Xigmatek Achilles S1284C has four 8mm H.D.T. heatpipes and a 12cm PWM fan with orange blades and white leds.This cooler not only offers a reliable and easy way to cool down our procesor but is also nice looking and high performing!

Let's go to the features and specifications!

Now lets see the packaging!

Achilles S1284C has a high quality transparent packaging so we can see the cooler.We can notice some info on the front regarding H.D.T.

Unlike other cooler Achilles S1284C is positioned with the base on top inside the package.This helps us see the H.D.T. base easilly.

At the back we can see the specifications.

Some details of the packaging, here we can see the fins and also the features of Achilles S1284C.

Compatibility can be found at the side of the package.

Some more details about the rubber fan mounts.

Accessories include:

1. User manual
2. Thermal paste
3. AM2 retention kit
4. S775 retention kit
5. 5 fan rubber mounts
6. 2 screws 

Now let's have a closer look at Achilles S1284C!

The fins have a special design to improve airflow resulting in better performance.

We can see the four 8mm heatpipes.

The base and the heatpipes.

A detail of the base.

At the base there is a protective sticker.

When we remove it we have a clear view of the base, which makes very clear for everyone what H.D.T. stands for.

The finishing is not the best I have seen, but the base is completely flat.The tiny gaps between the heatpipes and the aluminium base help any excess thermal paste to be removed and achieve a thinner layer of thermal paste.

Let's move on the installation!

Installation is very simple and easy, we just secure the push pins with the 2 screws...

And just press the push pins to install the Achilles S1284C.

From another point of view.

We can see that Achilles is not touching anything.

Included fan is Xigmatek XLF-F1253

The fan can be installed easily with the included rubber mounts.

It is better to place the fan after installing the cooler because it restricts access to the two push pins.

With the fan installed

From another point of view.

From the top we can notice the shape of the fins.This help to reduce the air resistance and further increase performance.

And a night shot! It is very nice,orange blades and white leds create a nice optical result!

Now let's move to the testing!

Heatsink testing methodology

• Each heatsink test consists of two parts, Real Test and Synthetic Test.
• Real Testing is performed in a real system, while Synthetic is done using methods that simulate thermal loads.
• Stable thermal loads are used in order to have accurate results, more specifically thermal load is produced by power resistors.
• The thermal load wattage is 30,60,90,120,150,180,210 watts. This covers a really wide range of processors and also overclocked states at wattages of 180 and 210 watts.
• Temp readings are taken from a sensor inside a copper plate that is the exact size of the processor tested in order to simulate the cpu with the best way.
• For reading the temperature I am using a high sensitivity digital multimeter.
• Thermal paste used in each test is Noctua NT-H1 because it has very quick break-in time.
• The copper piece that simulates the processor is not perfectly sanded, because the actual processor heatspreaders are never mirror polished.This happens again to have as accurate results as possible.
• Sound pressure levels are measured with a high sensitivity digital sound pressure meter, from 20cm away of the cooler inside a sound proof box to eliminate any external noise of echo.   

In order to have more clear results Achilles S1284C will be compared with:

1. Intel Stock cooler
2. Nexus H.O.C. 9000 

TESTING PART 1 - Real Testing

System used for the test

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.8Ghz
• Asus Striker Extreme
• MSI GTX260
• Seasonic M12D 850w

TESTING PART 2 - Synthetic Testing

Stable thermal loads are used in order to test the cooler at a wide variety of thermal loads, this test simulates cpu states from Idle to Overclocking

TESTING PART 3 - Sound Pressure Level

Achilles S1284C performs really well especially if we consider the price! Build quality is excellent!The whole cooler is very sturdy.

Price starts from $46(usd) at Amazon, meaning that Achilles not only performs well but is also low priced. Build quality also is remarkable and exceeded all my expectations!Perhaps a better lapped contact surface would be nice, but this is not problem at all. We also have to mention that Achilles S1284C is not compatible with Lga 1366 but this can be easily solved with Xigmatek Crossbow mounting kit that not only adds Lga 1366 compatibility but also a backplate and a more secure mounting mechanism at the price of ~6$.

Xigmatek Achilles is one the most cost effective cpu coolers on the market.It combines a high quality fan with a cooler that has nothing less from other high performance coolers,except price. At this price range the cooling systems we can find including a fan are very limited and most of them simply don't perform well, but Achilles has both the right price and the performance needed!

Pros

• High quality
• High performance
• Low price
• Fan included
• Low noise

Cons

• Not compatible with Lga 1366 out of the box(requires Crossbow kit)