NZXT HAVIK-120 Review
Up Close: The Cooler
Published: 4th April 2012 | Source: NZXT | Price: £46.05 |
Up Close: The Cooler
With two thirteen bladed fans set up in push pull configuration the Havik 120 is quite an imposing sight. The fans are 1200-1500rpm units, with the supplied Y splitters able to offer the required control into a single header. These 13 bladed fans look very similar to NZXTs 9 bladed black and white units but do not appear to feature on the NZXT website.
The 4 heat pipes are grouped into sets of 2 closer to the outer edges of the fin stack than the centre. As with the Havik 140 the fans are attached by means of rubber bungees. A bit of a fiddle to begin with, but once you get the hang of them you'll never want to go back to the metal spring clips. No chance of dropping one of these inside your case and shorting out something expensive.
In the images below you can see better how the fans attach. The bungees are a single piece per side, essentially looping from the rear of one set of holes, though the edge of the fin stack and back into the other hole. They're secured by simply stretching them over the fins and letting them find their own level to sit at. Being rubber the bungees also provide vibration dampening between the fans and the fin stack. Also seen on the images below is that the outer edge of the centre of each layer of fins are slightly inclined towards each other in pairs. At first I thought this angulation went all he way through the cooler, but on closer inspection it is just the outer edges. Whether this be for aesthetic or performance reasons I'm not sure. Perhaps a bit of both. Something else that may be intended to aid performance is what appears to be a slight honing of the leading edges of the fins in the stack. The edges appear slightly thinner and "sharper" than they would normally be, and certainly thinner than on the reverse side. I'm thinking perhaps NZXT have looked towards aerospace engineering and tried to imitate and aerofoil to some degree. Either that or my eyes are starting to play tricks on me because in all the photos I took it they looked no different.
The contact plate and heat pipes can be seen in the images below. The contact plate is machined smooth rather than being of the mirror finish type. To be honest I'm not sure that having a mirror finish to the contact plate makes much of a difference to performance. I'd rather have it machined and flat than shiny but not flat any day. At the end of the day it's going to get a blob of TIM delivered in to the gap anyway so what's it really matter if you can reflect a pound coin in it? Both the contact plate and the heat pipes are Nickel plated Copper and are finished to a high degree, although there is some evidence of solder leakage around where the heat pipes enter the contact plate, presumably from when the one was attached to the other. I mention this in passing as it won't be seen and shouldn't affect performance.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by Excalabur50
Sounds great for those with limited space or a tight budget seems NZXT are lifting their game nice to see. |
This lady with the whp, does she take bookings?
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Originally Posted by Ghosthud1
£46 seems steep for a heatsink of this performance level. Actually all heat sinks are starting to sink into much higher price brackets! what happened to the ocz vendetta that stomped everything at £28 |
The reason I suggest it, is because based on thermodynamics, heat transfer has a multiplicative effect based on the difference of the two items temperatures which are touching. Meaning, more heat will transfer at a faster rate between two things (air and the heatsink fins/pipes) when the difference in their temps are greater.
Meaning, when you test two heatsinks at different ambient temperatures, the Delta Temp you measure when the ambient temps are higher will actually be skewed due to the multiplicative effect.
I don't know if this makes a huge difference in air cooled heatsinks as I've never tested it, but theoretically it would.
You cant test the difference it would make easily. Use the same rig/setup voltages, settings, etc at two difference ambient temps in the room.
If the delta temperatures for the cpu are the same/similar, then it doesnt have an effect; however, if they are different, it would show that the ambient temperature has an effect on the delta temperatures you are measuring, putting rigs in a higher ambient temp room at a disadvantage
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We saw what the Havik 140 could do back in December last year when Tom took it for a spin. Now with the release of the Havik 120 it's time to see what the 140s little brother can do.
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