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FRONTPAGE NZXT HAVIK 140 Heatsink Review

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The NZXT HAVIK 140 is the company's first foray into the competitive air cooling market. It will be interesting to see if NZXT just cobbled something together or if they did some serious research into cooling modern CPUs.

NZXT was started in 2004 in Los Angeles, California, with the original intent of being the number one designer and manufacturer of computer chassis, like the NZXT Phantom. Since then, they have expanded their lineup from being chassis specialists to supplying power supplies, fan controllers and fans, mice, notebook cooling and even premium computer cabling. Now they are lo... ... Return to article to continue reading.
 
His D14, TRUE, TRUE Cu, VX, Megahalems, H50, H70, A70, and True Spirit testing was done with a different test system (i7 980x). So, they cannot be added to his chart for direct comparison. His HR-02 results could have been added, but that heatsink is meant for silence and not best performance.

I'm not sure if he even still has all of his heatsinks from previous reviews. If he does, it wouldn't be a bad idea to retest them.

From the design of the cooler, I would expect it to perform about the same as a VX, Megahalems, TRUE, etc.
 
NZXT Havik 140 rubber

Your comment about the rubber used to mount the fans is interesting. No doubt metal clips would be advantagous. But some rubber is designed for high heat usage. Did NZXT mention which rubber "alloy" was used?
 
I'm interested in the fan. If it can beat gentle typhoons than all nzxt has to do is incorporate a normal system into it and mass market.
 
Cooler looks pretty good for a first try, but i'm interested in the fans. 90CFM each, at 24db and 1200 RPM? That's pretty dang good...
 
Sorry for the late responses everyone. I went out to the rig yesterday and sat on my butt at the heliport most of the day; didn't get much time to check anything yesterday evening.

Your comment about the rubber used to mount the fans is interesting. No doubt metal clips would be advantagous. But some rubber is designed for high heat usage. Did NZXT mention which rubber "alloy" was used?

No, NZXT didn't specify what kind of rubber compound the straps are made of. But it felt a bit different from the rubber used with the fan pegs on the Corsair A70 and Transformer 3. It felt closer to a tire rubber compound than silicone rubber. I'm not worried so much about the rubber holding up to the heat, but rather how well it will age. And it still is a PITA to stretch the rubber over the hooks in a tight area. I found that even in that roomy case I test in, that I had to hook the side closest to the vid card first to get the rubber to engage the hooks well. And in a case with a top mounted psu crowding into the cpu area, I imagine it will be a real PITA to hook correctly.

Since I bought the Megahalems clips, I plan to experiment with them and see how much modding they will need to work with the Havik.

I'm interested in the fan. If it can beat gentle typhoons than all nzxt has to do is incorporate a normal system into it and mass market.

The fans didn't sound to me any quieter than the GT AP-15 fans I also tested with, even though NZXT rates them at a little lower dBA rating. And while they might move more cfm in free air, I don't think they have quite the static pressure rating as the GT fans. But this is just conjecture, since I'm not set up to test for either of these numbers. I guess I need to eventually buy me some of the Thermalright fans that they include with the Silver Arrow heatsink. That's what the NZXT fans remind me most of in general shape.

Can you review the Scythe Susanoo next please?

If Scythe will send me one, I would be glad to test it. But buying heatsinks for testing is an expensive proposition and I already spend too much doing so. Right now I have $90+ worth of heatsinks waiting for me to test I bought a few weeks ago.

i wonder if they are lying about those fan ratings? pretty obvious answer, looks like a good sink though, reminds me of some of the top dogs.

My gut feeling is they are inflating the cfm and deflating the noise rating a little on both. And if you notice, they don't give any static pressure numbers at all. But they aren't bad fans at all.

Cooler looks pretty good for a first try, but i'm interested in the fans. 90CFM each, at 24db and 1200 RPM? That's pretty dang good...

See my above comment.;)

If I could get it back, I would send 1 of these to Vapor (or Martin maybe?) who has a setup to test fans. But I don't want to lose the fan since it is part of this kit.

And a FYI, since I still own my old TRUE Rev. C that I used in my original 6 heatsink shootout review, I plan to re-run tests on it with my present fan testing suite on my present test platform. That will give a known high performance heatsink to compare my present results to. The TRUE Rev. C came out a very close second in my original review to the NH-D14 with normal fans and absolutely smoked it with that Denki compound fan on it.
 
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