Review Item...........................: Nexus XiR-2300
Supplied By............................: Nexus

When your looking for a heatsink you want something that can deliver maximum heat shifting ability with good airflow. This has to be kept in line with noise, so some where you have to compromise. Performance over Db levels or face something else giving a little as the alternative. Typically the material can help the heat transfer, along with a good paste, good fans to feed the system then in turn feeding the heatsinks fan and then moving the air out the back. Now this is a complicated co-dependency and one slight wrong choice can affect everything leading to a knock on, or domino effect in the cooling. The copper made heatsinks in general cool better as heat transfer is more efficient, and larger fans can offer lower noise with similar air flows. Add to them the tuning of the blade angles and you can refine the reach of air. In short, if you fine tune the cooling, you can make it work really well.

Nexus are a company that can design, produce and then fine tune heatsinks into a really good art form. They have function at the pinnacle of what they stand for, and form, style and aesthetics behind that. Anyone who makes a product work before dressing it gets my respect. After all, if a product works, you can make it look like anything afterwards.

Stepping up firstly to the batting plate today is the XiR-2300 heatsink from Nexus. Its available in a copper or aluminium version. Now this looks like a behemoth in the box and when its removed looks a little more normal sized. It still tops the scales at around 4 cubic inches but its compact, its neat, its stylish and its got a really nice level of finish. The copper is polished to a good lustre, and although it may age with time and hand contact, the patina on opening is exactly the same as it would have left the factory.

The base of the heatsink is the really interesting part, and this is where we should start with what makes this heatsink so different and effective. The base plate is a solid copper slug with four grooves machined into it. Connected to the base plate are four heatpipes, which we will cover more in a moment, and that is topped with a copper, full fin radial heatsink to remove any residual heat. (Or aluminium depending on what version you buy) Now this needs to be made perfectly clear. The heat passes from the core, to the base plate and into the heatpipes and upwards. Any overspill or residual heat for want of a better term is radiated through the mini radial heatsink outwards. (The one in the base) The heat pipes carry the heat upwards and over into the copper fins. The copper fins are made by CoolJag who are famous for the Skive Technology. Very thin copper, perfectly spaced and manufactured. The same applies here, the combination mates the two companies beautifully. Its a fantastic partnership.

The fan is a 92mm illuminated orange fan with no casing. The fan motor and blades are mounted on a bar to allow it to fit but it does not have the traditional surround that creates noise. Now this performs two functions, firstly it means its going to have less noise. Obviously. Secondly it means the focus or air is a little more relaxed so can penetrate the fins but without the aggression. It also manages to make it down to the aluminium heatsink below it aiding in the cooling of that just a little.

I cant see the weight of the heatsink being a problem for anyone, the size of it overall could for a few case layouts be tight. Its higher at the top than the bottom so it does keep the ability to fit onto your motherboard easier by making it a small base footprint. So this means you have room to move your hands about for fitting. But as I say, the top business end may be tight on some boards if the PSU is close.

When it comes to fitting I dont want to confuse anyone, its straight forward, and if you can fit it with the backplate I certainly would do so for a tighter fit. It pulls the core more easily and gives a better connection for heat transfer. Mate that with some really good paste and it will perform well for quite some time.

In testing the new Coolermaster case was used, and it fits neatly into that, so after testing was done we also tried the Lian-Li for a more real world fit. Also real world temps for a better idea of what it can do for you. On the whole, for looks, fit, and for the ease of fit with a normal case you would be fine, some of the smaller cases may need a little jiggling around to get a good airflow but it should in reality fit any case and perform well. The temperatures on the whole were not overly impressive when compared to some coolers, but it sat happily, and almost silently at 32-36 degrees no matter what we threw at it so although the maximum to minimum temperature scale is not big, its a good all around cooler that played well even when on a clocking system. You may, and I do say this as a word of warning, be better off taking the fitted fan off and putting a regular fan on if you want more clocking from it. As it is, it does work but you may be pushing the limits of the design a little to far by using the existing fan.

With a fitting in a smaller case the air flow differences were noticeable. The normal running temps we in the region of 34 degrees and under load gaming did go a lot higher. To the point of 43 degrees which is a more real terms temperature. The Cosmos S case does seem to make a difference to the over all temps making it a bad test bed for us to work from.