The shipping container for the Reeven Justice is pretty decent. It makes use of good contrasting color pallet while making the large picture of the Justice itself the main focus. Mix in a decent amount of information, in multiple languages, and from just an aesthetics point of view it is more than ‘good enough’. With that said it will be easier to get lost on store shelves than the more attractive E12 RGB. This is because the Reeven Justice is an older design that came from a different era with different philosophy on what made a cooler a good cooler. Yes, this is going to be a reoccurring theme for the Reeven Justice.
Opening the box up we can see both good and bad things happening. On the positive the Reeven Justice comes with the fan (and fan mounting tabs) preinstalled. This will save a bit of time during installation. On the other the device itself is not overly secure. This is because while the top and bottom are well padded (via either foam or the accessory cardboard box)… the Reeven Justice can move from side to side. In our sample’s case the inside of the cardboard is dented in multiple places from this happening. So much so that this did slightly bend a fin on the fin array. Not enough to be overly concerning… but not something you will want to see on your new purchase either. Overall this box is a little underwhelming in the protection department so we would be a bit hesitant over having it shipped across the county. With that said it is good enough to pickup at a local store and bring home. It really will come down to how poorly treated in transit it will be.
Moving on. The accessory list that comes with the Reeven Justice is pretty darn good. This is something that impressed us with the inexpensive Reeven E12 RGB and the same holds true for the older Reeven Justice. In grand total you can expect to find an installation pamphlet, enough fan mounting tabs to mount two fans, a single 120mm fan, enough mounting hardware to cover off everything from ancient Intel 775 to Intel HEDT systems, and everything but ThreadRipper systems on AMD’s side.
With that said there are few disappointing things to go over. Firstly, this design relies upon four plastic tabs for mounting the fan to the array. We are not overly found of plastic as it does tend to weaken and then break over time. Equally important is the fan will not be mounted all that close to the fin array. Instead it will be about 1/16inch away from the fin array. In testing air will indeed have a tendency to jump this gap, hit the face of the fin array… and bounce out the top. Only when there is another fan on the other side is this issue almost moot (as air is being sucked in with enough force to overcome this configuration issue). A higher static pressure fan would have also made this almost a non-issue.
The next issue is more of a nitpick. It has been a loooooong time since we have since little ‘one shot’ TIM applicators like what is included. This really does underscore how old the Reeven Justice design really is… as these days companies either pre-apply the TIM to the base or include a small tube of TIM. Put simply no one liked this method of TIM dispensing and it was dropped in favor or more optimal alternatives long ago.
The last issue goes hand in hand with the previous two in that is highlights the older design philosophy behind the Reeven Justice. This of course is the included fan. This fan may indeed be capable of pushing a rather large amount of air (87CFM, thanks to a 1500rpm rating)… but it has almost no static pressure abilities at all. So little that you have to go to three decimal places to get an accurate static pressure rating of 0.067mm of H20. This is why the standoff for the mounting brackets are included as it is trying to overcome this issue via engineering. As we will show later in this review… it does not really work. In head to head testing between two of these fans and two Scythe fans running at 1500rpm (with noticeably higher static pressure) the results are night and day different.
Mix in the fact that the included ‘ColdWing 12’ fan is a sleeve bearing based fan… and well there is not much going for it beyond its pretty looks. Yes the gold colored fan blades do add a nice touch of color to an otherwise bland looking cooler, but there is absolutely nothing else good about the included stock fan. Once again this is all because the Reeven Justice comes from an early period where air movement was all that was considered important. Since then this theory has been proven to be false and is why even models like the noticeably cheaper E12 come with much, much beefier fans. As such we would be hesitant to even use the included fan and would rather use almost any other 120mm fan on the market instead… even a lower speed one. Caveat Emptor is in full effect here.
This is unfortunate, as the Reeven Justice cooler itself is an excellent mid-sized CPU cooling design. One that has been time tested and proven to be a winning one. Let’s start at the base and ‘work up’. As you can see this CPU cooling solution relies upon six 6mm heatpipes. This in conjunction with a solid base – that allows heat to be transferred to all six heatpipes (and not just those touching the CPU’s Integrated Heat Spreader) – can handle loads that are well in excess of what all but the most heavy overclocks can handle.
Usually this means a ‘large’ form-factor for the cooling tower is needed. While yes this is a chunky cooler (it is 131 by 162 by 105mm), Reeven has bent the heatpipes inwards allowing for a more compact fin array that still is big enough to handle most loads. Arguably a bigger fin array would be more optimal, but it is a balancing act between size of the cooling array and ease of installation… as otherwise all coolers would be the size of a Noctua D15!
The fin array itself has also been optimized for performance. This has been done by integrating two features. The first is a moderately advanced (and cutting edge for when this design first appeared) ‘face’ to both sides of the fin array that removes the dead zone in front of the cooling fan’s hub, and reduces static pressure requirements. Basically, by including a built-in standoff / shroud the air is allowed to be smoothed out before being forced through the fin array. Of course, Reeven has then doubled up on the standoff distance via the plastic spacers… which reduces this usability but it does help somewhat.
The fin array spacing is also fairly generous. While this does decrease the total surface area in the fin array, it does reduce static pressure and allows air to easily flow around all six heatpipes. This is an important feature as all the heatpipes are in a double row. With each end of the heat pipe in a single row on one side of the fin array and the other on the opposite end… much like two rows of toy soldiers. Arguably a ‘double diamond’ configuration would have been more optimal given the rather limited static pressure abilities of the stock fan, but this would have further complicated the design and increased the overall build cost.
In a very, very interesting tweak Reeven has not gone for the typical topper. Usually the top fin array is just there for aesthetics and does not really do much. If you look carefully you can see this topper is connected to multiple fins in the array. While only a little bit of heat will be transferred via the screws it does actually make the top fin useful and guarantees the aesthetically pleasing topper does not pop off.
Overall the Reeven Justice has the bones of a rather good cooling solution, it is just that the combination of plastic fan connectors with a fan that is less than optimal does put more than a mere patina covering over the shine of it. Of course, none of these are deal-breakers. Wire fan mounting connectors can easily be used on this cooler (as it was originally built around such fan mounting equipment). The same is true of swapping out the fan for a good fan or two. So while it appears to be a touch over-priced for the TLC it needs to perform optimally we will withhold our final opinion until we actually see this cooler in action… in action in stock single & double fan configuration, as well as single and dual aftermarket fan configurations.
