NZXT Havik 140 Heatsink Review

We got this heatsink several months ago and after initial tests we determined that it was either defective or had some fundamental flaws that was keeping it from performing how we had expected.  On the surface this heatsink is almost perfect, it has plenty of mass at the base and solid fin construction.  There are six rather large heatpipes with full and direct exposure to oncoming air so heat transfer should be good however there was something missing.

The Havik 140 comes with two specially designed 140mm fans that are supposed to push 90CFM spinning at 1200rpm.  Given that airflow there shouldn't be any issues with cooling but when you look at the size difference between the heatsink and fan you'll notice that a good majority of the air used to cool the heatsink isn't touching it at all.  In fact most of the high speed air is exiting out the top and bottom of the heatsink leaving the low pressure and low velocity air to pass through the heatsink and really do nothing for us.

To test our theory we tested the Havik 140 using the dual 140mm fans against a single Noctua NF-F12 and discovered that the single 120mm fan cooled as well as both 140mm fans did running full speed.  This isn't' to say the Havik is a bad heatsink, since it can handle a decent overclock, but it does seem like a victim of poor design and attempts to add more bling with not enough zing.

Solid Mounting on Sandy Bridge
Rubber Mounted Fans
High Powered Fans

Rubber mounted fans, rubber tends to rot over time
Mounting on AMD is labor intensive
Lack luster cooling
Flashy fans with no results