Reviews for Xigmatek HDT-S1283 CPU Cooler

A great cooler thats also a great value

Strengths: Excellent Cooling ablility. Fairly quiet fan. Rubber fan mounts for noise. Heatpipes make direct contact with cpu.

Weakness: Push pin cpu mounting. Should have used screws and backplate to mount on motherboard. Very Tall. Base not perfectly flat. Has small groves from the heatpipes.

Keeps my Q6600 cool at 34C at idle and 46C at load. I recommend removing the motherboard to install the heatsink. Also place a little lubricant on the rubber fan mounts to make them easier to install. Place a thin line of thermal paste on each of the heatpipes. Xigmatek has a bolt thru kit on their website but I can't find it for sale online. You can use the Thermalright bolt thru kit instead. Overall a terrific quite cooler.

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Great Heatsink

Strengths: Excellent cooling, quiet fan

Weakness: Not their fault, but those stupid push-lock mounts (Argh!) Plus this thing is HUGE

I have been using this cooler for about two weeks now. Ambient temp in the room is about 73F', and with a Q6600 pushed to 3Ghz, it keeps it around 115F'. The heatsink and fin assembly is HUGE, so be aware that you need about 6.25 inches above the processor to mount it. In addition, in my setup, I have a mid tower, so the heat pipe assembly is oriented horizontally. It is not performing as it should. I would imagine that if the pipes were vertical rather than horizontal, that it would cool even better. I certainly will get one of these for another machine I am building.

The only drawback is those irritating @$%#&! push pin locks that mount the assembly to the motherboard. They apply so much pressure that the mb bows some. I also about broke my thumbs trying to get the last pin to lock. If you have not wrestled with these before, do a dry run in your hands to see how they work before trying to mount them to the board. Another heatsink I have uses a backplate with spring loaded screws. WAY better. Too bad these guys did not go with that kind of mount.

Oh yeah, also using Arctic Silver grease.

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Great cooler, great price

Strengths: Price, Cooling, Weight

Weakness: Quality

This is a very good heatsink for its price. It is on the upper echelon of air coolers, regardless of its budget price. The quality leaves much to be desired, but as long as you're careful, this cooler can do the job. If you are looking to overclock a Core 2 Quad, get this cooler if you can find it for a low price. Recommended.

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Better than Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme

Strengths: I am running a E6850 3.8Ghz with vcore 1.45 V and temperature doesn't go above 65 degrees C.

Weakness: The fan noise can go up. It doesn't fit in the Thermaltake Armor case.

I own Thermaltake V1, CoolerMaster GeminII and ZALMAN CNPS9700 and this is definitely the best cooler I have used.

My rig: CPU:E6850 3.8Ghz/MOBO: P5Q Dlx/ 4x1OCZ Reaper HPC1180/GPU: 9800 gx2/HDD:WD Raptor X/PSU:Antec Quattro 850/Case:Thermaltake Armor

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Best air cooler ever used

Strengths: effective and quiet.

Weakness: installation of the rubber screw made me sweat. Can be cheaper.

I use this cooler to replace the stock one on my new G0 Q6600. I overclocked to 3.2Ghz and it works well. The full load temps dropped about ~15 degrees(C).

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By member: louiv - Aug 15, 2008

Massive Cooler, Tiny Price...

Strengths: Great Cooling for a low price! Competes well with the higher priced solutions.

Weakness: Very Large. I suggest buying the Xigmatek Crossbow braket for a few dollars extra. Makes installation easier and more secure.

This is a great cooler if it will fit in your case. Mine is an NZXT Tempest and I have the fan blowing thru the fins and out the chassis fan. Specs are QX9650 CPU, Asus Striker II NSE, 4GB OCZ Platinum 1333mhz, Dual XFX GTX 280, Kingwin Mach I 1000w PSU....WOot!!

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Great Aircooling at an Even Better Price

Strengths: Best price/performance ratio Direct Heat Touch truly does help Surprisingly light for its size

Weakness: No backplate included which is a pain on Intel based systems due to having to use pushpins Size can limit what cases and motherboards you can use this with

This cooler has been absolutely wonderful. I have this on an Intel Q9450 (@ 3.4GHz) in an ASUS P5Q Deluxe motherboard, and it keeps my full load temps under 50 degrees Celsius.

The only complaint that I have was the installation because using the pushpins, it had to be oriented a specific way on my motherboard. Unfortunately, this wasn't very apparent which caused me to put a lot of stress on my motherboard trying to get the pins to work. Also, I ended up with small lacerations on my fingers because of how sharp the fins are. This wouldn't have happened if I had used a back plate.

I highly recommend using a metal based thermal paste such as Arctic Silver 5. While the curing time is longer, it provides better heat transfer when used with copper. The application was kind of tricky on this heat sink due to the heat pipes. I recommend packing the open spaces to the sides of the heat pipes with paste until you have a perfectly flat surface. Then apply two small lines of paste on the two aluminum pieces between the pipes and put it on the processor.

All in all, I highly recommend this cooler, and the price is outstanding for such a great air cooler. Be sure to check dimensions before buying because it is big.

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HDT-S1283

Strengths: Lots of metal keeps your CPU cool

Weakness: Clips don't work very well.

Installed this cooler on my QuadCore 6600 and Dark DFI Infinity Socket 775 Motherboard. The pushpin clips that retain the assembly were a pain - the fan has to be removed to pop the clips in. Once that is done everthing else went well.

I am not overclocking the CPU yet, but I noticed a 5C reduction in temps under normal loads using this heatsink. Will try to start the overclock game and see how it goes.

I recommend this cooler for the price, just remember to get some good thermal grease, and expect to spend a little time with the installation.

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Excellent cooler for the money

Strengths: Cools incredibly well, very quiet compared to stock fan. Great price compared to similar coolers.

Weakness: Huge, would not fit in my htpc case.

I ordered this to replace a dead stock AM2 fan for an Athlon 64 X2 5200. It was a pain to get installed, I had to take out the motherboard. Once that was out it was not too bad. The performance and noise of this heat sink and fan are great, and it looks pretty cool to boot. I would definitely recommend it.

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A good heatsink cooler

Strengths: Excellent cooler. quiet enough. HDT:Heat-pipe direct touch) technology

Weakness: too big and was not that easy to install

Got it about $27AR. Great value for the unit. Works great on my Q9450. One of the best cooler in this price range. Would recommend it to anyone looking for a top class cooler with a good price.

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Best heatsink I ever used.

Strengths: top notch in every aspect. very quiet and cool compared to the stock heat sink as well as many other more expensive heat sinks. best bang for your buck is right here!

Weakness: the installation wasn't a breeze, but its doable.

I was never an overclocker. But once I read how easy and effective it was to overclock the Core2Duo line, I started researching for a proper 3rd party heat sink and I'm not disappointed with my selection, the HDT-S1283. Everything works like a charm and is nice and cool and don't forget silent!

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Better Cooling at About Half the Cost

Strengths: Direct Touch Design; Pipes in Line with Air Flow; Large Fan

Weakness: This thing is HUGE.

You hear a lot of people talk about the Thermalright Ultra 120 as being the best there is - well it's not entirely "TRUE" - pardon the pun. While the Thermalright does an excellent job, it will set you back about $50 and you end up having to buy the fan separately. This cooler cost me about $30 and it came with everything I needed to keep my Q9450 running cool. I bought the item based not off reviews, but rather actual comparison testing published by a number of websites which showed the Heat-Pipe Direct Touch design (HDT) was more effective - this was the case with every single comparison test. I was concerned at first because my new Asus P5Q3 motherboard has some serious heatsinks on the chipsets and I was afraid that the immense size of this thing would interfere, but it clears those large heatsinks with no problem. The problem, as with the TRUE and the OCZ version of the HDT is with the height. This thing is so big that it may not fit in your case and absolutely no where did I find where anyone had specified the TOTAL height whether it be in a review or in the ads, or even on the box itself - so you're in luck. The total height of the Xigmatech is 6.5" from bottom to top with 1.5" clearance between the bottom of the heatsink to the bottom the fins. It's also 4.75" wide and 3" think (with the fan attached). There - now you have the one advantage I didn't. As far as performance is concerned - no complaints here. Some may want a quieter cooler. If so I would suggest the OCZ version of the HDT, but the fan included with the OCZ does not run at as high of a speed and actually is not quite as effective of a cooler although it still (based on published comparison tests) outperformed the TRUE. I would highly recommend this cooler, but I'll warn you to check your clearances first.

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HDT-S1283 CPU Cooler

Strengths: direct heat pipe contact with processor, superior cooling, fan

Weakness: no backplate

This new hsf design has produced superior cooling. The paste should be applied to hsf to fill in heatpipes. The fan is better on the HDTS1283 than other versions. The unit works better with backplate which is not included. There are backplate kits available which I recommend. Check case and motherboard clearances and expect more difficulty installing which is common with any good aftermarket coolers.

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Great Cooler!

Strengths: Comes with a good fan, it is not huge OR heavy!

Weakness: Kinda expensive and comes with plastic pushpins

A great cooler that comes at a fair price. Only down side is that it only comes with the plastic pushpins and not a bolt thru set. Otherwise a good produce, kept my q6600 and e8400 very cold.

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Best heatsink for the money around

Strengths: Keeps my cpu nice and cool

Weakness: The anti-vibration screws for the fan are a bit of a pain to attach.

This cooler is great. I switched from the stock cooler and my load temps dropped about 10 degrees C. Im running an e2180 @ 3.5GHz at 1.5v. At an ambient temperature of 22C, I idle at about 30C and peak at about 63-65C while running a Prime95 stress test. Overall, this is probably the best price/performance heatsink around.

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great cooler

Strengths: -very effective -not too big in size -fairly quiet fan

Weakness: -rubber screw for fan feels a bit flimsy

I got this cooler to replace the stock on my Q6600. It cools very well as I overclocked to 3ghz. The idle temp is 34c and underload is ~50c. My stock cooler temp was 43c idle and 69c underload. This cooler is a major improvement and highly recommended.

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Best CPU Cooler

Bestcovery experts have rated the Xigmatek HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler as a best pick for the Best CPU Cooler. Bestcovery's experts recommend the best products and services for a particular need based on extensive research and evaluations. Click below to see Bestcovery's full review of this product.

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Xigmatek HDT-S1283

Testseek.com has collected 29 expert reviews for Xigmatek HDT-S1283 and the average expert rating is 87 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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