Xigmatek S126384 “Thor’s Hammer” CPU Cooler Review

[AkG]

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Xigmatek S126384 “Thor’s Hammer” CPU Cooler Review
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Manufacture Page: XIGMATEK
Part Number: CAC-SXHH7-U01
TechWiki Info: Xigmatek Thors Hammer - TechWiki
Price: Approx. $75CAD / $66USD


Since the beginning of personal computing, companies have been striving to design and produce the best possible air cooling solutions for processors. Within the last few years we here at HWC have come across many examples of broad marketing brush strokes but few of these coolers have lived up to expectations. Conversely, we have found some real diamonds in the rough which were unassuming but still exceeded all our expectations; be they value or performance leaders. That is why when a company like Xigmatek talks, we listen.

As a brand name, Xigmatek is much better known in the enthusiast community it is not exactly one which you would call a “house hold name”. Xigmatek has only been in business since 2005, but in this short period of time they have become well known for producing great value coolers and essentially bringing the HDT style cooler to the enthusiast community in North America. Their corporate goal of I.C.E or Impressive, Creative & Essential does nicely sum up why they have made such a good reputation for themselves in so few years.

Today we are going to be looking at a cooler which has a lot of expectations riding on it: the Xigmatek Thor’s Hammer S126384 (yes, it's a mouthful). Why the high expectations? It's younger brother, the HDT-S1283 is still one of the best price / performance heatsinks out there and Xigmatek is known for constantly on-upping their own designs. The Thor's Hammer has been out for a while now and while we have been busy looking at other manufacturers' products, this one has quickly gained a awfully respectable reputation for itself. Even though it has been on the market for a while, it is not widely available but if you can find it, it goes for a hefty $75CAD. This of course does not include the price of fan as unlike the Xigmatek HDT 1283, this newer model does not include an OEM fan and leaves that crucial decision up to YOU the consumer.

In the recent past we looked at HDT cooler which used 4 heatpipes to form is base and we walked away very impressed by that product. We have also looked at a few coolers which use three large heatpipes and they too were award winning but this is the first time we have looked at a heatsink which has both FOUR heatpipes and THREE heatpipes all integrated into one package. Needless to say, on paper the S126384 has a heck of a lot of cooling potential. Will all this added cooling potential be useful in real world situations or is this a classic case of adding more just for mores sake. We have all seen “upgraded” kit where all the additional potential is wasted or worse still actually hinders the product resulting in a net loss.

I for one am looking forward to seeing exactly how good (or bad) the impressively-named Thor's Hammer really is. Let's get on to it, shall we?

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[AkG]

Specifications

Specifications

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Please Note:
It appears Xigmatek has transposed the Depth and Height numbers. The fin array is large enough to easily accept a 120mm cooler without having the fan towering over the array!

 

[AkG]

Packaging and Accessories

Packaging and Accessories

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Even though you can't really make it out in the photos above, the box for the Thor's Hammer is massive. This has not been done to try and make it more grandiose or stand out from the crowd but rather for the simple reason that the cooler residing within is a titan.

Let’s face it, any packaging container whether it be a bag of crisps or a box of memorabilia has two main jobs. The first is to protect is contents and from a structural standpoint we have no issue what so ever with this box. It is reinforced with extra layers of cardboard and should be able to withstand any of life’s bumps and bruises. In a nutshell, it is an decently designed protective enclosure.

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Unlike the previous Xigmatek coolers which were wrapped in Styrofoam, this big boy is in a plastic clam-shell case. This shell allows the S126384 to float in the center of the box with a huge crumple zone above and below it.

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The list of accessories is fairly well rounded, but we do have some nits to pick with the list. You get a small ketchup style “one shot” applicator of TIM, 8 rubber fan mounts, a small instruction pamphlet, a dual purpose backplate for both i7 and 775, dual use brackets for both 775 and i7 (with mounting bolts and springs), two small screws to attach the brackets to your brand new cooler and a AMD lever style mounting bar for AMD systems.

What really bugged us was the fact the mounting bolts and their springs did not come with retaining clips or any other way to attach them to the brackets. The long bolts had a recessed lip where a clip could be attached to hold them in place BUT Xigmatek did not include them, as they did with the 775 only crossbow kit. This may not seem like such a big deal (and one could argue that it makes swapping from 775 to i7 easier as they just fall off) but it does make installing them that much more difficult. For the cost of TWO older Xigmatek S1283 coolers, we expected the mounting kit on the Thor's Hammer to be as user-friendly and easy to use as possible. It isn't.

 

[AkG]

Heatsink Construction & Design

Heatsink Construction & Design

Before we begin looking at the design of the Thor's Hammer, we think an explanation of the name “S126384” is in order. Usually, we would not talk about the name of a cooler in this section but Xigmatek’s underlying nomenclature is directly related to how their products are designed. Once you know the code they use it does become self-explanatory and in fact, you can tell a lot about the make up of a given model from understanding it.

Starting with the “12”; this tells you the size of fan that can be accommodated; in this instance it is “12” or 12cm (aka 120mm), if it had been the smaller 92mm fan style it would use 92 instead of 12 and 80 if it had been even smaller and used 80mm fans. The next digit -the 6 in our case- states the size of the first (or topmost if there are multiple levels) layer of heatpipes in millimeters and the next digit tells you how many of them there are (3). The next digit after the three tells you the second layer heatpipe's size (in our case the large 8mm) and the last tells you the number of these used. If at some point Xigmatek adds a third level of heatpipes they most likely will add this information onto the end and that third level would be the new BOTTOM level.

So, what does this all say about the Thor's Hammer? It is a 120mm fan capable, multirow HDT cooler with three 6mm heatpipes on top of the base and the base of the cooler is made up of four larger and more capable 8mm pipes; or in Xigmatek nomenclature a “126384”. Phew.

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As stated in the Packaging section, this is one BIG cooler but what we didn't allude to is the fact that it is just stunning to look at. Unlike any of the previous HDT’s we have reviewed, the Thor’s Hammer has been anodized with a black finish and reminds us a lot of a TRUE Black.

As for its size, we can safely say that it is easily the largest HDT cooler we can ever remember seeing let alone testing. Xigmatek states this beast weighs in at 800 grams and is 120mm(W) x 160mm(H) x 90mm(D). Needless to say, its size and weight puts in into a completely different category when compared to many other heatsinks on the market: the heavy-weight category.

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Also unlike any previous HDT-based products we have reviewed, the tops of the heatpipes are not exposed on this cooler. Rather, two stylized "hammer heads" cover them. It's a nice touch but some may find this a bit over done. We personally never had any issue with exposed heatpipes tops but we have to admit this cooler does have a much cleaner look to it. If you have a windowed system this can make a difference but performance-wise we don't think this is a game changer.

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Let's continue our tour by explaining the unique layout of the fin array. Unlike most tower-based coolers whose fins are basically all the same width and only vary in depth (except the top most in a few cases) these fins are set up in a very distinctive pattern in width, depth and height. In the height department they have a unique 2 - 1 - 2 pattern with the center single fin having its corners chopped off or recessed. The seemingly wider double fins are in fact two (per side) of those stylized hammer-looking units with a larger yet narrower fin stacked in between, repeated over and over in the above pattern. This has the effect of making the center of the Thor’s Hammer perfectly suited for free-flowing air. While this potentially low static pressure area is not as low as some other products', it should help direct the air towards the center and keep some from escaping out the sides before it can be fully used to remove heat from the fins.

 

[AkG]

Heatsink Construction & Design pg.2

Heatsink Construction & Design Con't​

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Lowering static pressure is the name of the game for most coolers. This goal usually becomes a delicate balancing act between having too many fins spaced tightly together (but with higher surface area) versus two few spaced widely apart (and thus not enough surface area to properly cool the heatpipes).

Designing for low static pressure, by itself is a very good reason for the non-standard fin style on the Thor's Hammer but as we will see in the installation section this makes fan mounting a whole heck of a lot easier as well.

While the ease of installating a fan explains the unique width of the various fins, why do they vary in depth? To begin with, this cooler has easily one (actually two) of the best “faces” we have seen. In the past we have talked about the fact that if a fin array is nothing more than a slab-faced affair, the air from its cooling fan slams into it very much like its hitting a wall. This in turn requires high static pressure fans to force the air through the face of the fins and out the back. Meanwhile, staggering the faces works well at eliminating this issue.

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When looking straight on at the front of the Thor's Hammer, the left side "hammer" shaped fin is always more pronounced with the wide end of the fin or “face" of the hammer pointed towards you. Conversely, the right sides hammer fin is pointed away from you and is only slightly offset from the fin array. What this results in is the fan not being pointed directly at the face; rather it is angled to the left causing a greater gap between it and the face of the fin array. This in and of itself is an interesting concept as the air from the fan will sweep across the fins in a flowing motion and not all hit at once.

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The above angling of the fan will probably help reduce static pressure but Xigmatek did not stop there. As mentioned earlier, the large full-width fins are basically rectangular in shape with the corners cut off. What this does is actually angle the leading edge of the fins so that it looks like an L shape. On its own, this shape would most likely have no effect on static pressures but when you combine the angled fan direction with this oddly shaped fin, what you end up with is a wedged shape face pointed into the direction of the air movement. This shape cuts the air movement and (in theory) drastically reduces the static pressure needed to properly cool the fin array.

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The best way to get a clear understanding of what this cooler is all about is to look at its bottom half from two angles. On first glance it looks like an amalgamation of the OCZ Gladiator Max cooler we reviewed a while back, but then you realize that this particular product has even more heatpipes sprouting from it. In total you have 7 heatpipes in two sizes strategically placed in and on the base of the Thor’s Hammer. The inner layer of three U shaped 6mm heatpipes sits right under the metal cooling towers above the base's center point. These heatpipes are primarily there to cool down the aluminum pillars which are in direct contact with the CPU.

The short but chunky aluminum cooling towers do help slow the buildup of heat and thus hot zones on the cooler. Unfortunately since they are so small, have only a few small layers of fins and considering the fins and the towers themselves reside below the level of the fans' cooling zone the net effect is they are really nothing more than passive heatsinks. These are heat sinks which will become overloaded fairly quickly by today’s hot running quads. This was one of the major weaknesses of the OCZ Gladiator Max and by not only adding heatpipes to suck the heat away from the aluminum foundation but making them an integral part of the fin array Xigmatek has minimized this inherent limitation to a great extent.

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As with all HDTs we have reviewed, there are aluminum inserts spaced between the flattened heatpipes to add strength and rigidity to the whole affair. Unfortunately, the aluminum inserts do not run the full width of the base and while we have come to expect a certain amount of gap or distance between the heatpipes and these spacers, this is one of the worst examples we have seen in a long while. There are veritable crevices between the aluminum shim and the heatpipes.

On the positive side, at least the aluminum pillars are not offset like we have seen before and are all have a center alignment to them. This minor positive is negated by the fact that the base is not that well polished; in fact, it is relatively rough in texture and appearance. To be honest, it appears the original difficulties in mass producing a well polished HDT base have still not been solved by Xigmatek like they have been by other companies and our sample is on the lower end of the spectrum. Maybe our expectations of what a good polished HDT base can look like, have been elevated recently by the amazing polishing job found on the Cooler Master 212 PLUS.

 

[AkG]

Installation

Installation

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Installing the Thor's Hammer onto an Intel-based system is actually a fairly easy yet multi-step process. The very first thing you have to do is install the proper Intel bracket to the cooler itself. As with the OCZ Vendetta 2 and Xigmatek S1283, this involved placing each bracket in the right spot and screwing in one small screw to hold it in place. The inner hole is for 775 systems and the outer if i7.

We assume at some point there will be aftermarket accessory arms for i3/i5 but for now when it comes to Intel, the Hammer is compatible with i7 or 775 only. Both sides come with a backing material which has to be put in place but this only takes a moment to “peel and stick”..

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With this small step is accomplished you simply grab the backplate, flip the motherboard over and insert it up and through the four mounting holes. Just as the arms were dual purpose, so too is this backplate. One side is for 775 systems and the other is for i7. The 775 side has small raised mounting points which rise up and through the motherboard making installation slightly easier. Honestly though, neither installation procedure was exactly what you call difficult but the i7 was little tougher in comparison due to its side lacking this feature.

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With the backplate in place you then flip the whole works right side up and gently lay it all back down. If you do this correctly, you should now be able to easily install the Thor’s Hammer. After applying some TIM to your CPU (and making sure the protective label is OFF the base of the cooler!) you gently lay it in position.

At this point it does get a little tricky. Unlike the “crossbow” mounting brackets and backplate we purchased for our Xigmatek S1283, the four spring loaded screws and the bolt are not held in place. Rather, you have to stick each one individually through the end of an arm and screw them in. Once you have two screws started, the other two are much easier…or at least they should have been. While we like the angled face and think its going to significantly decrease temperatures, it does have the unintended consequence of partially obscuring two corner posts. This is where the little wrench comes in handy. As we have said in the past if the manufacturer includes extra tools…it is for a darn good reason. We found hand spinning these half hidden bolts into place to get them started and then doing 1 turn on each using the supplied wrench in a diagonal criss-cross patterns worked well.

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Unlike past Xigmatek and Xigmatek OEM reviews we have done in the past, installing the fan on this cooler was simplicity itself. In fact, it was actually the first time we preferred this style of mounting to the older tried and true wire bracket setup. To install a fan, first BUY one as Xigmatek does not include one and has offloaded this “value added” cost on to you the consumer. Then when you have the fan of your choice you simply push each of the small rubber brackets through one of the four fan holes and align them in a North / South orientation.

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Except for the slight hiccup of aligning the backplate in our i7 testbed this, was a fairly easy installation process which belied the size of the cooler itself. The added hassle of the fin array partially blocking two of the mounting screws is more than made up for by the ease of installing the fans. Easy or not, this is not a flimsy setup and provides a very stable mounting platform with even pressure across the entire CPU.

 

[AkG]

Installation pg.2

Installation Con't

To show you exactly how much room this cooler requires we have taken photos and notes of it installed in both a North/South and then East/West orientations. Here is what we found out.

North / South Cooler Orientation

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In the alternate North South orientation, the fans are pointing up and down. This orientation does have some major benefits IF you have a case which is side and top fan heavy (such as the HAF 932). One fan sucking the heat out the back versus three working in tandem….sounds like a no brainer right? Unfortunately, complications can arise and in the instance of the S126384 this is what we found.

Please note:
The motherboard heatsink closest to the PCI-E slots stands about 32mm tall, the heatsink closest to the I/O panel stands about 34mm tall and the small silver one stands about 28mm tall.

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While the cooling fan will overhang heatsink closest to the I/O ports, we had no issues as there was literally over a finger's width of gap between it and the metal of the heatsink. If your motherboard’s secondary heatsink is larger you may run into problems but only if it is more than approximately 49mm in height. As for the ram side of things, the fan was not even close and as along as your RAM is not overly wide (and we can not imagine why it would be) you should have no issues.

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As with the other two sides, we ran into zero problems here either. The only caveat we have is the same one we mentioned with the secondary heatsink: if your main Northbridge heatsink is overly tall you MAY run into issues as this cooler does over hang it.

East / West Orientation

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The East/West orientation (AKA front to back) is the typical orientation found in most setups. This is because while not all cases have two exhaust fans, darn near every one we have heard of (i.e. except for the occasionally exotic passive case) has a rear exhaust port and it makes perfect sense to have the hot air pushed towards this fan so it can be quickly and efficiently sucked out of the case. As with the N/S orientation, we install this cooler with both fans attached.

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As with the N/S orientation we ran into no issues what so ever. With that being said you still have to be careful of the height of your Northbridge heatsink as taller ones may cause you to be unable to install this cooler in ANY direction.

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In this orientation ram height does become an issue (or at least it does with dual fans) as the fan does overhang the first stick of our memory. If your ram is overly tall you may run into compatibility problems. In this orientation the height of your secondary heatsink (one closest to IO ports) is also important as this may trip you up if that heatsink is more than the approximate 49mm of clearance afforded by this cooler.

All in all, we ran into no issues worth mentioning in either the N/s or E/W orientation, but some people with overly large heatsinks may not be as lucky as we were. To further help you understand the sheer size of this unit we can say the Thor's Hammer when fully rigged with dual fans is 120mm wide and a whopping 140mm deep. The fin array starts nice and high up at about 49-50mm above its base but that isn't a lot when you think of some of the oddball motherboard heat sinks we have seen over the years.

 

[AkG]

Testing Methodology

Testing Methodology

To ensure that the results from one review to another are not only reproducible but actually pertinent to this review, the Testing Methodology will be the same throughout all reviews used. If something does change we will be sure to make a special note of it and explain why this change was done and more importantly why it had to be changed or altered.

For i7 Testing HTT was enabled but Turbo Boost was not.

All CPU Cooling Solutions which do not come with their own fan, a Noctua NF-P12-1300 will be used if it accepts 120mm fans, if it only accepts 92mm a Noctua NF-B9-1600 will be used. Any and all fans are run at their highest speed.

Except where noted all comparison testing was done on an open bench with a constant ambient temperature of 20c. If at any time the room temperature increased or decreased by more than 1°C testing was halted until the temperature constant was reestablished.

Recorded temps were as reported via CoreTemp's "Temp Log". Average load temps were taken after 15 minutes of running Prime95 “small fft” and are taken directly from CoreTemp’s temperature text file. Excel was used to average the results of all cores. Idle temps were taken 15 minutes after Load testing ceased. Motherboard temperatures were recorded using SpeedFan. All CPU throttling technology was disabled in the BIOS; as was all CPU fan speed control.

Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal paste was used for all coolers during these tests unless otherwise noted. For all non HDT coolers, application of thermal paste was in accordance with TIM manufacturer’s instructions; and while not necessary, the TIM was allowed to cure for 24 hours under moderate to high loads (with periods of low loads) prior to testing.

For all 3 pipe HDT coolers two lines of TIM are applied to the two center metal posts and for all 4 pipe HDTS three (smaller) lines of TIM are applied to the metal posts. With this method it has been found to provide significantly better coverage than the more typical methods.

Please note: All possible mounting orientations are tested and only the best results is represented. All tests are run a minimum of 4 times if only one mounting orientation is possible, and 8 times if both N-S and E-W orientations are possible.

Please Note: To keep the motherboard chipsets from overheating a single 40mm Scythe Ultra Kaze was used, but was orientated in such a way as to not interfere with nor help the CPU cooler (i.e. it was basically on top of the South Bridge and pointed down). The 120mm Scythe E on the side of the open test bench was unplugged during temperature testing.


Notes about Overclocking:

For Q6600’s I consider 1.45 volts to be the most that I would seriously consider for a moderate-to-long term overclock.

For i7’s I consider 1.45 VCore and VTT to be the most that I would seriously consider for a moderate-to-long term overclock. As luck would have it this particular 920 would not overclock any better that 3.8 irregardless of how much voltage we pushed (we literally maxed out the Vcore and VTT/PLL available in the BIOS options and it still wouldn’t be stable).

Yes you can go much higher but the longevity of the CPU is then called into question. Just as importantly the CPU should average out at LESS than 65c for the Q6600 and 75° C for the i7 as this is also what I consider the safest, maximum long term overclocking temp for each of those CPUs. For the purposes of these tests I was willing to overlook higher temperatures as long as they averaged below 65c/80c (775 and i7 respectively) and did not peak over 75/80c. If 75/80c was displayed for more than 10seconds in CoreTemp all testing was stopped and that test run was considered a fail.

With these two general guidelines I overclocked both systems until either one (or both) of these "rules" was needed to be broken to continue.

Overclocking was accomplished by increasing FSB/Bclk speed and then Vcore/VTT (only if necessary).

Before testing for idle and max temperatures Orthos was run for 1 hour to make sure that it was stable at a given overclock and voltage. If both finished with no errors SuperPi set to 32m was run twice. After the stability testing was accomplished the given system was allowed to sit idle for 30 minutes before starting the official tests. IF both of the above stated guidelines were not broken then testing continued with an increased overclock. These steps were then repeated until 1 or both of the general guidelines were broken.

As they have no bearing on these tests the RAM’s voltage and timings are not recorded. Please do not consider this a full “how to” review on overclocking or “safe guidelines” for overclocking nor even an indicator on how well a given CPU will overclock. IF you are interested in OC’ing your system, and use these guidelines we at HWC take no responsibility for the results. Bad Things can happen if you are not careful.


Complete Test System:

Processor:
Q6600
Intel i7 920

Motherboard:
Gigabyte p35 DS4
Gigabyte X58-UD3R

Memory:
4GB Mushkin DDR2-800
6GB Aneon Xtune DDR3-1600

Graphics card: Asus 8800GT TOP
Hard Drive: 1x OCZ Apex 120GB
Power Supply: Topower Powerbird 900W

Special thanks to Direct Canada for their support and supplying the i7 920 CPU.

Special thanks to Gigabyte for their support and supplying the i7 motherboard.

 

[AkG]

Q6600 Performance Results

Q6600 Performance Results

We really were disappointed with the Q6600 numbers. The fact of the matter is this cooler has at best only a mediocre base and has been designed with the larger i7 CPUs in mind. On the smaller 775 setup, all the heatpipes are not coming into contact with the CPU and in fact only 2 are doing most of the work with only the edges of the others helping along with the cooling. The only saving grace of this unit is the shear size of the fin array and it’s built-in cooling capabilities this affords it.

 

[AkG]

i7 920 Performance Results

i7 920 Performance Results

To get to the upper echelons in our charts a heatsink has to display some serious cooling potential and the Thor's Hammer has done just that. Unfortunately, it just can't seem to beat products that are priced significantly lower than its approximate $75. While these numbers are certainly good they really do underscore the main weakness of this unit: the base. Even though we risk editorializing here, we believe that the large gaps between the heat pipes and the aluminum shims along with the poor polishing quality are seriously hurting the base's potential to efficiently conduct heat away from the CPU.