Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283V Black Nickel CPU Cooler with 120mm Rifle Bearing

by Xigmatek

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 2 x 4.7 x 6.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00275V1PE
• Item model number: Dark Knight S1283V
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 21, 2009

Product Description

Dark Knight-S1283V retains the brilliant record of HDT-S1283 family - powerful, outstanding, high performing and user friendly. The Black Nickel creates a very gentle and noble image, which also increases cooling performance. Like other H.D.T. series coolers, it comes with the advantage of light weight, easy installation, anti-vibration, performance and user friendly.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It can't get any better at this price!!, July 24, 2009

By 

M. Alexander (Trinidad) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283V Black Nickel CPU Cooler with 120mm Rifle Bearing (Personal Computers)

The Xigmatek Dark Knight is one of the Best air coolers out there. I got mine for $44.99 which is usually the price point for the smaller 92mm tower coolers.
Also don't let the picture that Amazon has up there fool you; the one that was shipped to me is Core i7 Ready.
With this cooler Xigmatek have also decided to include a proper mounting kit (Backplate and spring loaded screws) instead of the push-pin type mount. This however brings with it the need to remove the motherboard to install it, a must for any good cooler.

This cooler shaved about 14 deg Cel off my idle temps and about
8 deg Cel off my full load temps

There are however a couple of drawbacks:

1)This cooler is TALL; I have a Cooler Master Elite 330 case which measures 182mm wide and it Barely fits. If i push on the side panel of my case, i can hear it tap on the top of the heatpipes.

2)THE Thermal Interface Material aka "Thermal paste" provided is meant for ONE application Only, meaning there is only enough for ONE (1) CPU.

3)The rubber inserts for the fan require a bit of effort to get in and there is nothing provided to attach a second.

But all in all a Very Very Good cooler
I highly recommend it

System:
Case: CM Elite 330
MBD: Gigabyte P35-DS3R Rev 1.0
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 @ 2.6 GHZ
RAM: 2 x 1Gb OCZ PC 6400 SLI certified
GPU: XFX 8800GTS 320mb
PSU: OCZ GameXstream 700W

**Update July 25th 2010**
Its been just over a year with this cooler; Same machine(processor now at 2.8GHz), same great performance from the cooler
On the downside...the nickel plating doesn't seem to hold up to well on the one that i have; some of it has started to flake off and the appearance on the top plate has dulled quite a lot compared to when it was new.
Now i have to mention that i have my machine running 24/7 in a room that isn't air conditioned and the dust that the heatsink collects also traps moisture which i believe accelerated the deterioration of its appearance.
IT's still a great cooler and its a good thing i don't have a window at the side of my case :)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best bang for the buck, October 8, 2009

By 

J. Giussi (Miami, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283V Black Nickel CPU Cooler with 120mm Rifle Bearing (Personal Computers)

At this price there's absolutely no other cooler that can match its performance. I bought two of these for both my personal computers and they are absolutely awesome and they look gorgeous inside my cases. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who needs a good cpu cooler. Of course there are better coolers but they are way more expensive. Another choice would be to buy the s1284 which has 4 heatpipes instead of the 3 the s1283v has. Oh... another thing, If you want to make this coolers work even better replace the fan with cooler master 120mm fan.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Nice CPU Cooling Unit, September 1, 2009

By 

Daniel F. Van Werken "Getting fatter, older, ... (Scotia, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283V Black Nickel CPU Cooler with 120mm Rifle Bearing (Personal Computers)

First off, this is the third such cooling unit I've installed in my son's computer. The first cooling unit was also a third-party unit. I diligently read the instructions only to find it was poorly designed and would not lock into place. I had to go back to the basics and use the CPU fan that came with the CPU. I guess Intel wants others to make large amounts of cash on CPU fans because theirs also sucked, but at least it stayed attached to the CPU.

Well, the Intel motherboard broke for a second time, so we got another make and this CPU fan as an additional add on. I will tell you, it was easy to put together and relatively easy to install. I gave it four stars because it wasn't perfect. The unit is actually too big and clunky to install easily. I'm a fairly big guy with large fingers, and I was not able to install the unit by myself. I had to have my daughter screw in two of the four screws because I couldn't fit my fingers into the very little space that was available after the unit was set on top of the CPU.

So, if you don't have small fingers, find a child to assist before you begin installation. Likewise, the fan attachment methodology seems a little less than solid. You basically attach pieces of rubber to the fan and then hope for the best as you attempt to attach the rubber pieces to the large fin arrangment. It seems to have worked though. I now actually have two fans (the case fan and this CPU Cooling Unit fan) blowing air past the many fins available.

The other thing to watch out is to plan carefully. You're basically slugging in a large rectangle on top of your CPU. My CPU and memory slots were close together, so I had to make sure I didn't cover over the memory slots with the fins. I just rotated it 90 degrees and all was well. However, installing the fins *before* the memory or even installing the fins *before* screwing in the motherboard was impracticle. There is absolutly no way I could have screwed in the motherboard screws behind the fins with the large fin attachment in place.

Overall though, no complaints. It's working, keeping the very hot CPU cool, and has not failed since I've installed it (which is much more than I can say for the other two units I installed).