Conclusion

First about XIGMATEK Achilles S1284. Relatively inexpensive and stylish cooler employing pretty young Heatpipe Direct Touch technology will not be able to satisfy demanding overclocking fans’ needs on contemporary CPUs. But what determined the insufficient efficiency of this cooler with HDT technology? I believe there were several factors that contributed to the result. I think you already know about a 45nm CPU that doesn’t suit well for HDT. Add here too big of a gap between heatpipes and aluminum base plate instead of copper. Moreover, don’t forget the incomplete contact between the processor heat-spreader and the shifted heatpipes in the cooler base (“Achilles’ heel”?), absence of LGA 775 backplate and weak cooler retention. So, looks like XIGMATEK engineers have a lot to work on to ensure that Achilles S1284 didn’t end up like its Trojan namesake. By the way, while we were working on this review, XIGAMTEK send us a new cooler revision with a few improvements, so stay tuned for an update.

The second participant of our today’s test session showed its real best. High cooling efficiency, almost the same as that of a more expensive Nirvana NV120 Premium; moderate price; simple and reliable retention mechanism and easy installation procedure; moderate noise under peak CPU utilization and very quiet operation in regular mode. Is there anything about ZEN FZ120 that could have been better? I believe, it could be nice to have an option to install a second fan and increase the heatsink plate density from 1.5mm to 1mm between the plates. With more plates, the effective cooling surface area would also increase. And finally, ZEROtherm could switch to 8mm heatpipes that are currently used in the very best CPU coolers. Anyway, there is another great CPU cooler out there now: ZEROtherm ZEN FZ120.