Member Reviews: Xigmatek Dark Knight II SD1283 Night Hawk Edition

Reason why I bought this cooler over any of the closed loop water-coolers is due to a faulty H80 that I had purchased not too long ago (not taking anything away from Corsair, just my personal experience). I have always used air cooling over water since it's cheaper and easier to maintain/clean. I looked at many air-coolers prior to purchasing this one and it came down to the 212 EVO/NH-D14 and this cooler. The EVO is a nice cooler, the chrome/aluminum on the other hand is old school looking and the Noctua is just to big for my taste. This cooler comes in 3rd place when it comes to performance but since it is the smallest out of all 3 and it's black it was a no-brainer. The color of the...

Not very much to say here. It installed easily and quickly with no fuss and keeps my 6300 nice and cool. However the included fan is really rather loud when it decides to rev up but is silent enough for me the rest of time.

I bought this heatsink way back in August when I realized I wouldnt have time to watercool my ITX rig before I had to leave for school. I bought it because it was a reasonable price, it was black, and I got a free fan with it with a newegg deal. Mounting wasnt too confusing, although I had to cut off some of the plastic bracket that goes on the back of the mobo. Wasnt enough room to clear the MSATA connector on the back of my Z77E ITX. Honestly I expected this and it wasnt a big deal at all, just clipped it off with some tin snips. LIke another reviewer said, mount the rubber prices on the heatsink, then attach the heatsink to board, then attach fans. The problem I had was there...

Installation - Installing this cooler was a little tricky for a first timer of installing an aftermarket cooler. Since I had never installed anything but stock coolers I had to take off the old mounting brackets on the motherboard. Which wasn't hard at all. Even with the instructions it wasn't that hard tho. When I was reading how to attach the fan to the heatsink, the instructions made it harder then the way I did it. It wanted you to put the silencers in the fan then attach the silencers to the heatsink. Which was almost impossible. Instead I put the silencers on the heatsink and then attached the fan. Which was 10X easier. When putting the new mounts on it was pretty easy. The only...