Raijintek Orcus 240 AIO cooler review - Article

Raijintek Orcus 240 AIO cooler review
Make it Raijin!

Right off the bat of my review of the Leto Pro RGB, I also received Raijintek's new Orcus 240 AIO cooler. Ok, for the sake of simplicity, and my hands, it's 'Orcus' from here on. This new cooler from Raijintek is, on the surface, your fairly typical 240mm AIO liquid cooler. However, it brings a couple of fairly neat tricks to the party, that I will discuss in greater depth later.

Right away, I need to make a very clear differentiation between the two products. The Orcus 240 'Core Edition' comprises of the AIO itself, some extra coolant, mounting hardware, and that is it. The 'Regular' Edition comprises of all of the above, but also includes 2x RGB PWM fans, an 8 port hub, and remote control (for various ways of controlling the cooler's light show). I believe this is the first that I have seen this approach taken by an AIO product, and it's an interesting concept that appears to cater to two different markets (if you forget about the RGB for a minute).

There is, naturally, the question of price. The full Orcus 240 retails for a  $140 in the United States. In Europe, it can be found on Amazon UK and Amazon DE for £99 and 115 EUR, respectively. I suspect this slight disparity is due to an import cost, however, and little else. Amazon DE was the only place, oddly enough, that I was able to locate the 'Core' Edition of the cooler, for just 15 EUR less. Now, for just the sake of 15 EUR (call it... a semi-decent takeaway?), you get a lot of extra stuff in the box, so I already know what I will be going for if I were to purchase this product. The only point of separation between them will be the fans you decide to pair with your 'Core' unit, should you decide instead to go for that.

In terms of use cases for this cooler, 240mm units are generally very happy to cool moderately overclocked Intel LGA 1151 CPUs (i.e. Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake), and - to some extent - the lower to middle-lower end of the road LGA 2066 chips as well. In my experience, a well-tuned overclock on a chip such as the 7900X can be kept reasonably in check by a 240mm unit, though quiet it will not be. For those interested, I was able to get a 7900X to 4.25Ghz using 1.125v. Ryzen users will like the fact that this cooler is AM4 compatible out of the box, and I would be entirely ok with paring this unit with AMD's current mainstream flagship CPU, the Pinnacle Ridge based R7 2700X. Sadly, as I do not have a 2700X on hand, the test system for the Orcus 240 will remain the same as it has done since my inaugural Fractal Celsius S24 review. Improved cooling on Pinnacle Ridge 'X' chips definitely allows Precision Boost 2.0 (as well as the enhanced XFR algorithm) to reach higher clock speeds, which is always a bonus.

AIO's, however, tend to be much of a muchness in the current PC market. So is there anything that the Orcus manages to bring to the table that it can safely say the competition doesn't have? Well, actually, yes, it certainly has a few neat little tricks up its sleeve. I will cover these over the next few pages, where and when I feel is appropriate. Suffice to say that I feel as though the Orcus brings enough to the table that it's worth considering.

Warranty wise, the Orcus carries a fairly standard 2-year package. Naturally, the length of time this unit is going to last (something that could be said for any product containing this number of moving parts) which almost entirely dependent on how much you use your PC. Parts fail and the two-year warranty we see here is nothing out of the ordinary. Fractal did push the boat out with their 5-year warranty on the S24, but that is definitely an outlier. Products that have many moving parts (especially where the main point of failure, i.e. the pump or impeller, is working with liquid) are inherently more prone to mechanical failure, and the very nature of liquid coolers means that you do subscribe to some level of risk by having liquid near your PC at all times. AIOs can leak, but that is part and parcel of the 'game' we play when seeking enthusiast level cooling. Modern AIOs are, however, exceptionally reliable, and even if they do suffer part failure, the chances of a leak are still incredibly slim. Next, we will look at the advertised feature set, some more detailed specs, and then do a thorough unboxing of the unit.