XIGMATEK HDT-S963 (082) Cooler

Performance

Engineers that design coolers have to be able to make a cooler that's not overly big or heavy, yet have the capability to deal with large amounts of heat. This is harder than it sounds, and many new methods have been tried. Different materials, different shapes and sizes, more powerful fans, and other technologies such as heatpipes are some of the ways to improve a cooler's performance. One thing with CPUs at least, is that they are becoming more energy efficient and cooler running - unlike GPUs.

For the test setup, Prime95 was used to load the CPU, and Windows at the Desktop was used to get the idle temperature. Different clocks/voltage were used to increase the total heat output. The amount of heat output of a processor is measured in watts. All CPUs/GPUs have what's known as a TDP or Thermal Design Point which is given by the manufacturer (different manufacturers measure TDP in different ways). This TDP rating gives a base of how much heat is being dissipated off of a CPU when it's at its default state (not overclocked). However to get the heat output of an overclocked CPU, a formula is needed. To calculate this, the formula " TDP * (OC MHz / Stock MHz) * (OC vCore / Stock vCore )² " was used.

CPU:	AMD Athlon64 FX-55 (S939; 1024 KB; San Diego; 104 Watt)
Motherboard:	DFI LanParty RDX200 CF-DR ATI RD480
Memory:	2x1024MB OCZ Platinum PC3200
Video Card:	ATI Radeon X1900XTX
PSU:	SilverStone Decathlon DA750
Hard Drive:	Raptor WD360, Barracuda 7200.10
Software:	Windows XP SP2

The cooler was mounted, then removed immediately after and the contact area was inspected. The contact between the heat pipes and CPU was excellent, but the rest of the base was not so good. I'm one that likes a perfectly smooth base, and these new coolers with the heat pipe as the base won't give you that. Although, it's the contact with the heat pipes that matter for heat transfer, so it's not as much as an issue as it could seem.

Now let's look at some numbers to see how this cooler stacks up with it's new heat pipe technology and how it compares to the iCEAGE cooler by 3R System with the same type of base.


The performance of the 082 is very good, and is just behind the massive 120mm iCEAGE cooler.


Again at a very high heat load, the 082 does a very nice job at taming the heat produced by the A64 FX. The overall performance of the 082 is superb and it does it without being a huge cooler. It is still large, but 92 mm is going to fit into almost any system easily.