The Xigmatek Bifrost VD1065 GPU Cooler

Using the bottom half of the shell as support, we get our first unimpeded look at the dual 100mm fan and shroud. Both fans are wired together and mounted securely in the shroud. They also make great coverage of all the fin area.

After removing it from the packaging and a bit of propping the cooler, I can show you the heat transferring side of the Bifrost. There are the five 6mm heat-pipes that wrap around this side of the cooler to get heat away from the GPU. Xigmatek took the extra step to black Nickel plate the entire body and heat-pipes to match the blackness of the shroud.

The opposing side shows a bit more on how the Bifrost is built. The copper heat-pipes are surrounded by an aluminum base plate. The aluminum fins are textured for better turbulence in the air flow that are pressed onto the heat-pipes, and are the last step to removing heat prior to the fans.

Xigmatek took a simple approach to mounting the shroud and fans to the Bifrost's fins. It uses these two tabs that lock into a groove in the end of the fins. With a bit of gentle pressure the clips will release and allow for the removal of the fans for maintenance. Keep in mind, these are on both ends of the cooler.

With the fans removed we can get a really good look at the fins. All twenty-six fins are interlocked; this aides in keeping the correct spacing and minimizing any vibration, by making the fins more of one solid unit. While this does remind me a whole lot of SilenX's cooler, Xigmatek has removed the little tips that the SilenX had at the very top of the fins, and plated the entire thing.

The business end of the Bifrost is not plated. These five heat-pipes are squeezed pretty flat to fit between the base and the GPU. The plating is covering the base during the manufacturing process, but milled to an exposed, flat and level base. Of course, depending on your choice of card, some GPU's aren't large enough to utilize all five of the pipes. My 9800 GTX+ for instance, only contacts two and a half of the pipes.

Getting a little closer, you can tell that I had wiped the base with a cloth. Don't do as I did, it took me a lot of time to remove the fibers from the small imperfections of the base. While the razor showed very little deformation, under closer examination there are small voids and that there is a bit of a lip between where the copper and aluminum meet.

Figured I may as well get an image of the reverse side of the fans. For those wanting to run this off of a fan controller, there should be no issues with the fans being 12 volt and 0.3 amp requirements.

I added some power and got the fans spinning to get an image of the fans in action. I would have liked a bit of LED lighting here, but I can't always have what I want. I understand that the shape between the fans fits the overall design, but it looks close to the Megahalems design found on top of the cooler.