Member Reviews: Xigmatek Gaia SD1283 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler bracket included dual fan push pull compatible

I know everyone wants to compare this with the hyper. That is fair. But to be honest, at a $20 price point this is its own beast. Granted the provided fan is geared more towards silence it still gets the job done. This cooler is pretty well the same size and shape as the hyper. It does have 1 less heat pipe. As stated in another review on here it however has a much better looking base. It is overall thicker and has a lot more aluminum to dissipate the heat built up at the base. The fins also seem less dense. I can not say weather that is a pro or a con but what I can say is less static pressure should make the air pass through the fins easier. The fan is a 1500 max RPM Hydro bearing fan...

The Gaia is one of a number of CPU coolers from Xigmatek that use the same heatsink design (their Dark Knight II SD1283 and Balder SD1283 being the others), with the only real differences being in finish and fan selection. The Gaia model is positioned right against Cooler Master's benchmark Hyper 212+, matching it almost feature-for-feature and spec-for-spec and generally coming in within $5 of Cooler Master's offering. The cooler itself is very similar to the current Cooler Master Hyper 212, using the same 'direct heatpipe contact design' (I suspect that this design is largely responsible for the low cost of these models), with the pipes pressed into an aluminum base and running...

I have an i5-2300 - a locked variant that is only capable of being overclocked by 800hmz per core (if all four cores are activated) - And with a BCLK of 103mhz I was finding that the stock cooling was simply not sufficient. While video encoding - the CPU would run as hot as 95 C and idle in the mid to high 30s This kit has brought my CPU load temps down to less than 45 C on load and idling in the very low 20s It's all there - for less than £25 / 40$ and a bit of patience for pulling your rig apart