NZXT is a well known provider of "eye-catching" cases and peripherals, but like many other brands they offer power supplies as well. These include the HALE90 series, their first 80 Plus Gold product to hit the market. While the HALE90 targets the high-end audience, NZXT also wants to cater to midrange users, and for that market they have their new HALE82 series that covers wattages from 650W to 850W. The rated output makes these models good for high-end single GPUs as well as moderate SLI and CrossFire systems. Features such as 80 Plus Bronze certification and modular cables are common these days, but such features say little about how good a PSU really is. Today, we're testing the 650W and 750W models, with our usual results on the following pages.
If you browse custom builds across different boutiques, you'll find NZXT's name comes up an awful lot. One of their enclosures, in particular, tends to see a lot of action: the Phantom. Its unusual angular design for some people is the right mix of style and gaudy, resembling the kind of case an Imperial Stormtrooper might choose if they were planning on learning how to at least hit the broad side of a barn in their off-duty hours. Today we take the wraps off of the Phantom's new fun size version, the Phantom 410, offering all the style without the massive footprint.
NZXT is new to the cooler game, but if the Havik 140 is any indication, the company isn’t being dumb about it. The Havik 140 is a hefty cooler in the stacked-fins “skyscraper” style, with six copper heat pipes rising from the heat exchanger through 4.25 inches of nickel-plated‑copper heat-dissipation fins. Two 14cm fans with white, wavy blades and black casings are strapped to the front and back faces of the heatsink in push-pull configuration using rubber-band-like straps, which are easier to use than the standard wire clips. The fans use 3-pin power connectors, and the cooler ships with a Y-cable to connect both fans to the mobo’s fan headers.
NZXT’s Havik 140 marries two 14cm fans with six heat pipes and a passel of fins.
The cooler stands more than 6.25 inches high from heat exchanger to the ends of the heat pipes, 5.25 inches across, and (with both fans strapped on) 4.75 inches deep. Installation uses a now-familiar system—a universal backplate with four posts mounted in the appropriate holes for the socket and plastic spacers on the other side of the motherboard, upon which rest two mounting bars. A second bar runs between those two mounting bars and secures with spring screws, pressing the heat exchanger against the CPU. NZXT’s version of this mounting system isn’t as solid or as easy to use as Prolimatech’s, which remains the gold standard by which we measure CPU mounting systems, but it’s hardly the trickiest install we’ve ever done.
Once mounted, the Havik performed admirably, besting the Hyper 212 Plus in our stress test by nearly 18 degrees Celsius and slightly outcooling the Prolimatech Armageddon, our Best of the Best air cooler. And it didn’t sound like a jet turbine doing so—the fans were remarkably quiet. At , we’ll accept the slightly cheap-feeling mounting bracket. NZXT’s first cooler is great for overclocking.
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