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Up for review today is a personal favorite of mine, the Xigmatek EE 1284. This is a tower cooler that boasts an impressive design with direct touch copper heatpipe placement. This heatsink should be on the top of the list when you are considering a serious air solution and are on a limited budget. This cooler can be had for 39.99 and comes with all of the brackets and a fan to be mounted on the cooler.

Tower coolers have some ups and downs, they do not blow air down on top of the motherboard meaning you will have to figure out another way to pass air through your systems board if you have a passive heatpipe solution. On asus boards you can choose to fit the heatpipes with the optional cooling fan if it doesn't interfere with the coolers airflow. The upside to this design is that it quickly moves air through the cooler with little resistance on the other side, usually given that the cooler will be pointed directly at the casefan pushing air out of the case, aiding in the airflow through the cooler itself.

The Xigmatek cooler competes even with the best offerings of Thermaltake, at a fraction of the price. This cooler is ideal for quadcore processors looking to overclock hard on air. I am able to run a G0 Q6600 under this without hitting above 65C full load at 4.0Ghz, and about 60 at my daily overclock of 3.6Ghz. For a quadcore overclocked on air, these are very impressive numbers.

As you can see on the graph below, the cooler is beating the competition in the open case enviroment, I believe in my modified Antec 300 case it would also be outperforming due to the crazy airflow I have in the setup. The closed case tests do not allow a whole lot of airflow and it seems the cooler is a little less efficient in this environment when compared to the others.


Thermal Performance 5/5, Value 5/5 --- Final Rating 5/5 ---- This is a HIGHLY recommended product!


Reference to the image, only piece used in this review goes to xbitlabs.com

I think the difference is a high RPM fan and a slight adjustment to make it easier to mount, also it has 4 heatpipes instead of 3. Performance isn't too big of a diff between these two coolers though more heatpipe contact is always a good thing.

I heard the staggered heatpipes don't fully cover the IHS and thus provides slightly less cooling potential.

It's why I went with the RS1283 over the 1284, in fact.

If seated correctly, the 2 pipes will cover more area over a single one. At least on a dualcore.

Wait, lemme make a real quick paint job of what I want to say.

Check the picture down here. The (too pale) orange would be the S1283, while the red one would be the S1284. Keep in mind that the "middle" block between the pipes (that holds the pipes altogether, let's say) also conducts heat thru the pipes. Theorically, you will want more heatpipes to cover as much space as possible. and if aligned correctly, each pipes will cover a good part of each of the cores on-die, in advantage for the 1284.

Besides, that kind of factor is extremely small, since the IHS transfers the heat almost equally over all it's surface, so moar surface is always better.

Also keep in mind that the heatpipes carries the heat to the fins, and if you only have "one" heatpipe doing all the job, the two others are not doing much, the single pipe will do alot of job and not cool as well as if two would be getting the heat out of the IHS, near the cores.

Right, this is what I'm saying:



From benchmarkreviews.

Granted, it's the Achilles model, and not the EE, but the staggering of the heatpipes is the same. Also on the EE, the aluminum dividers are slightly recessed compared to the other models giving the heatpipes a better chance of contact. I also like that they made the K8 mounting omnidirectional.

The S1283 can only mount with the fan blowing up or down on most AMD boards. This also puts the heatpipes in an incorrect alignment over the cores. Regardless, the S1283 keeps my s939 x2 3800+ nice and cool at load.

50/49 C at peak load. x2 3800+ @ 2.75GHz (275x10) @ 1.3875V

I run mine with the air blowing in an upward direction - Because of the top fan on my case and it increases airflow since it'd just be pulling air from the drive bays and now the air being pushed in above the videocard from the front fans;) I've also got a fan on top and on the bottom of the cooler for increased airflow. Works very well for me.