Forward-looking: German hardware maker Raijintek has announced a new version of its popular Morpheus aftermarket GPU heatsink that promises to keep all but the RTX 4090 chillier than the stock cooler can. It also looks great if you enjoy the industrial aesthetic of two exposed fans strapped to a hulk of black anodized aluminum.
Raijintek rather unceremoniously announced the Morpheus 8069 through Igor's Lab this weekend after leaked photos of the cooler found their way onto the internet late last week. But it had already let Igor's Lab run some tests on an early prototype a few months ago, so it was hardly a surprise.
The Morpheus 8069 takes the opposite approach to most board partner coolers: instead of strapping more metal to the heatsink and using faster fans, it relies on thoughtful engineering and careful construction to achieve similar or better results with less material.
It weighs in at a mere 515 g (1.1 pounds) and measures up to 245 x 110 x 44 mm. For comparison, the RTX 3090 FE cooler that it was designed to replace weighs 2125 g (4.7 pounds) with the PCB and is a fair bit longer at 313 x 124 x 52 mm. The GPU has a 320W TGP, and the 8069 can dissipate up to 360W with two fans, not included.
It looks in the renders like the cooler has six heatpipes, but Raijintek promises that it has 12, each 6 mm in diameter. All of them meet at the GPU die before half of them branch out across the PCB and half wrap around over the die. Raijintek says that they could've been joined together into six pipes, but found that dividing them into shorter paths had huge advantages.
The 8069's plus-shaped nickel-coated copper base extends to cover the memory modules of all modern GPUs ensuring that they're amply cooled. Included in the box are five copper heatsinks and three smaller aluminum ones that can be glued onto any line of VRMs. Igor's Lab found that they worked well but were at risk of falling off if the GPU was installed pointing downwards. The outlet says that the risk is manageable with some knowledge about thermal pads but doesn't recommend the process to first-time builders.
Igor's Lab only briefly tested the prototype 8069 with two 125 x 25 mm case fans mounted and found that it did a good job keeping an RTX 3080 cool. After running the Furmark stress test for multiple hours, the GPU stayed at a breezy 55° C in a 24° C room and only peaked at about 70° C in a hotspot, which is a great result. Read their report for the full breakdown (in German).
I'm personally excited to see how the Morpheus 8069 performs as a passive cooler. It doesn't look like it's capable of passively cooling anything powerful while a game is running, but because its design is so open, it should be able to hold on a bit longer than other coolers can before spinning up the fans.
It will only be a week before it hits the market on November 1 and we can find out more. Raijintek is waiting until then to announce the availability and pricing, but most of their products are available globally through their partners. Newegg currently lists their older but similar Morpheus Vega for $95, so we'd imagine that the Morpheus 8069 would land in the ballpark of $150-200.