Xigmatek Venus XP-SD1266 Cooler Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging3. Xigmatek Venus XP-SD12664. Installation5. Testing Methodology and Performance results6. Acoustic Performance7. Closing thoughts8. View All Pages

Our time spent with the Xigmatek Venus XP-SD1266 proved to be a mainly positive experience, although there is room for improvement.

The new cooler from Xigmatek performs quite well with the single 120mm fan that it ships with. Installation of the Venus XP-SD1266 was straight forward and only takes a few minutes to complete.  The hardest part was figuring out the correct procedure for installing the rubber fan mounts.

We have tested coolers in the past with dual fans that didn't perform as well as the Venus XP SD1266, so Xigmatek deserve some credit for their work during the development phase.

One issue we had with the Venus XP-SD1266 was the orientation of the cooler.  Our preference is to have the heat produced by the processor exhausted out the top of the chassis, but as we mentioned earlier, the mounting hardware for AMD configurations forced us to have the fan directed towards the rear of the chassis.  The performance of the cooler isn't in question however as it performed well during stress testing as indicated earlier in the review.

We can't indicate a value for money rating as we can't find this cooler anywhere in the United Kingdom. Xigmatek really need to look into this if they wish to target a wider enthusiast audience.

Pros:

• high quality construction.
• easy installation.
• good performance even with only 1 fan.

Cons:

• orientation limited to rear exhaust.
• fan is noisy at full speed.
• hard to find online.

Kitguru says: A good cooler which faces stiff competition and availability problems.

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