by Sergey Lepilov
07/06/2009 | 06:39 PM
The term “hawk” that stands for a particular species of birds is also used not only in respect to birds. There are multiple examples of that use. Remember the famous movies called “Black Hawk Down” or “Hudson Hawk”, Chicago Blackhawks ice-hockey club, different models of military equipment and even one of Mitsubishi Colt modifications. The popularity of this term can be very easily explained: it indicates a fast and strong bird that poses serious threat for its enemies that is why it is being associated with a lot of things.
Looks like XILENCE Company liked the hawk-related associations a lot that is why their new processor cooler was named “Black Hawk COPPER”. It is hard to tell what exactly is in common between black hawks and the new cooling solutions from XILENCE (a black fan or elimination of high CPU heat). Frankly speaking, I didn’t get the same associations after taking a close look at the new cooler. Anyway, we have a great opportunity to check out the new cooling solution and see how it compares against the best product in its class as well as against the indisputable performance leader among contemporary super-coolers.
As usual, let’s start with the package and included accessories. The new XILENCE cooler ships in a pretty big box, I would even say unusually big for processor coolers. Its front side if half-open revealing most of the cooler inside:
The back of the box bears a photo of the cooler. However, it is not the exact same cooler that we find inside but a common Black Hawk with an aluminum heatsink:
The specifications listed on the box are also for the aluminum Black Hawk cooler. However, XILENCE reps assured us that the coolers differ only by weight, while all other specifications remain the same.
Inside the cardboard box there is a molded plastic casing with the cooler in the center and all accessories sealed in a pair of small plastic bags and stored beneath it:
The cooler is made in China and its recommended retail price is relatively high: $90. However, taking into account the latest tendencies in the super-cooler segment, prices like that are not surprising anymore. The cooler should hit the retail channels in September 2009. So if you really like it you will have to wait for a while.
XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER is a classical top-cooler with the airflow directed towards the mainboard PCB. Although it doesn’t have any sophisticated traits that are pretty popular these days, it looks very beautiful. I would even say “juicy”:
A solid copper heatsink consists of 56 plates pierced by six copper heatpipes, each 6 mm in diameter, which come out of the copper base. The cooler measures 154.5x143x143.5 mm and weighs 1225 g. The cooler is subjectively very heavy, although this weight is no record in the field. For example, copper Thermalright TRUE and Scythe Mugen 2 modifications weigh around 2 kg.
There is a frameless fan attached to the heatsink that sends a flow of air in-between the heatsink plates:
The plates are 0.4 mm thick and are spaced out at 2 mm from one another. The calculated heatsink effective surface is 4810 cm2, which is kind of average even for top-coolers (for example, Thermalright AXP-140 has effective heatsink surface area of 4787 cm2 and Scythe Kabuto – 7057 cm2).
Actually, the new XILENCE cooler looks very similar to the legendary Thermaltake Big Typhoon 120 with that only difference that all its six heatpipes come out of the same side of the base plate (not in groups of three in each direction) and the heatsink plates are shaped differently. The heatpipes are soldered to the heatsink plates.
The heatpipes are slightly bent away from the center of the heatsink and find themselves in the fan airflow zones. The ends of the heatpipes are topped with shaped caps. At the cooler base the heatpipes are placed in special grooves and are soldered to them:
The thinnest part of the base plate below the heatpipes is 3.5 mm. Despite pretty large base surface, it is very even:
The finish quality of the base plate is impeccable:
Of course, on an even surface like that the thermal compound imprint from the processor heat-spreader turned out perfect.
As we have already mentioned before, the fan is attached using a plastic frame with an X-shaped cover:
According to the cooler specifications, the fan is 120x120x48 mm, but the height is listed for the fan and the retention frame. The fan itself is only 38 mm tall. The fan rotation speed is PWM controlled in the interval from 300 to 1800 RPM. The maximum airflow created by this fan is 78.31 CFM. There was no mention of the fan static pressure in the official specs, although this parameter is extremely important for coolers with very dense heatsink plate arrays. The fan uses a fluid dynamic bearing with unspecified MTBF.
The fan clips on to the heatsink with four latches along two sides of the frame. There are four silicone mounts inserted into the four corners of the frame:
In other words, the frame panels holding the fan do not touch the heatsink at all, but hand on these shock-absorbing silicone mounts. This allowed the designers to lower the level of noise from the fan compared with what would be generated by the fans directly contacting with the cooler heatsink.
XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER is compatible with all contemporary platforms, including the LGA1366 mainboards. The cooler is installed through the mainboard PCB in all cases that is why you will have to remove the board from the system case before installation. The installation procedure is extremely similar to that for Thermaltake Big Typhoon and is identical for AMD and Intel LGA775 processors: you stick the universal backplate to the bottom of the PCB and insert the retention spindles into the holes from the front side of it. After that you use screwed caps to tighten the front retention plate holding the cooler in place. We have already discussed all this many times, so let’s not dwell on it again.
As far as installation onto LGA1366 mainboards is concerned, the procedure is a little different here than what we have just described above. Since mainboards for Core i7 processors already have a default backplate pre-installed, XILENCE engineers had to give up a universal backplate for LGA1366 platforms. Instead you have to stick special plastic washers with built-in threaded bush to the bottom of the PCB:
Then the plastic retention brackets are screwed on to them:
And after that you use four thumb-screws to tighten the retention plate pressing the 1.2 kg copper cooler against the CPU heat-spreader very securely:
The heatpipes coming out of the cooler base do not interfere with any electronic components around the processor socket. Moreover, the heatsink’s beveled plates won’t hit against tall memory heat-spreaders either:
Since the LGA1366 retention holes are symmetrical, the cooler can be installed facing any of the four directions (the same is true for LGA775 platforms). However, this time we didn’t experiment to determine how XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER cooling efficiency depends on the cooler positioning. We simply installed the cooler with the heatpipes ends facing up:
We were pleasantly surprised to see beautiful red LED highlighting that made the whole system case look really unique:
It is really hard to show how extremely stylish and pleasing this lighting is on a photograph, but trust me, you won’t be disappointed.
All tests were performed inside a closed system case. Our testbed was identical for all coolers throughout the test session and featured the following configuration:
During this test session we managed to overclock our 45nm quad-core processor with the multiplier set at 21 and “Load-Line Calibration” enabled to 3.95 GHz (+48.1%) using the weakest cooling system of the today’s testing participants. The nominal processor Vcore was increased to 1.3475 V in the mainboard BIOS.
The memory voltage was at 1.64 V and its frequency was around 1500 MHz (7-7-7-14_1T timings). All other parameters available in the mainboard BIOS and connected with CPU or memory overclocking remained unchanged (set to Auto).
All tests were performed under Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86 SP1. We used the following software during our test session:
So, the complete screenshot during the test session looks as follows:
The stabilization period for the CPU temperature between the two test cycles was about 10 minutes. We took the maximum temperature of the hottest processor core of the four for the results charts. The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer with 0.1 °C precision that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperature was unusually high and stayed at 26.5-27 °C. Well, looks like the new cooler and its competitors will have to work a little harder this time :)
The noise level of each cooler was measured after 1:00 AM in a closed room about 20 m2 big using CENTER-321 electronic noise meter. The measurements were taken at 1 m and 3 m distance from the closed system case. During the acoustics tests all five 120 mm case fans were slowed down to ~520 RPM. In this mode the background noise from the system case measured at 1 m distance didn’t exceed ~33.3 dBA. When the system was completely powered off, our noise meter detected 28.8 dBA (the lowest on the charts is 30 dBA). The subjectively comfortable noise level is around 34.5~35 dBA.
Keeping in mind the design of the XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER cooler, we picked a top-cooler of similar structure and highest cooling efficiency – Thermalright AXP-140 ($70) that was installed using the retention kit from Thermalright IFX-14 with additional metal washers added below the screw springs to ensure more secure hold. The cooler was equipped with a 140 mm Scythe Kaze Maru fan working at 1050 and 1830 RPM.
We tested XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER with the same Scythe fan and a default fan.
Of course, we couldn’t leave out our ultimate performance champion, Thermalrigth IFX-14 ($79.90), which is the today’s best CPU air-cooler. It was tested with two Scythe Slip Stream 120 fans at 830 and 1900 RPM:
The results of cooler tests are grouped according to two test modes: inside a completely closed system case and with the case side panel removed. All numbers are sorted out in order of increasing cooling efficiency:
The results are quite logical: the total score of XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER puts it on the same floor with Thermalright AXP-140, although it is a little more efficient in quiet mode and a little less efficient at maximum fan speed. Thermalright top-cooler has much denser heatsink plates array than XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER that is why at 1050 RPM it lacks air pressure to cool the aluminum plates properly. At the same time, Black Hawk only wins 2 °C due to a 140 mm fan and only when the case side panel has been removed. Inside a completely closed system case a frameless default XILENCE fan is more preferable than Scythe Kaze Maru.
Note that both top-coolers improve their cooling efficiency quite a bit when we remove the side case panel (it is especially true for low fan rotation speeds). The tower Thermalright IFX-14, on the contrary, doesn’t demonstrate any noticeable cooling efficiency improvement, because the airflow structure inside the closed Antec Twelve Hundred system case suits its design best of all. And sicne we got to talk about the IFX-14, I have to say one more time: it is the best.
But let’s get back to our today’s hero, XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER. I would like to point out that the engineers made a perfect choice of a fan for it. Installing a more powerful Kaze Maru brings no efficiency improvement. Moreover, it is louder than the default Black Hawk COPPER fan. The noise levels measured at 1 and 3 m distance from the system case were 34.1 and 30.8 dBA at 800 RPM and 39.6 and 34.3 dBA at 1830 RPM respectively. In the same testing conditions the noise levels of Thermalright AXP-140 with Scythe Kaze Maru fan were 35/31.9 dBA and 40.9/34.7 dBA accordingly. And the actual numbers aside, I can say that subjectively, the fan of XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER cooler is really very quiet at its minimal rotation speed, and is absolutely not annoying at maximum speed.
In our opinion XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER cooler may be considered a new reference solution among top-coolers for Intel Core i7 platform. Not so long ago this title belonged to Thermalright AXP-140 that won it from the already discontinued Thermalright SI-128 SE, which has been holding it for a long time. Although Black Hawk costs about $20 more, the $90 you pay for it already include a fan and an LGA1366 retention kit, which you don’t get among the default AXP-140 accessories. Moreover, the new cooler won’t have an uneven base and won’t interfere with tall heat-spreaders on the memory modules. Besides, its fan frame features unique LED lighting, which will definitely appeal to modding fans. We didn’t discover any other drawbacks besides high retail price resulting from use of solid copper for the cooler heatsink. So, we have every right to recommend XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER as an excellent cooling solution for an overclocked CPU.
In conclusion to our discussion of performance and features of the new XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER cooler, we decided to award it with our prestigious Editor’s Choice title as the today’s best top-cooler for CPU:
