Xigmatek HDT-S1283 Heatsink Review

The HDT-S1283, Xigmatek’s flagship performance air cooler with heat-pipe direct touch CPU. How will it perform?

Now, before we dive into performance details, let’s have a look at this particular heatsink unit.

Appearance

The heatsink is as sturdy as it looks. Solid build with 3 copper heat-pipe bent in U-shaped fashion. The aluminum base was designed to hold the copper pipes and ensure it is in direct contact with the processor while its longer ends of the copper pipes are joined to an array of tightly packed aluminum fins.

The package comes a 120mm PWM fan, anti-vibration rubber studs to hold the fan and also a 3 in 1 application: LGA775 push-pin/K8 & AM2 tool-less clip.

Installation was not an easy task, especially when you decide to mount the heatsink without removing your motherboard from the casing, consider the size of the HDT-S1283.

I’ve always hated the idea of having to remove a motherboard just to install a heatsink. For the HDT-S1283, I’ve decided to install the HDT-S1283 on my Biostar TP35D2-A7 motherboard without removing it from my Coolermaster Centurion-2 casing. 🙂 I thought it’ll be great to know whether it is possible to install without much effort.

After applying a dab of the Arctic Cooling MX-2 on the processor, I proceeded to mount the heatsink. While push-pin installation for LGA775 should be a breeze, it wasn’t so in this case because the pins were somewhat blocked by the fan but after some careful (and precision!) alignment – the unit was finally on the motherboard, YAY!

Due to the enormous nature of the heatsink, you can see (in one of the pictures) that the fins are nearly touching the power supply unit while cover a portion of the northbridge heatsink.

Next step – close the casing……… unfortunately the height of the HDT-S1283, I was not able to close the side-panel for my Centurion 2 casing. 🙁 Alright, never mind. In the end I still proceeded with the performance test of this heatsink. The fan was powered via the motherboard.

Speaking of the fan, the 120mm fan that came along with the HDT-S1283 is attached to the heatsink via 4x rubber studs that hold it into place. Unlike other heatsinks that have fans in direct contact with the plastic holder piece or the heatsink foils, the rubber studs for the HDT-S1283 are the only contact point between the fan and the heatsink unit – an interesting concept for vibration noise reduction. 🙂

Technical Data

For the heatsink

For the fan

Get full details at the official product page

Performance

For the performance test, I just run both my processor cores at 100% load and took the readings. The processor? My overclocked Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2140 running at 3.2Ghz.

Ambient temperature was around temperature was around 25°C when the readings were taken.

Yes, call me crazy for testing it without fan. 😉 I’m just curious on how far it can go without a fan blowing at it.

Please do note that in this test, the side-panel for my casing wasn’t completely closed so with a properly enclosed casing you SHOULD see the temperatures being lower by a few degrees.

Conclusion

It’s a great cooler, no doubt about that.
The only thing I didn’t like about the HDT-S1283 was the size of it that could be unfriendly to smaller casings, in my case the casing wasn’t wide enough to fit the entire height of the HDT-S1283. The 120mm fan? It was silent as it is, just that the silence is somewhat broken once the RPM goes to maximum when the processor is on load.

I’m also glad that Xigmatek included holding clips that cater for multiple socket types.