Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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 :)

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.

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).

Xigmatek has to have the worst customer service. The CPU fan stopped working on this unit after 2 months and I was requested an RMA. I sent in the fan and they have received it but have not sent out a replacement yet. It has been 2 weeks since and I have received no replies after contacting them on the status. So now I am stuck with a useless CPU cooler without a fan......

I have not received one of the rebates from January on this unit. My second rebate was sent out this Summer on another unit and I'm not expecting anything back from it.

The CPU cooler worked fine when it was functional. Until Xigmatek contacts me back, I am not rating them any higher than one star nor will I ever buy anything from them again.

After 2 weeks without a fan on the CPU, I finally gave up and ordered a Corsair CPU cooler. I will never buy another Xigmatek product. Look for something else if you don't want to be scammed by their rebate offers and their poor customer service.

When building my workstation to conduct multi-nanosecond molecular dynamics simulations of macromolecules, I chose a modest build: i7 920 2.66 GHz, 3 GB of RAM (to start with, kinda on a budget), MSI built GeForce 240 GTX, MSI mobo model: x58 Pro-E. I researched the processor thoroughly to ensure it was exactly what I needed and just tossed in a decent enough graphics card, and a starting point in RAM (more will be added, when more funds come in, a.k.a. more paychecks). However, I neglected to really put the time in to research the motherboard to understand that it operates HOT. The model has received many complaints about running above 100 C and idling around 60-80 C. Needless to say, I was interested in cooling products immediately.

Once installing two temperature sensor applets (using Ubuntu, so I have no access to SpeedFan or CPU-Z, etc.) I was somewhat relieved that the operating temperatures hovered around 30 C at idle for the CPU, with the input/output hub (IOH) at 72 C. When starting a minimization of a protein within AMBER10, the temperatures rose quickly and unmercifully until both CPU and IOH hit 80 C and rattled around for several minutes until I couldn't watch any longer. The main case fan was set to blow hot air out, which is basically equivalent to attempting to keep the Titanic afloat by bailing water with a dinner glass: it just doesn't work. I opened the case up, spun the fan around, and watched as the temperatures fell to about 27 C for the CPU at idle, 60-65 C in simulation, while the IOH really never wandered too far from 70 C in simulation or just sitting there doing nothing. Still too hot for my liking. I won't have 8+ day (10 nanoseconds) simulations ruined by overheating components.

In search of a solution I turned to an Antec Spot Fan which basically did nothing because all the hot pieces are under large, inadequate heatsinks. I resorted to opening a window and putting a large house fan at the rear of the machine to literally blast the case with frigid air. This gave me some breathing room which I ate away with a slight overclock of the processor to 2.90 GHz (within the included overclocking ability of the processor) which helped to push my simulations further and pick up more than one nanosecond per day of simulation on a system with 72,711 degrees of freedom. Operating temps at this point are essentially equivalent to those described before, except the CPU temp. would go as low as 56 C on occasion. Still not a good solution, it won't be this cold outside all year long, so I bought one of these fans, coupled with Arctic MX-3.

After removing all the components and getting the motherboard out, I applied the thermal compound to the motherboard's heatsinks and to the CPU and GPU. I secured all the heatsinks with additional pressure and proceeded to wrangle the rather large CPU cooler onto the motherboard. I found it difficult to fit the fan on the rubber holders simply due to the fact that I had to wedge my hand in a place that wouldn't allow me enough leverage on the rubber to pull it through, so I can't count this against the manufacturer. The construction is solid and the fins are sturdy--I banged the crap out of them getting the unit in (it's a pretty tight fit) and the unit is perfectly fine.

Performance wise, I couldn't be happier. Overclocked to 2.90 GHz, it dropped the CPU temp to 38 C in a simulation using all four cores (8 threads) in parallel and the IOH temp. dropped to 53-55 C (simply changing the thermal compound and adding additional pressure). When I upped the base frequency to 150 (running at 3.0 GHz) the max temperature in simulation is 47 C for the CPU and 58 C for the IOH. The best news of all: the window is closed and the house fan is on its lowest (and quietest) setting. The house fan is there just to keep the air flowing out the front of the case and not settling down on the GPU.

In short:
BEFORE -- CPU and IOH ~ 80 C -- stock frequency
AFTER (Cooler + Arctic MX-3) -- CPU 47 C and IOH 58 C -- CPU overclocked slightly to 3.00 GHz

This cpu cooler keeps my q6600 overclocked at 3.4ghz with a vcore of 1.4125 always below 50° celcius... also it looks really good and its kinda silent (at least it is not loud enough to botherme)... i have to say that the only thing i dislike its the way the fan its mounted, cause the bottom "rubber pins" are hard to reach and secure... that's it!

Este cpu cooler mantiene mi q6600 overclockeado a 3.4ghz con un voltake de 1.4125 siempre por debajo de los 50° celcius, además se ve muy muy bien! y es silencioso al menos a mi parecer, cabe destacar que las piezitas que se usan para montar el ventilador en el cpu cooler son dificiles de poner, especialmente las de abajo... eso es todo! en definitiva es muy bueno y se lo recomiendo a quien tenga pensado overclockear su cpu!

This heatsink is unbelievable. I replaced a much smaller Coolermaster hs/f with this one after my mobo started beeping at me on startup and during some games. Turned out the fan wasn't running well enough so my new Intel Quad was getting a little warm. No problems anymore and all my components are running at under 30C. The heatsink is so massive by itself that I doubt you even really need the fan for regular use, but hey, the cooler the better!

I'm an A+ tech so the installation wasn't too horribly scary. It's not as easy as popping on a bundled Intel fan, but we're looking for better performance than that anyway. You should be fairly comfortable with hardware upgrades before you attempt something like this as in most cases you will need to extract your motherboard to secure the hs retainer plate beneath it before securing to the CPU. I was impressed by the overall construction quality at this price point and the performance is outstanding...especially considering the one that I just replaced.

No cons from me. I feel like I got a good value for a quality product.

Installation was easy and worked great the first install. I didnt try the thermal paste that came with it. I used Artic Silver Thermal Paste. My temps dropped by 9 degrees celsius (Idle) from the stock cooler! I have a AMD 64 X2 6400+ processor. I also have a M3A motherboard and the fan does block my first RAM slot, so I shifted my RAM over one slot, seems to work fine, but if I didnt have available RAM slots it could have been a problem. I am currently using 2 of 4 RAM slots.

I built the Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz system on Asus P6T DELUXE V2 Motherboard and overclocked to 3.8GHz with core cpu voltage set to 1.225V.
The Intel stock cooler cools the cpu down to 45C when idle but couln't keep it down below 85C when 100% load running Prime95 "Torture Test" and SpeedFan.
[...] Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 review and Amazon.com's price led me to buy this S1283V.
After installing S1283V with included thermal paste (I used very small portion), idle and 100% load temperatures down to 36C and 76C accordingly.
Although the fan noise is noticable when 100% load, when idle I hear only whispering fan sound.
Very nice!

Installed into CM storm scout case on a gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AM3 motherboard.

This was installed while the MB was already bolted into the case, the bracket was a tad annoying, requires some eyeballing to make sure the plate is lined up correctly. Installing in the case also prevents the top fan slot on the side panel from being occupied by a 120mm fan, but no big deal... the airflow in the case more than compensates.

- the fan's led's are a nice dim white glow, accents the other lighting very nicely.
- the fan is very quiet, much lower than the other 120mm fans in the case.
- sink was installed using arctic silver, and has a dual core PhenomII unlocked to 4 stable cores (good luck on my part) and running around 27c on idle.

this sink was a TON easier to install in comparison to the cm tower sinks I have been testing lately.

I hear the black nickel eventually will be flaking off according to some older reviews, but by that time a new system will most likely be getting built, and the unit will not be getting touched, so we shall see.


just wish it was easier to install a push-pull configuration out of the box, but i knew this going in, no deduction.

- great price, looks great, works great (so far).