Self-experiment for second life: former high-end instead of current middle class | Retro

1 - Alt oder neu: Was kann weg und was darf bleiben? 2 - Zeigen, was man hat: Raijintek Paean und Zusammenbau 3 - Fertigstellung und Benchmarks

Showcase with the Raijintek Paean

What benefits you with the most beautiful hardware when no one sees it? Some people want to proll a little. Why not? After all, we also want to show what we have achieved. And the bling factor of our top hardware from yesterday is still an optically delicious eye-catcher for outsiders today.

And what about the noble restraint? That is why we ultimately decided on a compromise show case. Open, almost transparent and yet, thanks to the coloured glass, not quite open-hearted. Something like irritant wash for hardware. Insight yes, but it doesn’t have to be the deep insight. The imagination is also allowed to work a little.

With a street price of approx. 160 Euro the kit is not quite cheap and you could of course get it much cheaper. But we actually want to make an appetite and the rest then works like in the economy: first come the engineers and the marketing, then the accountants. In the end, everyone has to live with it somehow.

That’s why we try to get former high-end as cheap as possible and still pack it nicely. Mid-range hardware in a mid-range case looks more boring, but it certainly doesn’t work any worse. The heart and brain often wander separate paths.

Mainboard installation

All this is modular-like also screwed together quite quickly. The 4mm thick aluminium mounting plate in the middle is solid, absolutely torsion-stiff and also quite well divided. Even over-deep motherboards still find their place, so that the connection cables for the power supply can easily go through.

This is not self-evident and we have had some problems with this very motherboard in the past. But not here. This would also answer the question that attentive readers might have asked: why we actually played here with two so different motherboards.

In the end we had installed the black-and-yellow MSI X99S XPower AC, and not the Asus Rampage V Extreme, which would also have exceeded the price frame a bit. But the size just had to be tested!

AiO installation

It was pretty tight, but it fits. Thank God. With less than 35 cm hose length you don’t have to start here. The new Orcus 240 from Raijintek relies on a pump that is mounted in a fully-supporting hose system. Cleverly solved and a pity for Asetek, who probably can’t complain about it. Good for the customer, because the pump noise is so perfectly attenuated by the hose that a complete decoupling from the housing takes place.

It is perceptible when everything else is silent, but the difference between just as perceptible and disturbing is already as great as the Milky Way. The fact that a “pump wheel” rotates over the Cold Plate is pure optics and completely dysfunctional. But we already know this from the gas station. Please tap bubble-free.

Both the supplied IRIS fans and the pump cooler housing are connected to the RGB controller from the scope of delivery. This in turn can also be controlled covertly with a radio remote control (no IR!) or you can simply connect it to the appropriate RGB output of the motherboard.

Power supply assembly and cabling

The Seasonic Focus Plus 650 Watt Platinum is quite short (which of course suits us very well) and is screwed to the back of the mounting plate. Since the cables are modular, we only use what we really need. Of course, we also use all the cable ties for the great optical harmony, but it shows once again that you can hide with smoked glass, which even carries the appearance of chaos.

What we would criticize the only thing about the power supply is the missing second EPS plug for the CPU, which you can already find in the power classes below and which should actually be standard by now. After all, you can at least reorder it. For this purpose, we were able to fully operate the three 8-pin connectors of our graphics card. Runs.

Data carriers and cable carriers

At the same time, the hard drive carrier is also well suited to partially subtract annoying but necessary cables from view. In the case of data carriers, however, this is such a thing with the use.

In general, we would only install 2.5″ SSDS, but no mechanical hard drives. Even if decoupling with screw and O-ring is standard in class, something always lifts and vibrates. Low tone can be annoying, resonances are no less.

Graphics card assembly (with obstacles)

The Raijintek Paean can certainly do so much, but with overlong and overweight graphics cards, that’s one thing. For normal cards with less than approx. We would even agree to install 1.3 kilos of live mass horizontally, but as massive as the mounting plate may be, the frame for the expansion slots is unfortunately not quite there.

After just one day, we had a nice optical hanger, so we either had to switch to a lighter card or faced the task of solving the assembly differently. Since the Lightning is also very high, the PCI-Express connection cables would have already collided with the great glass wall. Frontal impact.

That’s why we finally decided on the Paxx-S, which allowed us to mount the card vertically and using riser cables. Again, the card is already quite thick in the shop and Newton was right as always. It pushes everything towards the center of the earth. Only all the screws and a small angle below the card help, which we have simply bent on the mounting plate by 90°.

We have not received the stability price, which presupposes that it also includes pothole-filled Siberian roads with a standing transport and 100 km/h. That would have been a little too much of a good thing because of the over-heavy card. But normal transports and daily operation are at least safe in your pocket. How the whole thing then performs (still) and what you hear (or not), we read after turning over.