Reeven Arcziel 12 (RC-1203) CPU Cooler Review

New companies are few and far between these days. When we tend to see a "new company" in a particular market it tends to be an existing company expanding its portfolio, like when EVGA moved into the CPU cooler market. However, we've started working with a company who genuinely are new to the scene. Reeven are an Asian based cooling company who make CPU coolers, fan controllers and fans. Until recently we had never heard of them and currently find their products are very hard to buy as very few western retailers actually stock them. After finding Reeven products listed on the Scythe Japan website, I believe that Reeven are in some way affiliated to Scythe - but I am not quite sure how. From what we have seen and read so far about Reeven their products may not be top-of-the-line but they offer promising value for money.Today we will be kicking things off with Reeven's best CPU cooler, the Arcziel 12, with the 12 denoting the 12cm fan that is used and Arcziel being the name of the series of CPU cooler. Reeven's slogan "don't think it, feel it" would suggest that they are confident about offering products that actually deliver. One thing that strikes me with Reeven products so far is that they seem to be attaching themselves to the colour yellow. Much like Noctua have their trademark brown fans, Reeven are using a bright yellow colour scheme which gives them a really distinct look and once their brand recognition picks up a bit you'll instantly recognise them. I personally think yellow is a bit brave, but with the growth of MSI's Lightning series I think many people could find these coolers and fans a perfect match - if they deliver on performance that is. Whilst unpacking the various products Reeven sent me, it also struck me that their attention to detail was exemplary. I don't think I've ever seen products with such high quality packaging, accessories and overall attention to detail. I really can't wait to show you around these new products from Reeven, give them the heat treatment and see if they are worth your money. The Arcziel 12 (RC-1203) CPU cooler has the following specifications: Socket compatibility: LGA 2011/1366/1156/1155/775 and AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+/FM1 Dimensions: 140.5x 126x 131 mm (Width X Height X Depth) Six 6mm copper heat pipes with Aluminium heatsink array Fan Dimensions: 120 x 120 x 25mm (Width X Height X Depth) Fan Speed: 500-1900RPM (+- 10%) Air Flow: 27.61 to 101.33 CFM Noise: 4.3 to 35.5 dBA Weight: 557g (heatsink only) Although packaging is a very small part of the overall product, it is nice to see Reeven taking such care with it. That said, the general rule of thumb is that if a company goes over the top on the packaging it means it is trying to make up for a lacklustre product - lets hope that this is not the case with the Reeven Arcziel 12. The front of the box gives you an image of the product, socket compatibility and sports an industrial theme. The side of the box gives you some useful dimensions and overview pictures from multiple angles. The bottom points out some key features like Reeven's special fan mounting clips which really do make fan mounting very simple. 6 heat pipes mean this cooler is pretty capable of some good performance - although the top-down design means this is not going to be able to compete with more enthusiast orientated products. The other side of the box stresses its multi-socket compatibility - a nice feature but the vast majority of CPU coolers these days will support all sockets so its not anything we can give Reeven extra credit for doing. Included with in the box is a very nicely presented accessory package, installation manual and the cooler itself. The Reeven Arcziel 12 packs 6 heat pipes, which for a top-down cooler is quite impressive - we hope the results reflect this. It's worth noting that even though this uses a top down design, it still isn't that small because the fan is quite thick and the fan clips add about 5mm extra height too. Helpfully the Reeven fan comes with an arrow that points out the direction of the airflow in case you want to change it or are just interested to see if its functioning as you want it to. Even though the fan mounting system is very easy, we would of liked to see a fan that is closer to the heat sink as it would probably give better performance and reduce the height which is win-win for everyone. If you install the cooler in the "correct" position then the Reeven branding should be visible from the bottom of your motherboard (VGA card end). We think it looks subtle and sophisticated - a good job from Reeven. The yellow fan is a brave look, I think it works quite well but with such a striking colour it could put many enthusiasts off - particularly those who enjoy simple black/white contrasts. Reeven have gone with a nickel plated copper base which is my personal preference over the "flattened heat pipe" design. From below it looks really quite impressive - although it does appear that the heat pipes don't integrate with the heat sink very well which could impact on cooling performance. The mounting procedure is fairly simple. You affix the correct mounting clips to the mounting brackets and then screw these to the cooler. You then hold your backplate into place, and screw from the underside of your motherboard through the backplate and into the bottom of the mounting brackets on the cooler. If you have your motherboard inside a case this is all very easy to do. If like me you have to assemble this without any support for the motherboard, juggling the motherboard, CPU cooler, backplate and screwdriver is challenging to say the least. The Reeven mounting mechanism is average, I've seen better but at the end of the day it gets the job done on a lot of CPU sockets and that is all that matters. The cooler doesn't block any PCI express lanes although the first PCI express 1X lane is a tight squeeze. The Reeven Arcziel 12 offers quite a lot of clearance over the VRM heat sinks and the memory slots. Although DIMM slot number one is covered and in most cases tall RAM like G.Skill Trident X or Corsair Vengeance will not fit. However, if you are only running two DIMMs then you will have no compatibility issues. In case you needed a better angle, then here it is. As you can see there is quite a healthy amount of clearance, just not enough for ridiculously tall RAM like the G.Skill Trident X - although by taking our red heatsink attachments off we were still able to use our RAM underneath this. Anyone with high motherboard and VRM heatsinks needn't worry at all - there is plenty of clearance. We always use the same test system with CPU coolers that we compare against each other. The full specifications of our test system are as follows: Test system: ASUS P8Z77-V Intel Core i5 3570K with Gelid GC Extreme 16GB Kingston HyperX 1866MHz DDR3 AMD Radeon HD 5870 128GB Kingston SSDnow V100 (Boot Drive) and Samsung F3 1TB (storage) Antec High Current Gamer 620W Cooler Master Test Bench v1.0 We’d like to say a big thank you to ASUS, Antec, Kingston, Cooler Master and Intel for providing components that makes this testing possible. Testing Methodology: We always use Gelid GC Extreme or Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste (almost identical performance) to make sure testing reveals the efficiency of the tested coolers not the efficiency of the bundled thermal paste. Prime 95 is run for 10 minutes and then the average maximum temperatures as recorded by CPUID HWMonitor are noted The system is left in idle for 10 minutes on the desktop and then the average minimum temperatures as recorded by CPUID HWMonitor are noted Fans are always left to operate at PWM speeds, if this is not supported then 100% fan speed is used Delta temperatures are always used (Observed temperature minus ambient temperature) and we keep the ambient at 22 (+/- 1) degrees for all testing although Delta temperatures correct for the changing ambient anyway. The average temperature across the four cores is taken on our quad core processor Acoustic measurements are taken 10cm away from the CPU cooler with the VGA fan disabled The cooling performance tests are run at stock 3.4GHz (with Intel Turbo up to 3.8GHz) and overclocked 4.5GHz settings All other coolers in the graphs have been tested under identical settings Each test is repeated 3 times for consistency of results There is approximately a 1 degree celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software There is approximately a 1dBA margin of error with our decibel meter Software Used CPUID HWMonitor Prime 95 Stock temperatures show the Reeven Arcziel 12 keeping up with the single fan Be Quiet! Dark Rock advanced cooler at load, even though this Reeven Arcziel 12 uses a low profile top down design. Idle performance was impressive too, it managed to stay within a degree of the dual fan Cooler Master Hyper 412 Slim cooler. Overclocking is where the inefficiencies of the top down design were exposed, although the Arcziel 12 still remains within a competitive distance of the Be Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced. But can its acoustic performance and price tag keep it in contention? At stock clocks the acoustic performance on the Reeven Arcziel 12 is nothing short of exceptional. It is clearly very comfortable of dealing with thermal loads in the 80W region without even stretching itself. Once overclocked we can see the Reeven cooler starting to struggle a bit. Although its temperatures remain equivalent to the Be Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced, the Arcziel's acoustics start to deteriorate. With a fan that can kick up all the way to about 2000RPM its easy to see where the noise is coming from. We think Reeven would of been better placed by sacrificing a degree or two more in temperatures in order to tame that noise with a lower RPM fan - 1200RPM should do the trick. The Reeven Arcziel 12 is available for £39.99 which isn't exactly the most attractive price in the world but its a decent start from Reeven. We can see from the performance figures that the Reeven Arcziel 12 performs okay and is capable of taming a heavily overclocked Ivy Bridge processor. Although we did have some slight issues with noise in the overclocked configuration but as always we think its very important to point out we were running Prime95 for an extended period of time. During "realistic" use of our test system, such as playing Battlefield 3 and encoding videos, the acoustics never jumped above 43dBA - which is whisper quiet. However, if the ambient conditions were much hotter than ours then the acoustics could become an issue. A 7 volt fan speed reducer cable would go down a treat with this CPU cooler - although this would add some more cost. Mounting on the Arcziel 12 was slightly tricky but we had no complaints. The mounting equipment is perfectly adequate and provides a strong contact with the CPU as well as being versatile enough to support every major socket including LGA 2011. The overall build quality, packaging and attention-to-detail is quite amazing considering how young Reeven are and the aesthetics are left down to your own judgement - but I really liked them myself. Reeven have produced an attractive looking CPU cooler with good performance considering its single fan and top down design. The Acoustics need some work but they aren't irreconcilable, a fan speed reducer cable or a lower RPM fan would easily solve this minor hitch. At £39.99 the Reeven Arcziel 12 is more expensive than we would of liked to see, but if you're looking for a really unique looking CPU cooler that can handle the latest mid range processors (LGA 1155 with overclocks) and is generally very quiet, then you need look no further than the Arcziel 12.