Closer Examination

The Raijintek Forkis PRO RBW has an underrated aesthetic in my opinion based on how little people seem to talk about it online. I appreciate the monochrome color scheme, with a predominant use of black throughout and white for markings to contrast against the darker background. This is seen with the Raijintek logo, as well as arrows clearly indicating the preferred inlet and outlet directions of the coolant. These are placed on an aluminium frame that gets a brushed finish on the top and chamfered edges going around the middle cutout, exposing the PMMA top used on this version. The frame is no doubt held in place by the four hex head screws we see here, and I have little to complain in general even when digging out the macro lens to see well-threaded BSP G1/4" ports here. These are spaced far enough apart from each other and the edge to allow all typically used fittings these days to be installed easily—gone are the days of large 3/4" x 1/2" soft tube compression fittings and even large quick connect fittings! Even the side view shows very little, albeit I do wish that sticker was not installed on the waterblock itself, even if it's easy enough to peel off. The PMMA section itself isn't as polished on the sides as on the front, although this would potentially help diffuse the LED lighting further to make for a more uniform light show around the block. The Intel mounting bracket does indeed come pre-installed as postulated earlier, and on the top side juts out the expected LED power/control ribbon cable that terminates in an unusual 4-pin connector, despite this using standard 5 V addressable RGB LEDs.


Raijintek has a pre-applied sticker over the nickel-plated copper cold plate to keep it free of fingerprints or other contaminants, which is a good thing given it does come nicely polished and reflective for those who care—it's not really a testament to the overall fit achieved and performance of the block itself. As mentioned, do remember to take it off prior to installation. The cold plate itself has a light convex bow to it such that the inward pressure from the corners during installation should help make for a decent, uniform contact with the CPU IHS.


Removing the aluminium frame shows a fully functional acrylic top, and it should go without saying, don't over-tighten fittings here lest you get micro-fractures in the acrylic or worse. We also see a octagon-shaped PCB that sits in a recess in the top to have downward firing RGB LEDs. There are 12 addressable RGB LEDs here, and note the one that's clearly burnt out. This was my fault given I did not place the LED cable header correctly in my LED controller and Raijintek does have a warning about it on the product page. Still, I would like to think it's less obvious than it seems, and people are likely to make the same error I did owing to the not-exactly-standard connector used, given you still plug the cable into a 3-pin header and not a 4-pin one, and also the right way round at that. I would only urge Raijintek to remove any scope of confusion here which is otherwise a detraction to a fairly decent-looking block thus far.

Further disassembly was done after all testing was completed, and this happens from the cold plate side with four more screws involved. The cold plate come off easily to reveal a typical cooling engine design, complete with O-rings to ensure the coolant stays in the desired travel pathway through the block, as well as a relatively thick steel jetplate making for a split central-inlet flow path for the coolant. The cold plate has the usual machined microfins and microchannels too and we see it takes up a relatively large fraction of the available surface area to allow for increased heat transfer potential, but at the risk of having a higher pressure drop across the block.