Raijintek Orcus 240 Liquid CPU Cooler Review

Testing
Processor: Intel Core i7 3770K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H
Video Card: Zotac 560 Ti
Memory: Samsung Green MV-3V4G3D/US – 16GB
Power Supply: Corsair TX950
Storage: Mushkin ECO2 240GB Running Windows 7 64bit
Cooling: Raijintek Orcus 240
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe

As always testing was done using Intel Burn Test (IBT) with the AVX instruction set. The reason to use this instead of Prime95 with this setup is that it pushes our i7 3770K a whole lot harder. This gives us a better sense of extreme load temps. Most of the testing was done at the max memory setting for a single pass. While admittedly this in no way would qualify the chip as stable while overclocked, it gives us a realistic idea of what temperatures the CPU will be hitting. Additionally we are going to run 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme to give you a realistic idea of performance while gaming.

Our baseline was established using a bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 with the 3770K on stock settings:

Ambient temps: 22.22C/72F
Idle temps: 38.75C/101.75F core average
IBT temps one pass max memory: 63.5C/146.3F core average

The first thing we did was to test the cooler with stock motherboard/CPU settings:

Ambient temps: 19.16°C/66.5°F
Idle temps: 27°C/80.6°F core average
IBT temps one pass max memory: 57.25°C/135.05°F core average

Orcus 240 53 Orcus 240 54

*Our ambient temperature is 3.06°C cooler than baseline, we’ll be adding that to all our results to adjust for the change*

After we add in the variance in ambient temperature we find that the Orcus 240 performs significantly better than the baseline cooler at 30.06°C vs 38.75°C and again it’s a few degrees ahead on the stress testing at 60.31°C vs 63.5°C. With the stock testing out of the way let’s get into some overclocking.

Here are our results for our i7 3770K @ 4.5ghz with 1.248V vCore:

Ambient temps: 19.16°C/66.5°F
IBT temps: 74.75°C/166.55°F with the hottest core hitting 80°C

Orcus 240 55

After we add in that 3.06°C to adjust for ambient we find that the Orcus 240 doesn’t really keep pace with the top performing 240mm radiator AiOs that we’ve run through our bench. It’s not the worst but it is on the bottom end. In fact there are a few high performing 120mm and 140mm units that keep up. To venture a guess as to the lower performance it might rest with flow rate. It’s hard to say exactly what the flow rate is, but the meter certainly spins rather lazily. A higher flow rate would mean more cooler water reaching the block more quickly which the Orcus could obviously use. Comparisons aside, the overall thermal performance is acceptable. Even with the 4.5ghz overclock there is still a little bit of head room before we decide to downclock.

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With that in mind let’s see how the Orcus would perform in a theoretical game scenario while overclocked.

Ambient temps: 19.16°C/66.5°F
3DMARK: 56.75°C/134.15°F with the hottest single core hitting 60°C

Orcus 240 56

With the Fire Strike test complete we see that the Orcus does a fine job of holding the line when gaming. Our estimate would be a 4.7ghz overclock on the 3770K for gaming would be fine. While it would likely thermally fail to pass the IBT benchmark for gaming you would be right in the warmer side of comfortable under gaming load.

Aurally the Orcus 240 is pretty average. The claimed high output for the fans of 23dBa is probably a bit low but without proper testing equipment it’s hard to say for certain. The external pump isn’t exceptionally noisy either but you do hear it apart from the rest of the PC noise.

We were unable to test the RGB hub through a motherboard as our test unit predates those fancy new headers. We did however test the remote and it was easy to use and worked just fine if not a little old school in style. The colors and modes leave a lot to be desired. For modes you basically choose between static and breathing. As for colors green and red are best. When blue is selected the leds turn off. When white selected it goes to a pale yellow setting on the fan rings while the pump is more of a green. The other colors listed on the website are really not there which might be the result of our missing blue mode. It certainly leaves a lot to be desired.

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