Review of the Raijintek Tisis CPU Heatsink

Review of the Raijintek Tisis CPU Heatsink

You finally bought that new CPU to finalize your build and putting it together you realize…. I didn’t buy a CPU Heatsink. Well, if you bought a retail boxed CPU, most already bring them but the stock Intel CPU heatsink is a bit loud and does not cool very well, and the stock AMD fans don’t cool very well either. You can use the stock CPU fans for a while, but an updated one can help so much both in cooling and noise levels.

Because of that, I bring you the Raijintek Tisis CPU Heatsink. Some CPU heatsinks are not big enough or made well enough to dissipate heat properly. The Tisis could potentially be designed well enough, but 100% sure it is more than big enough. Here are the specifications.

Specifications and Features

• 5 8mm Heat-pipes with Extremely large dissipating area
• Fin Material: Aluminum Alloy and Nickel
• Thermal Resistance: 0.11 °C/W
• Included Fan Size: 2 x 140MM
• 1600 RPM
• Dimension: H 140mm, W 130mm, D 166.5mm
• Bearing Type: Sleeve
• Noise Level 20 ~ 25 dBA Max
• Air Flow: 70 ~ 75 CFM
• Life Expectancy: 50,000 hours
• Connector 2 x 4 Pin PWM
• Socket Compatibility:
  • AMD: FM1, FM2, FM2+ AM2,AM2+, AM3, AM3+
  • Intel: LGA 775, 1150, 1155, 1156, 1366, 2011 Core i3, i5 and i7’s

I love the fact that Raijintek did not play fan boy to Intel or AMD, they chose to include support for both CPU’s, and with that most of the socket types as well.

So let’s check out what it look like inside.

So there is big, and then there’s Tisis big, but you may not have a good comparison just yet, no worries, you will see a little something later on in the review.

For those of you that didn’t check out the video above, here is what everything looks like outside of the box.

This comes with 2 little baggies as you can see on the right hand of the picture above, these are all the accessories needed to install this heatsink.

In the first of 2, you will find the CPU back place and the AMD mounting clips as well as the Intel mounting clips, Crossbar, Thermal paste and fan clips.

The 2^nd, brings in it all the screws, nuts and nipples.   It’s a bag of jokes really, but I will refrain from the jokes.

For those of you wondering how one backplate works with AMD and Intel, I edited a pic to illustrate how this works.

The circles in red are for AMD and Intel blue, showing you how the back plate lines up to hold your CPU in place.

This is how it looks like already attached on my motherboard, the Asus Z87 Sabertooth, an Intel based board.

The knurl threaded screws are what keeps the backplate in place.

Once the knurled screws are fed through the holes, you need the plastic nuts to retain the backplate.

This is how they look working together.

Since this is an Intel board, I am not using the AMD clips, so I will move ahead to show you the Intel ones.

Once the plastic nuts and knurled threaded screws are in place, keeping the backplate in place, you can insert theses mounting clips to start installing the heatsink. I will skip the picture on where to install them, but show you the mounting clips, you need to screw them down with these metal nuts. You can never go wrong having a pair of metal nuts; this package needs 2 pair of metal nuts, so you know it’s tough.

Here you can see how the mounting clips are held down with the metal nuts. Actually, I ended up having turn the mounting clips because of the heatsink, but you can see why during the install video.

When you have that in place, you need some thermal paste. You can of course use your own, but I would recommend using the one it brings. Usually I would never recommend using the thermal paste included in a tube inside a package of a CPU heatsink, they usually include horrible thermal paste, but at least its something to get you by, till you can get something real instead. Raijinktek took the high road though, spent a few extra cents and included a pretty high end thermal paste from Dow Corning, TC-5121 or at least very close to it.

Here is that paste applied to the CPU

So now with the thermal paste applied, it’s time to install the heatsink. Before I do that though, let me show you a few pics of the fan.

Here is the top of the fan, the side you will spend your time looking at if you have a windowed side panel. You can see the heat pipes coming out of the top. The fins are odd in the portion on the back where it exhausts, but I guess it’s to show you where not to put the fan.

Here is the bottom part, the part that will be touching the CPU. Make sure you peel off the label, last thing you want on your CPU is melted plastic because the aluminum is not properly seated on the CPU being blocked by the plastic label.

Here’s a side shot showing you where the 2 fans would go. Remember, the oddly ridged portion of the heatsink is meant to keep you from installing the fan onto it. So you would place a fan the front flat side of the heatsink (outer left in the picture) as intake, blowing into the heatsink then a fan in the center as a push/pull fan, pulling air from the front fan and exhausting through the ridged portion of the heatsink.

The heatsink is 5.51 inches tall, 5.12 inches wide and 6.56 inches deep, so yeah it’s huge.

To give you some perspective on the size, here is the Tisis next to an Intel stock heatsink.

OK, now that the board has been prepared and you have seen the size of this heatsink, here is how it is applied to the board. Using the M3 screws, we tighten the Crossbar down squeezing the heatsink onto the CPU with the thermal paste we applied.

I can show you how the fans attach to the heatsink using the rubber nipples, but I think it would be a lot better to show you on a video. On this video I show you how to install it, and you get to see where I messed up with the pics above and it would help explain why the next pictures everything will look a little different.

Here’s how my system looks like with the Tisis installed

It’s a tight fit, but it works, but it may not work for all.

You can see in the pic above, I have a picture of my motherboard, and with the Tisis installed and zoomed in, you can see that with the fan installed, it takes up where the first PCI-e slot is and almost hits the video card.

Here is what I mean about the video card, on my board, there is about 1/4^th of an inch space in between the CPU Heatsink fan and the top of the video card.  The fan also hangs over the video card, here is a shot looking up from the power supply.

So 2 things I am not a fan of so far on this setup, is how close it is to the video card and the fact that I have to turn the heatsink a way that I am not too comfortable with because of the size.

Understand that with the fan right on top of the video card, only 1/4^th of the fan is exposed so it can’t possibly cool as well as it could as if it were completely exposed. Then the positioning of the heatsink, exhausts out of the top of the case, which makes sense as heat rises but again, with the video card there, it won’t push/pull/exhaust as much air as it should.

With the Thermaltake Silencer F51 case, there is only about half an inch (1/2) spacing between the top of the fan and the side panel, so you have space, but not much. The case is 9 inches wide.

Here is a view from the top of the case, the memory which is about 1 and ¾ of an inch tall, has about 1/4^th of an inch of space between the heatsink, so make sure you check out how tall your RAM is.

So, there seems to be a lot stacking against this heatsink so far, let’s see what the benchmarks show.

First off, here is my test system

• Processor: Intel Core i7 4790K
• Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z87
• Power Supply: Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W
• Video Card: EVGA Geforce GTX970 Super Clocked ACX 2.0 4GB
• Hard Drive (SSD): Samsung 850 EVO 500GB
• Secondary Hard Drive: Hitachi 1TB 7200RPM
• Optical: LG BDRW
• OS: Windows 10 Professional
• Case: Thermaltake Suppressor F51

For testing I will test to see how this heatsink cools after 15 minutes of the computer being idle. Afterwards I test running Cinebench to gauge performance and how hot the CPU gets and finally I will run a stress test for 15 minutes on Aida64 Extreme and report on how hot the CPU gets.

I use HWMonitor to see how high and low the CPU temperatures have gotten and CPU-Z to see how the CPU is clocking. If an Intel CPU gets to 100°C, it will throttle itself down to protect itself from getting damaged. It will continue trying to raise itself back to its full clock speed but if the heat is still up there it will quickly come back down.

So let’s start testing

After the machine sitting idle for 15 minutes, aside from the background processes programs such as NVIDIA’s Geforce Experience, Panda Anti-Virus, Samsung Magician, Logitech Gaming Software (mouse driver software), and Realtek’s Audio Manager. I have these installed not only because this is my main computer and they are all already installed but to also simulate a real world environment.

The lowest temperature the Raijintek Tisis reached was 31°C (outlined in Blue) and the highest was 46°C (outlined in Red). I don’t gauge it by the current temperature (outlined in Green) because that temperature fluctuates very rapidly. As you can see I outlined the “Package” temperatures of the CPU as this will represent the average temperatures the CPU has reach, I do not gauge it by each individual core.

Now on to Cinebench testing

The Cinebench score was a decent 880cb. The CPU portion will only stress the CPU, a great test that only takes about a minute, and while it is not the end solution for stress testing a CPU, it does catch many problems with a CPU overclock much quicker than most programs. It is also a great program to be able to compare and contrast performance from PC to PC, overall performance and how well an overclock performs.

We can see here from the HWMonitor reading shows that the lowest temperature during testing was 35°C and the hottest was 70°C.

Let’s build up some heat and stress the CPU with Aida64 Extreme.

Here you can see, the CPU was at 100% running for 15 minutes and 19 seconds. I bench for at least 15 minutes but I am not just going to stand around and watch, mostly will be anywhere between 15 minutes and 40 minutes, but all over 15. This means there will be some more testing coming up so stay tuned

Here we can see that the package temperature was at when the testing started was 35° but during testing peaked at 84°C. During those 15 minutes, the CPU never throttled. You can see in the Aida temperature readings that they were all over the charts.

The other testing will be with the Core i7 4790K overclocked to 4.6Ghz, only 200Mhz over the stock Turbo frequency of 4.4Ghz but 600Mhz over the Base frequency of 4Ghz. So let’s get into that.

Overlocked to 4.6Ghz the lowest temperature the Raijintek Tisis reached was 34°C and the highest was 49°C. The initial testing is done with the PC freshly booted into Windows 10 sitting idle for at least 15 minutes.

That’s not too far off of stock temperatures but remember, the processor is not always sitting at 4.6Ghz, When it’s not in use it will drop to 5% its speed. You can set this as well in Windows Power Options. My Power options are “High Performance” which would normally keep the CPU at 100% speeds, wasting power, generating needless heat and killing my CPU a little quicker.

If you want this set, go into the Power options in the Control Panel, click “Change plan settings” then again click “Change advanced power settings” and scroll down to “Processor power management”. Click to expand “Processor Power Management” and click to expand “Minimum Processor state” and you can set the percentage to whatever you would like, I set mine to have. When complete, click Apply and OK and you are good to go.

Don’t worry, this will not affect performance at all, the speed ramps up in a fraction of a second. I also had this setting enabled when I did the stock testing as well.

Now that you have idle temps overclocked, Cinebench is next.

Definitely improved performance at a score of 919cb over the prior stock scores of 880cb.

We can see below that during this test the temperatures peaked at 73°C, which of course means there was no throttling. In stock tests, it peak at 84°C, so the overclock is actually making it run cooler and better, go figure.

Let’s see what stress master Aida64 find out about this overclock with the Tisis.

As we saw before, CPU usage at 100%, not once did it throttle and I went much longer than 15 minutes, I got caught up playing a game, not on this computer though of course. Here is a HWMonitor reading during the test

Lowest temperature was actually 1 degree cooler with it overclocked. Doesn’t mean much, I thought I would just mention it.

So it looks like this heatsink does a pretty good job, but to help you have some sort of comparison I performed the same tests using the Arctic Cooler Freezer 7 Rev 2, the Intel stock heatsink that came in the box with the Intel Core i7 4790K processor and the Raijintek Themis Evo.

This graph shows you the differences in idle temperatures. Raijintek Themis Evo actually took the lead by 1°C degrees, not amazing but interesting. The Themis Evo is a lower cost CPU heatsink and only had 1 fan. These are all at stock speeds, and it goes without saying, but I will say it, in this case, lower is better.

Let’s see how the temps look like in Cinebench,

Remember, these are stock speeds right now on the fan that is included in the box. The CPU throttled so much it went down to 3.9Ghz, that’s 100Mhz lower than base clock, that’s pretty bad. The Raijintek Tisis cools 4°C better than the Themis Evo, 11°C than the Arctic Freezer 7 Rev2 Pro and 30°C better than the Stock Intel Heatsink Fan.

Cinebench Scores:

• Arctic Freezer7 Pro Rev2 : 882
• Standard Heatsink: 831
• Raijintek Themis Evo: 878
• Raijintek Tisis: 880

Even though the Raijintek Tisis ran cooler, it seemed to have scored a little lower in the benchmark than the Freezer 7 Rev 2 Pro.

OK, let’s check out Aida64 Extreme performance.

The Tisis impresses here scoring 7°C better than the Arctic Freezer 7 Rev 2, 10°C better than the Themis Evo and the Intel standard heatsink failed miserably again.

Now that the stock speeds have been mapped up, let’s get on to the overclocked performance. Even if you don’t overclock, a heatsink that performs well in an overclocked scenario will perform that much better in a stock scenario.

The Intel stock cooling solution again came up with the highest temperature here at 44°C. The Arctic Freezer 7 Rev2 Pro came it at a decent 39° and the Raijintek Themos Evo at 31°C, the Tisis actually came in a but hotter than the Themis Evo, 3°C actually, not a ton but worth mentioning.

Ok, now on to Cinebench.

No matter how many voltages I changed, I could not hit a 4.6Ghz clock with the stock heatsink. Usually it would work just throttle but the minute I would start up Cinebench it would just continue to fail, any voltage I would change would not work. The 4.6Ghz overclock was saved in a profile as was the stock so for each test I would load and save a profile, the stock heatsink wanted no part of this.

In Cinebench, the Raijintek Tisis again coming in strong at 70°C, 7°C cooler than the Themis Evo and 18°C cooler than the Freezer 7 Rev2.

Cinebench Scores:

• Arctic Freezer7 Pro Rev2 Pro : 919
• Standard Heatsink: FAILED
• Raijintek Themis Evo: 922
• Raijintek Tisis: 919

Oddly enough, the Tisis scored the same as the Arctic Freezer 7, but it still cooled better which is the most important. The Evo still won over them all in the score, though only by 3 points.

Now, the most important I would say would be the test where the CPU’s get stressed the most, Aida64

This would of course tell you which is the best heatsink.

The Raijintek Tisis came in at 89°C, 4°C lower than Themis Evo and 6°C cooler than the Freezer 7 Rev 2 Pro.

The Raijintek Tisis took the crown in performance, it is a great unit but could not stand up and grab the Dragonbloggers Editor’s choice because of how difficult it was to install and how unfriendly it was with the entire system.

This unit does deserve a 5 star Editor’s Choice rating because if there was enough clearance the heatsink would cool much better than what it did in the above tests, every single one of them I have no doubt, but I can only grade it on personal experience. If you have a board that has plenty of room I think this would be the heatsink for you, but for myself I had to give it a 4 Star rating, but it would be a 4 Star with a recommended buy rating, but make sure you check your system.