Xigmatek SD1283 Dark Knight Night Hawk Edition CPU Cooler

We will be taking a look at a very intriguing looking CPU cooler today. The cooler is the Xigmatek Dark Knight SD1283 Night Hawk Edition. What makes this cooler so intriguing is the fact it is covered with a special coating that is supposed to help dissipate heat produced by the CPU at a faster rate. Does it work? Well, we will test the cooler under our normal testing procedures and see how well the cooler performs. But I doubt we will be able to tell you if it is because of the coating. Read on and see what it is all about.

Introduction to the Xigmatek SD1283 Dark Knight Night Hawk Edition CPU Cooler

We will be taking a look at a very intriguing looking CPU cooler today. The cooler is the Xigmatek Dark Knight SD1283 Night Hawk Edition. What makes this cooler so intriguing is the fact it is covered with a special coating that is supposed to help dissipate heat produced by the CPU at a faster rate. Does it work? Well, we will test the cooler under our normal testing procedures and see how well the cooler performs. But I doubt we will be able to tell you if it is because of the coating. Read on and see what it is all about.

Xigmatek’s take on the Dark Knight

Special formulated ceramic coating with stealth technology for ultimate heat dispensing. This innovative composite coating is specially designed to conduct heat away from its source rapidly and dispense it extremely fast without leaving any trace on the surface. Night Hawk comes with 3 x 8 mm HIGH PERFORMANCE heat pipe rated at 160W+ and Xigmatek Crossbar Pressure Vault mounting system.

Specifications

Features

Closer look

The Dark Knight Night Hawk is one sleek looking CPU cooler the all black look gives it a devilish sense about it. We have seen a couple of all black cooler here in the lab like the Prolimatech Black Megahalems but honestly with the more matte black finish the Dark Knight looks better. And the fact the cooler is black from top to almost bottom except for the base.

We begin with the cooler basics. The Dark Knight weighs just a mere one pound without the fan being attached. This is far less than any of the fans we have tested in the past couple of months. With the height being only 4.72” it should be an easy fit into almost any PC casing.

We begin the tour with a look at the fins that help to make up the cooler. They are made of aluminum just like they are on any other cooler out there but like we stated earlier just about everything is covered in this black coating. The formation of the fins along the side of the cooler is closed off to keep the air produced by the fan moving across them. The four channels we see that travels up the side of the cooler are to support the rubber spacers that secures the fan to the cooler.

Looking at the top of the cooler we see Xigmatek implanted their logo in the center. The same logo appears on the bottom fin as well. And we can also see that even the ends of the heat pipes are black as well.

Xigmatek employs three 8mm heat pipes to adsorb the heat made from the processor. The pipes begin and end at the top of the cooler. A combination of all three heat pipes are rated at 160W which is output of a decently overclocked Sandy Bridge processor.

As you can see from all the images we have posted that the marketing of this product is in the black Ceramic coating that Xigmatek has distributed over the surface of the entire cooler except for the base. The coating acts as a way to increase the heat dissipation by increasing that same area. Does it work? Who knows as we have no real way of testing it.

Now on to the base of the cooler. Like many of Xigmatek every popular products the Dark Knight uses the HDT or Heat pipe Direct Technology. Which in simple terms uses the heat pipes as part of the base making direct connect with the CPU?

The cooler is designed so that two fans can be used in a push-pull configuration but the kit only includes a single fan. The rated at 1000-2200 RPM, up to 89.45 CFM at 30.1 dBA at max rotation.

Accessory wise the cooler comes with everything needed to mount to all of the current Intel and AMD sockets.

Mounting Images

Testing Methodology

For our testing we will be using the following procedures and parameters to acquire the necessary data:

1. Thermal compound used is Arctic Silver 5
2. Idle temperatures are recorded after the system has been allowed to idle for thirty minutes from the point Windows has finished loading.
3. Load temperatures are recorded by running LinX for twenty times..
4. Real Temp is used for the recording of all temperature sensor reading.
5. PWM function is disabled via BIOS to allow the fans to run at full speed.
6. CPU model and overclock speed used for testing are outlined below in “Test Hardware”.
7. Each cooler is first tested with one fan supplied from the manufacturer.
8. Each cooler is then tested again with a second fan attached if provided by the manufacturer.

Test Hardware:
Motherboard: ASUS X79 Deluxe
Processor: Intel Core i7 3930K @ 4.5GHz w/ 1.4 voltages
Ram: Crucial 2133 16GB Dual Channel (9-9-9-24)
Video Card: ASUS Radeon HD 5870
HDD: Hitachi 1TB
Power: Thermaltake Tough Power XT 850 (Sponsored by Thermaltake)
Case: Open air
Cooling: Xigmatek SD1283 Dark Knight Night Hawk Edition

Results

Conclusion

First thing first, you cannot talk about the Xigmatek SD1283 Dark Knight Night Hawk without talking about the ceramic coating. I can’t say that the cooler performed as well as it done because of it but it did performed pretty darn well. In our test we had seen it outperform the large Reeven Kelveros which we reviewed not too long ago. The coating gave the cooler a look that is quite different from anything we have seen. I mean different in a way. It blended in well with the rest of the system which consist of a black based motherboard and black shrouded graphic cards.

The fan that comes with the cooler did its job in helping the cooler perform. It was pretty quiet while we had it connected using the PWM function. When the system was rebooted with the PWM feature disenable the fan wake up. It was not terribly loud but it did compete with the fan of the ASUS GTX 560 we used on the bed.

While the cooler did well in our testing with its single fan, Xigmatek does include the mounting hardware to add another fan. Setting it up in a push-pull configuration should reduce temps atleast another 2-3 degrees.

Mounting was a breeze so we could not hold that against. Well, it was a breeze when it came to installing it on an Intel socket 2011 motherboard. We had it up and running in the matter of minutes.

The SD1283 Dark Knight Night Hawk will cost you about $49 on the web making it a better than decent investment. And we found it ideal for someone planning on overclocking low moderate levels.

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