Xigmatek Coolers XP-S964 & HDT-S1283

Author: Jouni 'Jipa' Vasama Published: 02.04.2008 Manufacturer: Xigmatek. Product Group: Coolers In English Suomeksi

Performance

The coolers were tested in a Antec P180B case. The original Tri-Cool fans of the case have been swapped to more quiet Nexus fans, which also has reduced the airflow through the case a bit. The rest of the hardware contains E6750 (3 GHz) and Abit IP35 motherboard. Software used were Core Temp, Orthos and CPUID Hardware Monitor for the fan speeds. Temperature reading is the highest reported for both cores.

Now something doesn't seem quite right here. Despite numerous installing attemps with varying amounts of thermal paste, the idle temperatures simply refused to drop under 34/31 C. The temperature inside the case was 25 C and minimal temperature difference of 9 C is just too much for these coolers. The conclusion here is that the IHS of the CPU is just too bent to provide a good contact.

That aside, the load temperatures, though a bit on the high side for this particular CPU, give us some nice readings. While the boxed cooler barely managed to keep the 3 GHz E6750 under 60 C at full load, both Xigmateks do clearly better. With the fan speed set to auto, the XP-S964 drops the temperatures by hefty 8 degrees and the HDT-S1283 does up to 13 degrees better than the Boxed.

Cranking the fan speed to 100 percent lowered the load temperatures by five degrees on both the boxed cooler and the XP-S964, but it seems like the most powerful HDT-S1283 reached the CPU limitations again, as it only managed to squeeze two degrees off the results even the fan speed increased by over 500 RPM.

Noise

As suspected, the larger fan of the HDT-S1283 proved to be the quieter of these two. On the temperature tests the "auto" fan setting means that the motherboard adjusts the fan speed so that the CPU doesn't get hotter than 55 degrees. In practise this meant that the 92 mm fan on the XP-S964 ran at 1340 RPM and the large 120 mm fan of the HDT-S1283 rotated one 820 times in a minute. At this setting both coolers were fairly quiet and the noise made by the fan didn't stand out from the rest of the system.

At full speed (100% on the chart) the 92 mm fan ramped up to 2900 RPM and became very noisy. Noise is a very objective thing, but alteast I wouldn't use the XP-S964 at full speed. The HDT-S1283 on the other hand still remained reasonably quiet at 1370 RPM. Neither of the fans are the really top of the range in terms of silence and performance, but especially the 120 mm fan on the HDT-S1283 did its job well also on the noise tests. When a fan controller is used then also the XP-S964 can be considered a quiet cooler.

Conclusion HDT-S1283   Performance   Quiet even with stock fan   Airflow for motherboard   The mounting pins   Base not exactly flat   XP-S964   Better than Intel boxed   Noisy at high fan speeds   Mounting clip's location Editor's Choice! Solid performer! It's always hard to tell if the advertised features work in real life, but especially the direct touch heat pipes seem to make sense. Be it because of them or not, the HDT-S1283 is really top of the range cooler in terms of cooling power, but unfortunately the mounting system simply isn't up to task. The cooler weights 600 grams with the fan, and that already seems like a ton when it's hanging over the graphic card, supported by nothing but four plastic pins. The plastic pins are also shown to be worse method than screws in terms of performance, so manufacturers: please, include some kind of bolt-through kit instead of the pins with your top of the line coolers. Other than the mounting pins, there's nothing wrong with the HDT-S1283 and it really deserves our editors choice-award! The XP-S964 doesn't feature any new ground breaking ideas, just the good basic design of heatpipes and lots of fins to provide as much surface area as possible. The XP-S964 may not compete in performance with the largest coolers out there, but there's nothing wrong with it, either. It cools the CPU better than the boxed cooler and also stays nice and quiet at low speeds. A nice upgrade from the boxed cooler, but doesn't really shine in terms of either performance or silence.

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Additional Information

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