Xigmatek Dark Knight

As with Silverstone, nosotros accept limited hands-on feel with Xigmatek coolers -- or any other products from the company for that thing -- only nosotros didn't hesitate to include what is one of the more than unique looking solutions we received.

Called the "Night Knight," Xigmatek's entry has a typical heatpipe/tower blueprint, merely it strays from the norm past roofing its copper and aluminum parts with a black nickel blanket. The only exposed expanse is the base, which features oestrus-pipe direct contact (HDC) engineering science (yous'll go it when you lot run across the pictures).

The iii 8mm heatpipes are exposed at the base to provide maximum thermal condition from top to bottom. The cooler measures 159H x 120W x 50D mm and weighs 483g without a fan.

The 120mm fan features what Xigmatek calls "long life bearings" and is designed to operate between 1000 and 2200 RPM. At full speed, the fan tin motility 89.45 CFM of air and generates 30.1dBA of racket. The fan itself is transparent, though a very night tint creates a neat effect when the four white LED lights are on.

Xigmatek used anti-vibration safety pieces between the 120mm fan and heatsink to reduce noise -- the aforementioned method you'll notice on Silverstone's Argon coolers, except that implementation was considerably improve than Xigmatek's as it allowed for quick and piece of cake fan installation/removal with the heatsink inside the example.

Installing or removing the 120mm fan was hard if the Dark Knight was already installed inside the case. The rubber connectors needed to be stretched quite far and the ones on the bottom were particularly challenging.

That shouldn't be a major effect if you don't program to remove/reinstall information technology much and it's somewhat easy to forgive with the Night Knight's unique aesthetics and reasonable price ($50).