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. With the Xigmatek 1283 not only do they use the heatpipes as direct contact with the CPU, but they also use very large pipes; 8mm compared to the usual 6 mm.

The system being used to test the heatsink is as follows:

CPU:	Intel E6850 Core2 Duo
Clock speed:	9 x 333 MHz = 3.0 GHz, Memory at DDR2-667
Motherboard:	Asus P5W DH Deluxe
Memory:	2 x 1GB G.Skill F2-6400PHU1-2GBHZ
Video Card:	Sapphire HD 2900XT PCI-e
Harddisk:	4 x 250 GB Seagate 7200.10 in Matrix Raid 0/5
Power Supply:	ThermalTake ToughPower 850W
Case:	Lian Li PC-A10B
Software:	Windows XP Pro SP2, Catalyst 7.12

Ambient temperature was kept to 22º Celsius (+/- 1 degree) and was measured by a standard mercury thermometer. Orthos Stress Prime was used to load the CPU for 30 minutes, and temperatures were monitored using Core Temp 0.96.

Now let's look at some numbers to see how this cooler stacks up with its massive heatpipes.





Overall the Xigmatek S1283 performed well and obviously couldn't keep up with the water cooling blocks but did hold its own against the other air cooler tested.