Xigmatek HDT-SD964

A good choice for aggressive cooling.

The good guys at Xigmatek were nice enough to send a sample of the Xigmatek HDT-SD964 heatsink. This is a “direct contact” heatsink – the heatsink’s heatpipes are in direct contact with the CPU’s IHS.

• Aluminum fins, four copper heatpipes directly contacting the CPU
• Dimension 140 x 95 x 79 mm
• Fan speed 2800 rpm, 55 cfm, 34 dBA – four pin molex connector
• Weight 466 grams
• All Intel® Socket LGA 775 CPU ((Core™2 Extreme / Core™2 Quad / Core™2 Duo / Pentium® Extreme Edition / Pentium® D / Celeron® D) Pentium® D / Celeron® D)
• All AMD Socket AM2 / 754 / 939 / 940 CPUs (Athlon™ 64 / FX / X2 / Opteron™ / Sempron™)

The fan mounts with rubber pins which serve to isolate fan noise; included are four extra pins for a second fan, if desired. It might be easier to mount the fan after mounting to the motherboard, as there is a tight fit with the two pins under the fan.

The base is made from the bottom of the heatpipes:

Mounting is very simple with four push-pins – this system does not require removing the motherboard from the case.

The Xigmatek HDT-SD964 was tested on an Asus P5WD2 motherboard with a modified Pentium D 805 to read CPU case temps while running Prime 95. For this test, I ran it first with one fan and then with two fans in a push-pull configuration.

¹On-die temperatures.
²50 dBA measured 8″ from the fan intake corresponds to about 30 dBA measured 3 feet from the fan, a very quiet noise level.

Performance with one fan is quite good, landing in the upper third of heatsink’s tested to date HERE. With two fans performance increased by 2ºC – whether this is acceptable considering the increase in noise levels is up to each user to determine. Xigmatek’s HDT-SD964 is worth a look for aggressive cooling.

Thanks again to Xigmatek for sending this our way to test out.

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Disclosure: Joe Citarella has a financial interest in a company developing products for electronic chip cooling.