Raijintek Themis Evo Pro & Tisis CPU Coolers Head-to-Head Review

Introduction

Raijintek are easily my favourite cooling manufacturer of the moment, while they may be relatively new to the market compared to the established few such as Cooler Master, Thermaltake, be quiet! and more, they’ve already make a big impact on the industry. Every single one of their products we’ve reviewed so far has been an award winner, bringing class leading performance, great overall aesthetics and bargain prices; making Raijintek one of the best all round cooling manufacturers on the market.

With all that in mind, I’m expecting a lot from the two coolers we have here today, the Themis Evo Pro and the Tisis. The Themis Evo Pro is targeted at a more budget friendly end of the market since it will only set you back a wallet friendly £27.95, but I wanted to put it against the almost twice as expensive Raijintek Tisis to find out just how much more you get for your money; it is worth investing in one of their high-end coolers if you only need something like the Evo and of course should you want to overclock, will you need to up your budget for a high-end model like the Tisis?

Despite the budget friendly price, the Themis Evo is well equipped; it features four 8mm heat pipes which make direct contact with the CPU, aluminium fins, a good quality 120mm PWM fans and supports all major socket types.

UPDATE: The Tisis used to be called the Nemesys!

The Tisis is obviously a lot higher specification, featuring fives 8mm heat pipes, a nickel copper base, aluminium fins and two good quality 140mm PWM fans.

In the box for the Themis Evo you’ll find a simple install guide, fan clips, AMD and Intel mounting places, a universal motherboard back plate, high-quality screws and fittings, finally a set of rubber fan pegs.

The Tisis comes with an identical mounting kit, albeit with more rubber mounting pegs instead of a set of fan clips.

A Closer Look – Themis Evo Pro

First up we have the Themis Evo, which comes equipped with a single 120mm fan. Raijintek fans are really nicely designed with their powder white fan blades and red frame, a nice change from the usually black ones we see.

The fan comes equipped with a nice quality black braided cable and a standard 4-pin PWM connection.

The tower is really nicely designed, with a lot of curves and cuts to it that will no doubt help improve its performance, but also give it a very stylish looking design.

The fins are all aluminium allow and all are finished to a mirror shine.

The top plate fin features a Raijintek logo in the middle, and the ends of the four heat pipes pass through the top on the left and right side.

The tower is quite tall despite its deceivingly compact looking design, but it should still be compatible with the majority of chassis on the market.

The heat pipes curve in towards the CPU block, where you’ll see they’re cut through to provide direct contact with the CPU die.

Direct contact is a cheap and effective method of transferring the heat from the CPU, the only downside is that thermal paste gets gunked up in the groves between the pipes.

The fan can be mounted on either side of the tower using the rubber pegs, which pass through the holes at the top and bottom of the cooler.

The rubber pegs should help reduce any vibration from the fan.

Overall a very nice looking cooler, and the red fan adds a really nice touch of colour to the aluminium alloy finish of the cooling tower.

A Closer Look – Nemesis

The Tisis comes equipped with two powerful 140mm fans, both of which are fitted with a good quality black braided 4-pin cable and funky shaped blades to help better direct the airflow and reduce turbulence.

The cooling towers are really nicely finished, with one very neat looking stack and the other with a more aggressive, spiked edge.

The side of the fins are closed on the right tower, this will help better direct airflow through the middle of the cooler and through the other tower, where heat is free to escape from the second towers open sides.

There are five thick heat pipes that pass through the two towers, more than enough to shift heat from a heavily overclocked CPU.

The right tower is much thicker than the left, it’s also worth nothing that you can only mount a fan on the right side of the right tower, obviously in push configuration. The left tower holds a fan in the middle of the two towers, pulling air from the right tower and through the left, although there are mounts again on the other side of the left where you could mount a third fan if you feel the need.

Much like the Themis, the Tisis features the same mounting holes in the top for use of the fan rubber mounting pegs.

The heat pipes are really nicely finished and join onto a thick contact plate.

The contact plate is huge and features a smooth plate with a mirror shine.

Both fans mounted and you can quickly see this is a pretty sizeable cooler overall.

It may be huge, but the Tisis is really nicely designed and it’ll look right at home in any high-end system build.

Installation

The universal back plate is identical on both the Themis and the Tisis. As you can see it easily fits on our 1155 socket motherboard and will no doubt fit easily on any compatible AMD or Intel motherboard. Just pop the four long screws through the plate and the motherboard, which only takes a few seconds to do.

Four plastic spacers hold the screws in place and can be tightened on by hand, only taking a minute or two at most to install. Plus an extra two minutes I then took to clean the CPU die up as its caked in old thermal grease, whoops!

The four screws are easily accessed with a long thin screw driver, and the whole thing dropped into place with ease.

I then mounted the fan, which was a little tricky to place as the rubber pegs at the bottom are hard to reach with the ram in place, and the ram is hard to install with the fan in the way; even so it only took a couple of minutes.

Ram clearance is really good, although you could always mount the fan in pull configuration is you really need the extra room.

The Tisis was also very easy to install, it’s mounting system is identical to that of the Themis, so I won’t bother showing you the same thing twice. The tower is mounted with both fans removed, then you add the fans afterwards, the middle fan was a little tricky to place, but overall it’s a job that will only take a couple of minutes.

Test System and Methodology

We always use the same test system and tests with CPU coolers that we compare against each other. The full specifications of our test system are as follows:

Test system:

• ASUS P8Z77-V, LGA 1155 socket, Z77 chipset
• Intel Core i5 3570K with Gelid GC Extreme under the IHS
• 8GB G.Skill Trident X 2400MHz DDR3
• 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 thermal paste 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 average temperature across the four cores is taken on our quad-core processor
• Fans are mostly left to operate at default PWM profile speeds and with maximum fan speed for reference.If PWM functions are not supported then fixed fan speeds are used and sometimes a low noise adapter if appropriate/provided. If fixed fan speeds or low noise adapters are used it will be clearly pointed out either on the graphs or in the write-up.
• All default result entries on graphs are for PWM performance unless otherwise specified. A variety of fan speed results are done for a particular product review and then removed from the graphs in future reviews of other products to avoid clutter. If you would like to see more fan speed results for a particular product please check its individual review.
• For watercooling tests all pumps have been operated at 12 volts directly from the power supply
• Delta temperatures are always used (Observed temperature minus ambient temperature) and we keep the ambient at 22 (+/- 1) degrees for all testing . Delta temperatures should correct for any marginal ambient differences between 21-23 degrees.
• Acoustic measurements are taken 10cm horizontally away from the CPU cooler with the VGA fan disabled, hard drive in idle and power supply isolated. These are taken at desktop idle and Prime95 load.
• The cooling performance tests are run at stock 3.4GHz (with Intel Turbo up to 3.8GHz) and overclocked 4.5GHz (1.35v) settings. Voltages are fixed to prevent inaccuracy between comparisons.
• All other coolers in the graphs have been tested under identical settings so are fully comparable.
• Each test is repeated 3 times with 3 remounts for consistency of results
• There is approximately a 1 degree celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software CPUID HW Monitor
• There is approximately a 1.5dBA margin of error with our Benetech GM1351 decibel meter

Software Used

• CPUID HWMonitor
• Prime 95

Since I recently took over our cooling reviews section we have started our graphs again to keep things consistent with my own testing methodology. If you wish to view any of the previous results you can do so on any of our prior cooling reviews in the Cooling section. We currently have four main categorisations for CPU coolers that are:

• Budget CPU coolers (sub £40 in typical RRP)
• Low Profile CPU coolers (Often top-down design, but any CPU cooler that is designed to be small)
• Water cooling AIO CPU coolers (Both closed loop and expandable water CPU coolers that come pre-built – no custom kits)
• Performance Heatsink coolers (Heatsinks designed for performance, typically cost upwards of £40)

In all these graphs we may have a few “reference” results of particular products that do not fit within that category for comparative purposes.

Performance

Now we’re onto the stuff that really matters, as you can see from the specifications below the Tisis is right on par with the Gamerstorm Lucifer, holding our i5 3750K at just 20c above ambient under full load, but it’s being beaten out by the Themis Evo, which managed a slick 15c above ambient.

The Tisis features two large 140mm fans that are pretty powerful, as such they are a little louder than most, but not overly so, putting them along side most other 140mm fan setups lower down our chart. The Themis Evo also scored fairly average on the noise test, sitting alongside the Corsair H75 and the Cooler Master Nepton 140XL water coolers.

This is where things really start to turn heads, just look where that Tisis cooler is sitting, it’s right at the top of the chart, literally the coolest CPU cooler I’ve ever tested! It beat out the 240mm water cooling radiator from Enermax by 3 degrees and even offered up the lowest idle temperatures too at just 2c above ambient. This is a performance hammer blow and a big win for Raijintek.

The Themis Evo is no slouch either, kicking the but of the Cooler Master Nepton 140XL water cooler by a full 3c, putting it just 1c behind the Corsair H75 water cooler, which is freaking impressive to say the least given that it costs a fraction of its nearest rivals (in terms of performance).

Another win for Raijintek is that the Themis Evo is the fourth quietest CPU cooler in our overclocking tests, creeping in just behind the three be quiet! coolers which dominate the top of the chart, although it’s worth pointing out that the Themis Evo performed better than all three be quiet! coolers in our thermal benchmarks.

The Tisis didn’t fare quite as well, there was audible turbulence from the fans when overclocked, but if that’s the trade-off for such ice-cold performance, I don’t care and neither will most enthusiast overclockers. I discussed this issue with Raijintek and they did say my fans were a little noisier than they should be, having looks at reviews from other sites, they are on average around 2dBa quieter, and we’re going to attribute this to it being an especially warm day when we were testing.

Final Thoughts

Price

Raijintek just keep on blowing us away, not only do both these coolers perform exceptionally well, but they do it without breaking the bank. The Themis Evo is a very affordable £27.95 from Overclockers.co.uk and the Tisis is just £49.99. Given that they’ve both beaten out products that are more than twice as expensive, you’re really going to struggle to find better for less, it’s as simple as that.

Overview

Raijintek are already in a very strong position given the products they’ve got available on the market and the highly competitive prices they offer. Time and time again they’ve proven that they can offer industry leading performance in multiple price ranges and today was no exception. They rolled up to Computex 2014 with a dizzying array of new products that’ll be hitting the market this year, and even a few that promise to out perform the already spectacular Tisis we reviewed today, and I don’t doubt them for a moment.

The Themis Evo pro is a really impressive product, it’s nice and quiet even when compared with much more expensive rival products and it’s performance is on par with products that we thought would have been way out of its league. When running on our stock CPU, the performance was simply stunning and for those running stock settings or mild overclocks, you’re going to see huge gains in terms of thermal performance for what is really a small investment in a CPU cooler. This may even be one of the best price vs performance coolers we’ve ever tested and for your average user, this is where you should be spending your money.

The Tisis is simply mind-boggling in terms of performance, there is literally nothing out there that I’ve tested that can cool our CPU this good. Sure there is a little more noise, but if you’ve got a good quality chassis you won’t have any issues, in fact you could easily roll back the fan RPM to limit noise without effecting performance that much. Of course if you’re intent on the running a chip at 5Ghz on a mental gaming rig, then you’re going to have a hard time getting near this level of performance from any other cooler on the market, and certainly for around the same budget. Extreme cooling for under £50, you simply cannot go wrong with that!

“Both coolers look stunning, build quality is premium throughout and the price is fiercely competitive, all of which take second place to the overall performance. If you’re on the market for a new cooler for your next gaming rig, or even just an upgraded cooling solution, you would be mad not to buy one of Raijinteks latest products.”

Pros

• Class leading performance
• Great aesthetics
• whisper quiet performance (Themis Evo)
• #1 Cooler we’ve ever tested (Tisis)
• Competitive price
• Easy installation

Cons

• None

Neutral

• The unfamiliar brand name may put off some consumers, but with consistently award-winning performance with each new product, all that should change very soon

Raijintek Themis Evo Pro CPU Cooler Review

Raijintek Tisis CPU Cooler Review

Tisis

Thank you Overclockers and Raijintek for providing us with these samples.