounting screws-which are placed on the 92mm fan and onto the cooler itself.  Metal fan clips have also been provided if one should choose to utilise them.

Installation of the actual product was a breeze and if one examines the final installation photos carefully then one will realise that there is room for another fan on the other side of the cooler-which allows for a push-pull configuration. Mounting grommets have been provided for this solution too.

All in all a simple and effective solution for the AIDOS (still don’t like the name much) product and yet care and attention to detail has been shown on the cooler.

Testing

Methodology

In this section of the testing all ambient air temperatures were at a cool 18 degrees Celsius and for both coolers the usual thermal paste was utilised, that is our favourite and ever popular Innovation Cooling’s IC Diamond.

To obtain an accurate Idle temperature for the processor, the CPU itself was ran under full load for one hour on Prime 95 and left to cool and only then were the idle results taken.

Since this cooler is obviously aimed at Mini ITX based systems we thought it would be prudent to test the cooler in the following scenario:

Most off-the-shelf computers (MITX ones that is) that are purchased from high street retailers such as; Dixons, PC World, Curry’s and so forth come with the standard and stock Intel cooler only. This is both a bad idea and poor attention to detail as MITX systems generally have little or no airflow which is due to their nature and as such heat build up can be extreme.  This test has been an exercise to ascertain on how the standard Intel cooler would fair when utilising PRIME 95 (in order to push the CPU to run at its highest) against the Raijintek Aidos

As one can see if the main processor is used to its full potential then the stock Intel cooler is not up to its task.  This is why MITX systems purchased from high street stores, break down after a year or two-due to the extreme heat causing expansion and contraction of components. Whilst not listed in the graphs we did however notice that the stock Intel cooler allowed the CPU to reach a whopping 60 degrees (after a longer testing time) Celsius before auto shut down due to heat. whilst the Raijintek Aidos was able to keep the temperature for the same amount of time at 45 Celsius. It is worth bearing in mind that this is only a low power Intel Celeron g1480 and one can only imagine how the stock cooler would handle a more powerful processor in the same environment, a worrying concept indeed.

Personally with data like this and if the writer of this article was the CEO of Raijintek I would approach the above high street stores with this evidence and try to obtain a deal where my products-such as the AIDOS cooler would be fitted as a standard.

Testing on a DFI LANPARTY (Socket 775) Motherboard

The next motherboard we tested on was an old DFI Lanaprty p45 T3RS system, with a core 2 duo 6300 Cpu.

The test conditions are the same as the procedure shown above, however the ambient temperature was measured at a hot 23.5 degrees. In order to compare, we tested the Aidos against the Alpenfohn Brocken and the OCZ Vendetta , with the addition the system was on a test bench and not in a case.

It is interesting to note: that even though the OCZ Vendetta 2 is a very old product it does however have a much larger surface area than the Raijintek Aidos and a 120mm fan and yet the Aidos easily out performs it and indeed equals the Alpenfohn Brocken. Not bad for a mini ITX based cooler, however we are not sure if this product will perform well in a modern and powerful processor, however for low performance machines within a MITX environment it quite clearly shows that is just the ticket.

Conclusion

The best things come in small packages as the saying goes, well in this case that metaphor is most certainly an apt one and for its size the performance is exceptional within a Mini ITX environment.  It does cool low specification or powered CPU really well.

If there is one issue I could find fault with, that would be the noise of the fan. On full speed it can get a little noisy and for MITX system the fan will be on high -even if it has been set to ‘automatic’ Also I would not use this on any high-end Skylake processors as quite clearly this is aimed at MITX sector of the market and I am sure Rajintek is aware of this .

There is more good news as quite clearly shown in our assembly stage is that there is room for another 92mm fan to have a push-pull configuration that will allow for more performance. It also shows that the latter-mentioned performance not only relies on having the  best fan or the largest sink but the quality on how it is put together as well as its materials.  We noticed on how thin and bendy the fins were on the cooler. They are indeed a lot more delicate than on the Apenfohn and on the Ocz products, having said that we understand why this has come about as a thinner material would disperse heat much more efficiently than a thicker material.

The price-performance of this product is also a great bonus at just £14.99 from OCUK then it is quite simply a steal.

To finish the Raintek AIDOS does exactly what it says on the tin and a little more due to its price point.

Pros:

• Wow what a price!
• Good performance for this sector of the market.
• Can out perform some larger sinks.
• Quality construction

Cons:

• The 92MM Fan can be quote noisy
• Fins are very delicate.
• Shame about the name (pun intended)

Overclockerstech are pleased to announce a score of 9.0/10 and therefore a gold award for the Raijintek Aidos.

We would like to thank Raijintek and OCUK for this test sample.

The Aidos can be purchased by just clicking on the OCUK logo below.

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