Specifications, Availability and Pricing

The basic premise of the Dark Knight is taking an S1283 cooler and plating it in a black nickel coating to help improve performance as well as giving the cooler a sleek look. The Dark Knight is the same size as the rest of the S1283 line-up standing 159mm tall. However, Xigmatek has added a bonus over the rest of their CPU coolers by using an 89.45 CFM fan with the Dark Knight. This just happens to be the most airflow out of a fan I have tested in the Xigmatek series. With the Dark Knight, Xigmatek kept the three- piece, 8mm heat pipes to take the heat away from the base into the aluminum alloy fins.

Using Google to search out the Dark Knight brings me to the realization that only a few e-tailers currently carry the cooler in stock. Newegg is on a separate list as well as many others showing these coolers as being out of stock, so attaining this cooler is a bit tough right now to do. One thing to note, there seems to be a variation when looking for this cooler. Xigmatek has released a Dark Knight S1238V version. From what I can gather, the only difference is the included i7 mounting hardware. If you are looking to use this on your new i7 rig, be careful on purchasing the correct version.

The Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 is currently unavailable, but it's listed at Newegg for $44.99, plus shipping. Xigmatek has done a good job so far with giving the end user a lot of bang for the buck with their cooling solutions. With the Dark Knight using a higher CFM fan than any cooler yet released with a 120mm fan from Xigmatek, I would bet this cooler can handle itself just fine with LGA775 rigs and has a bunch of potential to cool the i7's as well.