The S1284 was able to hold it's own, especially staying under the 60° C mark at 4.0 GHz. Although the idle temperatures are a little higher than I would like to see, the cooler did well. I would attribute the higher idle speeds to fan just not being able to push enough air at 800 RPM. Even at the stock 3.0 GHz the S1284 made a good showing posting up a load temperature of 48° C. The fan was completely silent at idle and at load. While the sound test at the moment is just based on what I can hear. A db meter will be ordered shortly.

Conclusion

Surprisingly the S1284 posted better results that I initially thought it would. Those thoughts were based around the fact that where the heat-pipes contact the heat spreader of the CPU are not smooth and shiny. My feelings were that there would be air trapped in the machining grooves and that would hurt performance, those thoughts now of course are of little meaning now. While there is no flash and flair to the S1284, contrary to other coolers in the same class, the S1284 does it's job well. Installing the cooler was no more difficult than any others and went smoothly. The way that the fan attaches to the cooler can be a pain though, as you have to pull some rather fragile rubber stand offs through the holes in the corners of the fan and if you tear one, there's no spares. The rubber stand offs are designed to insulate vibrations. The fan, by my ears, was completely silent both at idle and at load as a matter of fact, I could pin point that the front case fan was louder. XigmaTek pulls off a win with the S1284 and based on past performances with other coolers has established their name in the enthusiast community.

I want to thank the XigmaTek crew for sending out the S1284 for us to review.