Page 2 - Physical Look - Hardware; Installation
The overall design of the Reeven Okeanos RC-1402 falls into the conventional dual fan heatsink category. You will not find any radical design differences on the product. The heatsink has two modules, such that maximum three fans can be installed on the heatsink. For each heatsink tower, the shape of the fins is roughly rectangular. To secure the fans to the heatsink, the fins are carefully designed for the wire clips. As you can see from the picture, a little notch on one side of the fins' corner is designed to hook the fan installation clip, while the other side of the corner is flat to hold the fan in position. As long as the fan is in the right position, the flat surface ensure the fan is in parallel with the heatsink. After the fan is installed, a gap can be noticed between the fan’s air outlet side and the heatsink. The leading edges of the fin are generally pretty straight on the Okeanos RC-1402. If you observe it carefully, you will notice the left and right edges of the fin come slightly inward at the middle section. The practical reasons behind this edge design has to do with aerodynamics.
Not all fins are the same on the Reeven Okeanos RC-1402. The fin on the top is thicker than others. There are two reasons. First, the top fin should be protective to other fins below. Second, thicker fins make the whole cooler stronger. The thicker top fin means the cooler is sturdily built. The Reeven logo is engraved in the middle of the top fin. At both left and right sides of the Reeven logo, mesh holes are presented for better ventilation. I am not sure how much the mesh holes can help with the heat dissipation, but it surely looks good in my opinion. We can see the design team of the Okeanos RC-1402 has put in a lot of effort to deliver a sophisticated top view of the cooler. The stylish top fin definitely elevates the appearance of this product. Thanks to the dual tower design, the base plate mounting bar of the Okeanos RC-1402 can be easily accessed to without using any notches on the fins. Note the heatsink needs to be mounted before we put on the middle fan. As long as the middle fan is not installed, we can have both good vision and good accessibility to the base plate mounting bar. There are six continuous heatpipes on the Okeanos RC-1402, while only four heads are visible at the top fin.
When it comes to the measurements, the Reeven Okeanos RC-1402 is 140mm in width, 163mm in height, and 135mm in depth including the fan. Due to the dual fan design, it is definitely larger than its predecessor, the Reeven Ouranos RC-1401. From the above picture, you can tell how big or small the heatsink is compared with a standard 140mm fan. Due to the relatively larger size, the overall weight of the Okeanos RC-1402 is a heavy 1145g, which is expected. A lightweight build is usually a welcome feature for a CPU cooler, since it will cause less stress on the motherboard. However, lightweight typically means the size is also small, which comes at the expense of reduced surface area of the fins, and its negative effect on cooling performance. On the other hand, if you want to put two fans instead of one on the heatsink, the size and weight increase as well like this heatsink. For an air cooler, whether it is for a combustion engine or for an electronic device, the trade-off between size and cooling performance must always be considered. Comparing to a normal single fan CPU cooler, such as the Ouranos RC-1401, the dual fans configuration does introduce more weight. We will have to see how the cooler's size and fan complement one another on the next page.
In the above photo, since the cooler is laid on the table instead of standing, the top fin is now on the left-hand side. As I have mentioned earlier, there are two kinds of fins on the Okeanos RC-1402. The top one is the thickest for better protection of the fins below. The rest of the fins are thinner to save weight. The fins are made out of aluminum, not copper. It is true that the thermal conductivity of copper, which is 401W/mK, beats the thermal conductivity of aluminum, which is rated at 237W/mK. However, using copper for the whole heatsink may not be a good idea. This is because the density of copper is much higher than that of aluminum. Think about it -- for the same volume of metal, copper is more than three times as heavy as aluminum. If you make an all copper heatsink using the same size and shape of the Okeanos RC-1402, the heat dissipating performance may be improved by less than 50%, but the weight is 300% more, which is simply not a good trade-off.
The material and surface area of a CPU cooler are not the only factors in determining cooling performance. The fan, which is responsible for speeding up the air ventilation, plays another key role. For the Okeanos RC-1402, two fans, namely the Reeven Coldwing 14 PWM and the Reeven Coldwing 12 PWM, are included in the package. As its name implies, both fans have adjustable RPM through pulse width modulation. The adjustable spinning speed of a PWM fan allows a lower noise level when the cooling duty is not heavy. On the other hand, PWM can also push the fan to higher RPM whenever it is necessary. The maximum air flow of the Reeven Coldwing 14 PWM is 92.4CFM, and the maximum air pressure is 0.091mmH2O. Compared with the stock Reeven Coldwing 12 PWM, the provided Coldwing 12 PWM's the maximum air flow is adjusted to 92.5CFM and the maximum air pressure is changed to 0.098mmH2O. Note, CFM stands for cubic feet per minute. The provided Coldwing 12 PWM is configured to work with the Coldwing 14 PWM. According to the Okeanos RC-1402's installation guide, the 14cm fan should be installed in the middle of the heatsink and the 12cm fan needs to be put on the outside of the heatsink. This is combination should provide better RAM clearance. However, I prefer to put the 14cm fan on the outside. This is because the overall shape of the heatsink matches better with the 14cm fan than the 12cm fan. Meanwhile, even the 14cm fan is put on the outside of the heatsink, the RAM clearance is still pretty good. Regarding the noise level of the fans, thanks to the use of a sleeve bearing, the 12cm fan is specified as 33.4dBA at the loudest, while the 14cm fan is specified as 36.4dBA at the loudest, which I think is not bad. To my surprise though, the 14cm fan is louder than the 12cm fan, although the 12cm fan has higher RPM. If you prefer to have quieter experience, the noise level can be further brought down by using the Speed Switch Adapter cable.
Let us move on to take a look at the base of the Reeven Okeanos RC-1402. Reeven made this base out of copper. If you are not seeing the right color of copper on the plate, please do not doubt the quality of the photo. This is just because the base, as well as the heatpipes, of the Okeanos are electroplated with nickel to protect them from oxidation. Nickel is highly resistant to corrosion, therefore it can keep the copper parts of this cooler in their optimal condition for a long time. The other benefit of having a nickel-plated base and heatpipes is to match the color of the fins. The quality of the nickel-plated finish on the base is pretty good. The contacting surface looks just like a mirror after the protection film is removed. With the help of the provided thermal paste, heat can be smoothly transferred from the CPU to the cooler. All six continuous heatpipes are firmly soldered to the base. Also, the fins which are crucial components for dissipating heat are firmly attached to the heatpipes. Therefore, the whole cooling system is sturdily built, and it allows the Reeven Okeanos RC-1402 to cycle through the evaporation-condensing procedures for years to come.
For the Okeanos RC-1402, the orientation of the heatpipes are in parallel with the fan mounting surface of the heatsink. This feature makes the alignment of heatpipes different from that of other CPU coolers such as its brother, the Reeven Justice RC-1204. In this case, the heatpipes are aligned in four rows into the radiator fins, while for the Reeven Justice RC-1204, there are two rows. The layout of the heatpipes of the Okeanos RC-1402 allows the heat to be evenly distributed to the fins. From the above picture, you can see the fan is attached to the heatsink fins by using wire clips. There are two hooks on the wire clip for the fan. It is a great idea to use such a mechanism for fan attachment, since compared with using screws, wire clips are easy to use and pretty solid; it also saves weight.
The installation experience of the Okeanos RC-1402 was pretty straightforward, although it could definitely be improved by using a fan wire clip with some tabs on it. Without the tab, the fans were hard to clip onto the heatsink, especially with the motherboard already installed in the case. I remember the Reeven Ouranos RC-1401's wire clip had tab on it. Before I put everything in my computer, I took a while to look into the installation manual. The backplate was needed to install the mounting bracket for both Intel and AMD sockets. On top of the mounting bracket, the included bar can be attached using screws. It is worth noting all the essential parts for the heatsink installation are made out of metal. Therefore, they are strong enough to support the CPU cooler. On the other hand, there are also rubber pads at the contact surfaces of the motherboard and mounting system so users do not need to worry about overtightening screws. The metal backplate of the Okeanos RC-1402 is painted in black. From the above picture, we can see the backplate merges well into the motherboard and motherboard tray. Of course, it only happens if you have a black motherboard and computer case.
After the backplate is in position, the mounting bracket can be screwed on. Similar to the installation of the backplate, there are also three positions to screw the mounting plates. If you are confused by those screw positions, just take a look at the installation manual. In my case, I just used the screw position in the middle, which is for Intel LGA 115x sockets. According to my installation experience, all components fit precisely. Due to the big size of the dual fans heatsink, the RAM was covered by the Okeanos RC-1402. It might be a problem when I need to upgrade or troubleshoot my memory, since I have to remove the fan that is on the outside of the heatsink. By the way, for the fan that is in the middle of the heatsink, you have to install the fan after the heatsink is mounted, since the screws for mounting the heatsink are blocked by that fan.
Generally speaking, the Okeanos RC-1402 is well designed. The thicker top fin and the heatpipe arrangement are well designed for this product. Regarding the installation procedure, the Okeanos RC-1402 was acceptable, although it could be improved by providing tabs on the wire clips for the fan mounts. As for the actual cooling performance, let us turn to the next page and find out.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware; Installation
3. Test Results
4. Conclusion
